Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- BYU basketball aims to compete with top programs using significant NIL funding.
- Booster Paul Liljenquist is key, investing heavily to attract elite players.
- Concerns arise over BYU's alignment with its non-pay-to-play principles.
PROVO — Not that it was much of a secret in college basketball circles, but BYU basketball's ambition is now clear to literally the world.
Move over Duke and Kentucky or any other of the sport's blue bloods. With gobs of cash, the upstart program is coming after you.
"You're not going to outbid us," said Paul Liljenquist.
Who?
The apparent mega-money man is nowhere to be found on the roster of coaches or any of the other positions that comprise the entire BYU basketball staff. Yet he, along with a few others, might be more important to the program's success than head coach Kevin Young or any of the BYU basketball employees.
In an ESPN.com story posted Wednesday, in which the aforementioned quote appeared, Liljenquist is described as "one of BYU's most active boosters." In other words, he's rich and willing to spend a significant amount on NIL to get — or "buy" might be more accurate — Young the players needed to contend for a national championship.
Gone are the aims of winning a conference championship and a game or two in the NCAA Tournament. For a program with two Sweet 16 appearances since 1981, suddenly the Final Four might be understated.
Paying college players and/or giving them assorted benefits has been a routine business practice for decades, but it was done through sly methods to prevent getting caught afoul of NCAA rules and regulations. The proverbial $100 handshake, which now seems so quaint and innocent, has given way to forking over millions of dollars.
Liljenquist and like-minded billionaires are willing to pay to move up the college basketball ladder. As the CEO of Focus services, a $500 million company according to the ESPN story, the man has every right to spend as he chooses.
Good for him. And great for BYU basketball and all the fans of a program that never finished first in the lower-regarded West Coast Conference and has not won an NCAA Tournament game since 2014.
Three months shy of one year on the job, Young has rattled his sport by securing previously unattainable talent to play for BYU. In addition to luring projected lottery pick Egor Demin from Russia to play on this year's team, Young has signed AJ Dybantsa — currently the top-rated high school senior — for next season.
Demin had a connection to the program in former BYU star Travis Hansen, who became close with the player and his family through a professional basketball career in Europe. If Demin returns next season, expect the compensation to make up the difference of drawing an NBA salary.
Dybantsa was somewhat of a shocker, at least for ESPN star commentator Stephen A. Smith, when the player and his father announced the decision on the television network. For all of Young's NBA connections, which he does have in abundance, it still cost a bundle to get such a special talent.
Aside from playing at a prep school in southern Utah, Dybantsa does not fit the BYU profile. Not often does the school sign a Black, non-Latter-day Saint high school superstar from Massachusetts.
The BYU rich guys "made it clear they could offer the reported $8.5 million sum Dybantsa's signing demanded," as quoted on ESPN.
To an extent, shelling out big bucks is contrary to the pay-to-play formula BYU is against. Elder Clark Gilbert said as much last October in a Deseret News story.
"The church isn't going to weigh in on dollar amounts or recruits, that's the job of the university," the commissioner of church education said. "But we will lay out some core principles. We can never become a place where the culture is pay to play.
"We would undermine everything at BYU if that wins out. It's tempting, (but) if they don't fit the mission, we'd unravel everything."
To be sure, BYU goes to great lengths to point out the founding church institution does not fund athletics in any way, but the school's friends do their part.
All in favor, say I.
