Both Quinn and Stone took a few moments to look at the big picture and where a team like BYU fits in the modern world of college football.

“It’s a rarity, for sure,” Stone said. “It’s an outlier, particularly when you’re talking about the upper echelon of athletics where so much is the transfer portal and NIL.

“People don’t understand maybe the Polynesian pipeline that exists here in the Beehive State. They don’t understand what a mission is. And then you’re combining that with elite athletics, obviously, not just on the football level, but basketball and other sports as well. To me, it’s a very unique outlier that should be preserved.”

Quinn said he appreciates institutions like BYU that represent more than just sports.

“It’s what they stand for,” Quinn said. “It’s a spirituality or a sense of belief. I obviously kind of draw close to that because of my ties to Notre Dame and how where everything’s going right now.

“To me, that is a reason to root for them because it’s not just about football. It’s about graduating. It’s about the academic portion of it. It’s about the faith or spiritual based portion of it.”

He believes those things are important and make a big difference during formative college years.

“It’s what differentiates college football from the NFL, and for a lot of these young people too,” Quinn said. “It’s this time in their life where they’re growing and developing, maturing into something. All those things are kind of like mixed into one when you talk about college football at BYU and Notre Dame and TCU and Baylor, some other places where they’ll say a prayer before a sporting event. It kind of makes you reflect back on what this is really all about.”