BYU athletic director Brian Santiago says the school is putting major money behind football and staying locked in with Kalani Sitake as the program navigates a change in administrative oversight.
Speaking on the Cougar Tracks Podcast at Big 12 Basketball Media Day, Santiago addressed a handful of hot-button topics around the Cougars: the August decision to put Vice President Keith Vorkink over football, the state of his relationship with Sitake, and the scale of the investment going into the program. The interview came after BYU’s win over Notre Dame, when the Cougars were ranked No. 2 in the country.
“We’re going to continue to make good on the commitments that we’ve made,” Santiago said to KSL Sports. “We’re going to continue to do everything we can to elevate Kalani and this program.”
Santiago made clear that he sees his relationship with Sitake as steady and longstanding. Asked to describe it, he leaned on the years they’ve spent working together and the shared push to keep BYU climbing.
“Kalani and I have been together for 11 years, and we’ve always had a good relationship,” Santiago said. “And I’m going to continue to focus on the positives.”
He tied that mission to a bigger benchmark: getting BYU back to the kind of heights the program reached in 1984, the year of its national championship. The Cougars’ No. 2 spot in this week’s AP Top 25 is their highest ranking since that title season.
“We all want the same thing,” he said. “We all want to continue to elevate this program to heights that haven’t happened since 1984.”
Santiago added, “I’m going to continue to do everything I can to have a great rapport and relationship with Kalani.”
On the oversight change, Santiago kept the emphasis on collaboration rather than lines on an org chart. He acknowledged Vorkink’s role while saying he remains the athletic director and is still working daily with the Big 12 and on the many initiatives tied to football.
“The university announced that Keith would be overseeing the football program, but I’m still the athletic director,” Santiago said. “I work every day with the Big 12. We’ve got initiatives happening every day that we’ve all got to lean into.”
He didn’t spell out exactly how responsibilities are divided, but he framed the whole thing as a shared push inside the department.
“From our perspective, I’m just looking at it as a group effort, and we together are going to continue to try to elevate BYU,” he said.
“This is bigger than any individual. This is about BYU.”
Santiago also gave one of his clearest public signals yet about the resources going into football. He said the school has committed “unprecedented resources” to the program and revealed that more than $25 million in capital work is underway.
“We’re heavily invested, and we’ve invested unprecedented resources in our coach, in our coaching staff, in the football program,” Santiago said. “We’ve got 25-plus million dollars of capital projects going on right now in the football program.”
He didn’t specify which projects are included or compare the current spending to previous years, but he said the continued investment is part of helping Sitake keep the program moving forward.
“Kalani Sitake wants to be great, and so he’s going to continue to press for us to put resources in place to help him be successful,” Santiago said.
When asked what Sitake wants to improve, Santiago didn’t point to any single area. Instead, he described a coach chasing sustained excellence across the board.
“What I take from that is we have a coach that wants to have sustained excellence at the very highest level of college football,” Santiago said. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“He’s super competitive. I’m super, super competitive, and I’m going to continue to lean in to do everything I can as the athletic director to help this program be the best in the country.”
Santiago also pushed back on the idea that football success has to come at the expense of BYU’s other sports. He acknowledged football’s place at the top of the department, but said the goal is to thrive across the board.
“Everybody knows football is the king,” he said. “So, we need to pour resources in and help him be wildly successful.”
“We want to be wildly successful in football and be wildly successful in our other sports,” he said. “And we can.”
He noted that seven BYU fall teams were ranked in the top 25 at the time of the interview and credited the broader effort behind the department, including coaches, athletes, donors, corporate sponsors, and years of work.
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