‘We’re where we want to be’: What BYU’s Tom Holmoe is saying now that the Cougars are officially members of the Big 12
When the clock struck midnight Friday night, the calendar turned to July 1, touching off a big celebration in Provo, commemorating BYU’s official membership in the Big 12 Conference.
Why not? For athletic director Tom Holmoe, and Cougar Nation, it’s been a prolonged wait.
While Saturday served up 24 hours of unrestrained joy in Provo, recognizing all of the decades of work that it required to get to this point, Holmoe knows that that work continues.
Holmoe is both filled with optimism and grounded in realism.
With fans participating in fun and games in the heat outside the football facility Saturday afternoon to commemorate the Cougars jumping to the Big 12, Holmoe took time to field questions from reporters inside the climate-controlled football office lobby.
Certainly, Holmoe has a unique perspective on this monumental event in BYU sports history. He is the athletic director, but he was also a BYU football player in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“It feels good. … I don’t think people realize I’m a BYU alum. I’m a football player. Many times I wear the same hat as them. I’m an AD at day and an alum at night,” he said. “It’s something I’ve wanted for a long, long time. It’s something that I talk to the players about, the alum players, Cougar Nation. It comes up a lot. I know the desire and the need. It’s talked about a lot. I’m super excited for the fans.
Related
‘A culmination of twists and turns’: How BYU finally got into a Power Five league
What Big 12 commish had to say about the ‘big-time value’ BYU brings to the league
“It’s not about my administration. I think it’s kind of a family reunion celebration. It’s like, ‘Hey, this is what we’ve been fighting for; this is what we’ve wanted.’ But then tonight, that book will close. I’ll turn the page on that chapter because we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve been in preparation for a year-and-a-half. Whether we’re preparing the right way, we’ll soon find out. But I know that there’s so much work ahead and we’re up for that. We’re ready to go. We’re where we want to be.”
Cincinnati, Houston and UCF, which also joined the league with BYU, are also where they want to be.
The fact that Holmoe coached at the Power 5 level at California and coach Kalani Sitake was at Utah when the Utes moved from the Mountain West to the Pac-12 should help BYU’s transition into the Big 12.
“People that snicker and say, ‘Now you’ll see what it’s really like to play in the big time,’ I get it,” Holmoe said. “I’ve played in the big time and it’s hard. You have to be at your best and you have to stay healthy and you have to have great depth.”
Recruiting will be crucial in this new era, of course, as the Cougars look to contend for Big 12 championships.
“Recruiting is always hard. But you have a little bit of a leg up when you have that title of ‘autonomy five conference’ with you. That’s helped a lot,” Holmoe said. “It will help as you build depth and you bring in stronger personnel and a variety of personnel. You’re not as one-dimensional as you might have appeared to be. Those things will help. Those will come along, but they will take a little time. … We don’t give ourselves some type of number of years that it’s going to take. That would be crazy.”
BYU’s 12 years of independence, which provided many opportunities to play Power 5 opponents, should play in the Cougars’ favor as well.
“It has helped a lot. We’ve played a lot of big games in P5. We’ve gotten whooped in P5 and we’ve won some games that people didn’t expect us to win. That’s probably how it was expected to go,” Holmoe said. “That’s been going on for years. It’s not just recent history. But with these players, this is the important part. These are the players that are living it right now. They have been there. They have gone into some tough places and played hard and well. Sometimes they’ve won and sometimes they’ve lost. They’re not scared. They’re ready for it. They just have to execute.”
Holmoe feels the athletic department has built a foundation for a successful era in the Big 12. BYU is going to continue to do what it’s been doing, but at an even higher level.
“During the years of independence, where there wasn’t a real pathway to being in a P5 conference, we were still moving toward that,” Holmoe said. “It’s always been the goal. It’s always been the dream. So we structurally and strategically have made a lot of changes that we wouldn’t comment on necessarily. But that’s been the common goal.”
As a member of the Big 12, BYU will have access to much more revenue than it’s been accustomed to during its history.
But that’s not Holmoe’s focus.
“I’ve always said that for me, it’s not so much about the money you might get — that’s what everybody asks. I want our student-athletes to be able to play against the best competition in the country year-in and year-out,” he said. “There were certain teams that just wouldn’t play us. And it wasn’t that they feared us. It just didn’t fit into their schedule. So now when you play in an autonomy-five conference, you better be careful for what you wish for. It might come true. This is what happens now. Week after week, game after game, we get really good competition. It’s our best against your best. That’s really what I’m looking forward to most.”
For Holmoe, the wait is over. The celebration is over. Now, it’s time to compete in the Big 12.
Finally.
