Life is good in Provo.

The Cougars are back home after a convincing triumph at the Alamo Bowl. When the final poll is released, they expect to be ranked among the top 15 and with so many key players returning, BYU should still be ranked when the 2025 polls start to surface.

Rankings aren’t everything, and they aren’t always right, but they do reflect a team’s success and often indicate the direction a program is heading. After just two years of playing Power Four football, the Cougars are trending up.

For a team that lost five straight games to end 2023, this 11-2 finish is beyond even Kalani Sitake’s wildest imagination. The head coach has worked hard to establish a culture bold enough to compliment the church-owned school while competing and contending at the same time.

Looking at the foundation Sitake has fortified, it’s reasonable to expect that BYU’s football program is built to last, even as it welcomes a little luck along the way.

• Sitake contract extension. The architect will remain in place for “a long time” according to BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe, who announced Sitake’s extension on Dec. 7. The specific details remain under wraps, but the Cougars can rest confident that the head coach isn’t going anywhere.
• Staff retention: Successful seasons always bring poachers looking for help and Sitake has created a staff of future Division I head coaches, including defensive coordinator Jay Hill. Sitake’s off-season mission, empowered by his new contract, is to get his guys fairly compensated. So far, everyone is staying put. Hill, who suffered a heart attack just prior to the season opener, will remain a hot commodity every day that he remains in Provo and all indications are that he plans to be back.
• Roster: Losing key guys like Tyler Batty, Jakob Robinson and potentially Darius Lassiter will leave holes to fill. But BYU returns most of the team, including starting quarterback Jake Retzlaff, and BYU appears ready to fill the holes left by the departures. On Monday, Keanu Tanuvasa, the heart and soul on Utah’s defensive line for the last two seasons, announced he is transferring to BYU. Tanuvasa reportedly chose the Cougars against competing offers from Georgia and Alabama. This is the first post-Alamo Bowl recruiting victory for Sitake and he expects more to come.
• Schedule: Repeating an 11-2 season will be a challenge, but the Cougars have a schedule that provides an opportunity to contend again for the Big 12 championship and a date in the College Football Playoff. BYU will play home games next fall against Portland State, Stanford, TCU, West Virginia, UCF and Utah. The road tests include East Carolina, Iowa State, Arizona, Cincinnati, Texas Tech and Colorado — the team they blitzed 36-14 in the Alamo Bowl.
• Money: Nothing brings in money faster than winning. The Cougar Club witnessed that firsthand when BYU beat Michigan to win the 1984 national championship. Fan investment changed the game moving forward. This year’s 11-2 season is music to the ears of fundraisers, and with NIL and student-athlete compensation, the need for cash has never been greater. In addition, 2025 will bring BYU its first paycheck from the Big 12 as an equal revenue sharing partner. In 2024, the Cougars received $19 million. Starting in 2025, BYU will get $50 million.
• Momentum: An added boost to the future of BYU football is the current state of momentum on campus where there is a noticeable surge. While the Cougars were winning in front of a full LaVell Edwards Stadium, new basketball coach Kevin Young signed the nation’s No. 1 prep player AJ Dybantsa — a first for BYU. Young is amassing a group motivated players to take the Cougars to their first Final Four. In addition, the men’s and women’s cross-country teams swept the national championships.
• Luck? With Sitake’s football foundation firmly in place, the last thing needed to sustain or even grow BYU’s productivity is the one ingredient that can’t be counted on — luck. It shows up when it feels like it, and sometimes it’s not very good. Every program needs a little good fortune to get where it wants to go, and BYU had moments of good and bad luck in 2024.

Such as …

• With 10 seconds remaining against Oklahoma State, Jake Retzlaff’s throw that was intended for JoJo Phillips sailed over his head and into the arms of Darius Lassiter, who had gone rogue on his own route. Lassiter caught the ball and dodged two defenders as he danced into the end zone to win the game 38-35 in front of a frenzied home crowd.

• Facing fourth-and-10 at the Cougars’ own 9-yard line with 1:35 to play at Utah, Retzlaff was sacked at the goal line, all but ending the game. However, the Utes were penalized for defensive holding. Invigorated by a new set of downs and aided by an incredible diving grab by Chase Roberts on a 30-yard pass from Retzlaff, BYU drove down the field and Will Ferrin kicked a 44-yard field goal to win the game 22-21.
• Enjoying life at 9-0 and No. 6 in the CFP rankings, the Cougars watched Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels, from the shot-gun position, kick a pooch-punt on fourth down at the BYU 36. The ball sailed inside the 10, where it bounced off Evan Johnson’s helmet, becoming a live ball. Johnson was busy defending the Kansas receiver and was unaware of Daniels’ surprise kick. The sure-handed Jakob Robinson had a clear shot at recovering the ball for BYU, but as he jumped on top of it, the ball squirted away from him and into the arms of Jayhawks receiver Quentin Skinner at the 3-yard line. Bad luck had arrived. Kansas scored on the next play in what became the game-winning touchdown — eventually costing the Cougars a chance to play in the Big 12 championship game.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Sitake gets that, but he also agrees with Thomas Jefferson who said, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

Sitake and his staff worked hard this year and the results reflect it. More importantly, he has built a program designed to sustain success and breed its own good fortune and that is why life is good in Provo.

Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.