First of all, I am very grateful for the many sponsors of BYU athletics and people who support our team in ways that are much deeper than I can and do. Seriously, having a coach like Kevin Young is so fun, and he's not here because of me.

It's insane to me that we are landing guys like Egor. And that guys like Dybantsa are legit considering coming to Provo. When I told my wife (a casual BYU fan) about his visit, and that he's a projected #1 pick in the 2025 draft who isn't LDS, her response was, "Why in the world is he planning on coming to BYU?" I told her, "Kevin Young and NIL money."

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the team I've cheered for my whole life is landing guys like we are, and appears to be a heavy player in the new NIL era.

To be honest, though, a part of my identity as a life-long BYU fan has been to learn to love a team who is a perennial underdog. We're always under-funded, under-recruited, and far over-performing our expectations. On a national level in football and college basketball, except for a brief moment in the 80s, we've never been considered real players. We've always been the good, respectable team, but one who lacks resources of the big dogs, and therefore makes it easier to root for as an underdog.

That's all changing before our eyes, though. We're dropping NIL money and landing legit stars like big dogs. It seems like if Kevin Young wants a guy, and that guy is willing to come to BYU and live the honor code, people are making sure that NIL isn't an issue. The amount of money that we're rumored to have dropped on Egor is mind blowing. If you'd have told me 2 years ago that we'd be doing that, I'd have called you crazy.

It's cool that we have rebounded so hard from losing our head coach, and we are getting guys with the pedigree that we are. But I'm finding myself having to change my identity as a college basketball fan. I don't really root for the under-funded underdog anymore.