Kalani Sitake and the BYU team had two chances to conquer Joey McGuire’s well-oiled squad last season but faltered on both instances. Now, Josh Pate has delivered a blunt assessment of the Cougars’ standing in the Big 12.
Josh Pate Reminds Kalani Sitake and BYU of Their 2025 Failures
Pate, appearing on his podcast on Sunday, shared his Top 25 preseason rankings. As he ranked the Cougars 14th, he also highlighted their returning production and the team’s quality. He said, “I think a lot of folks probably are going to sleep on Brigham Young a little bit. Everyone’s just going to kind of throw this blanket feeling that the Big 12 is Texas Tech’s, with or without Brendan Sorsby. Well, I don’t automatically feel that way.”
“It’s just because Brigham Young is a really good team and they have a lot of returning production off of a group from last year that has been told, ‘You didn’t really win anything,’ because they didn’t.”
The core of this brutal reminder lies in two specific Saturdays that continue to haunt the BYU faithful. Last season, the Cougars were systematically dismantled by Texas Tech twice.
The first meeting in Lubbock was a defensive clinic by the Red Raiders that left BYU looking lost at the line of scrimmage. The second, a high-stakes rematch in the Big 12 Championship, was even more demoralizing.
So, here is the strange paradox: BYU has 63% returning production, and Sitake turned down the Penn State job to fuel more hunger in the team. But on the other hand, Texas Tech seems out of grasp for the Cougars, despite question marks on Brendan Sorsby.
Therefore, Pate said, “They ran up against Texas Tech twice, they lost to them twice, and that’s it. Just no one remembers anything. Well, here is what I remember: otherwise, that was a really good team that won a lot of games.”
However, Pate puts BYU high in the rankings. He concluded, “Because they don’t have a ton of newness all over the place, I expect them to enter the season playing at a pretty high level. So, I put Brigham Young in the top 15.”
It remains to be seen how Sitake finds a way to break the Texas Tech jinx, not to mention a game with Marcus Freeman’s Notre Dame on the calendar this year. As a result, PFSN’s CFB Playoff Meter gives the Cougars a 17% chance to win the Big 12 and a 29.7% chance to make the CFP.
