BYU Sports: Why 2020-21 was such a success

BYU Sports ended up having one of the best seasons of all time this past year.

Covid 19 has affected sports for the past 15 months yet that didn’t stop BYU Sports from having one of the most successful years that they have ever had. Nearly every team played in the postseason and posted record performances. Football, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s volleyball, and gymnastics all had top five seasons of all time. That doesn’t include postseason success by the men’s and women’s basketball teams, men’s and women’s indoor/outdoor track, women’s volleyball, softball and women’s soccer.

At one point during their seasons, BYU had the following rankings:

• No. 1 Women’s Cross Country (finished 1st)
• No.1 Men’s Cross Country (finished 3rd)
• No. 1 Men’s Volleyball (finished 2nd)
• No. 4 Men’s Track (finished 17th)
• No. 7 Women’s Soccer (finished 7th)
• No. 8 Football (finished 11th)
• No. 8 Women’s Track (finished 10th)
• No. 11 Gymnastics (finished 19th)
• No. 12 Women’s Volleyball (finished 12th)
• #14 Men’s Basketball (finished 23rd)
• #24 Men’s Golf (finished unranked)

This isn’t a knock against the other teams, but only baseball, softball, men’s and women’s tennis and women’s golf did not ever crack the Top 25 this past year. While BYU normally finds a way to be ranked in quite a few of these sports, I’m not sure there have ever been this many.

But why was 2020/21 so successful for BYU? I’ve got a few theories.

Church Affiliation

While not every athlete is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a majority of them are. Say what you want to about the church, but nobody can deny that the culture of the church teaches patience, persistence, and hard work. Many of the athletes served 18 month or 24 month LDS missions all around the world which also taught hard work, exact obedience, and following rules that otherwise are not necessary.

It should come as no surprise then that when many of these former missionaries were suddenly told to follow rules that in any other situation they wouldn’t have to (social distancing, Covid testing, and other protocols), they already knew what it was like to live with weird rules making it less difficult for them versus other student athletes at other schools who had never lived like that.

Admittingly it is really tough to know every game that got postponed across all sports, but if my count is correct, BYU had about 35 games/competitions postponed or cancelled with only four of them being because of BYU.

Utah

No, not the University of Utah, but the state. In a conference that was much more tough on Covid restrictions, California, Oregon and Washington, BYU was able to get away with things that other schools could not. Some states had such strict Covid contact tracing restrictions that they lost a lot more time practicing/playing games than BYU.

While the WCC had rules on contact tracing, the state of California was tougher than them meaning that at times, the WCC would allow BYU to continue to practice/play games, while St. Mary’s with the same issue would not be allowed to due to California’s rules.

There was a time when teams in California could not even meet as a team while BYU was having full on practices. That extra practice time, and the lack thereof for the other teams surely helped BYU in the win column and hurt every other team in the loss column.

Money

While BYU doesn’t have the same money as many of the Power Five schools, the fact that they have football and a deal with ESPN gives the Cougars much more money than any other team in the WCC and most schools around the country.

Having this extra money could help in a variety of ways including being able to afford to run facilities for additional hours as to allow athletes to come in and out without having too many athletes in a room at once, purchasing food for the players to take with them as opposed to either having athletes fend for themselves or come together to eat in a cafeteria style (yes this happened).

Perhaps the biggest way that the extra money helped though was being able to keep players isolated from each other. I’ve heard reports and spoken with players from other universities who said that even though their team did all they could to help, they still had to eat with a group, board with a group and be in smaller spaces for team meetings.

____________

Regardless of what the reason or reasons were for BYU Sports having such a successful year, it was a fun one and one fans will never forget.