College Football: 10 coaches on the hottest seats entering 2018
5. Kalani Sitake
BYU is one of the most difficult jobs in all of college football. An extremely strict honor code, and the close proximity to the LDS church makes the hiring process extremely difficult for the athletic department. Coaches they hire have to be Mormon, and those coaches then, in turn, have to recruit players that agree to the strict honor code.
That’s why BYU’s history of being a fairly successful football program is so impressive. A lot of that can be chalked up to LaVell Edwards and Bronco Mendenhall, the two best coaches in school history. Neither coach is associated with the program anymore, as Mendenhall left for the Virginia job after 2015, and Edwards passed away in 2016.
Those losses have hurt the program quite a bit. It’s difficult to find a coach that can consistently win games at BYU, and those that can do it are rare. Unfortunately, Kalani Sitake doesn’t seem capable of winning at BYU.
After a solid first season, going 9-4 in 2016, Sitake’s Cougars were horrendous in 2017. They won just four games, and their offense was anemic for much of the season. Quarterback Tanner Mangum took a massive step back in what was his third year in the program, and BYU was unable to get anything going until the end of the season.
Even then, the rushing attack was what led BYU to three wins in their last five games. For a team built around passing, that’s a pretty serious issue. The departure from the passing attack, the absolutely baffling hiring of Ty Detmer to coach the offense, and an understandably atrocious 2018 recruiting class have BYU fans calling for Kalani’s job after just two seasons.
What does Kalani need?
Kalani really needs offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes to be good, or at least better than Detmer was. BYU isn’t BYU without downfield passing, and they completely lost that identity last season. They need that to return, and frankly, they can’t win without it. Mangum is back, as is the Cougars’ top running back, Squally Canada, and much of the offensive line from last season.
They’ll need all of those players to step up in 2018. The defense should be pretty good, as it was last season, but to survive as a team with no conference affiliation, BYU needs to give people a reason to be excited. Grinding out wins with defense won’t get that done. If the Cougars can pull an upset or two, and return to a bowl game, Sitake is safe. If the offense is awful, and they miss out on a bowl again, he’ll likely be fired.