No. 14 BYU opens season tonight with Bachmeier at QB
Bear Bachmeier makes his first start as the No. 14 Cougars open the season at home against Utah Tech, riding a depth chart Kalani Sitake calls the deepest he's had in Provo.
BYU's depth chart is set, and tonight the No. 14 ranking gets tested
Tonight at 7 p.m., Bear Bachmeier takes his first snap as BYU's full-time starter when Utah Tech comes into LaVell Edwards Stadium — the job Sitake all but locked in during camp, where Bachmeier reported 15 pounds lighter and drew raves from offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick, who called him "as accurate of a thrower as I've ever coached." Fifth-year Treyson Bourguet held onto the backup job through fall camp, and Sitake has said Bourguet is "capable of winning games for the Cougars" if he's needed — not a quarterback controversy so much as a coach who trusts both arms.
The number attached to all of it is real: BYU opens the season ranked No. 14, its highest preseason spot since 1985, when the Cougars won 11 games and reached the Citrus Bowl, per CFBKings. Sitake framed the standard bluntly to KSL Sports this week: "The goal was to get to where we are at right now, so we don't have a lot of excuses," he said. "We have great depth. We have a lot of talent, and we have to do our job as coaches to get it done."
Freshman receiver Legend Glasker has beaten out older options to start alongside JoJo Phillips and Oregon transfer Kyler Kasper, and the one real hole on the two-deep is genuine — three-year starting guard Weylin Lapuaho, an All-Big 12 pick, is expected to enter the transfer portal per On3's Pete Nakos. A team this deep doesn't usually get to open a season this quietly. Tonight is the first time the ranking meets an actual opponent.
Last season ended on a bowl win BYU had to sweat out
BYU closed out last season by beating Georgia Tech 25-21 at home on December 27, and it needed the fourth quarter to hold off a Yellow Jackets team that made it uncomfortable. That capped a finish that swung wildly across the final month.
In November, BYU throttled TCU 44-13, won on the road at Cincinnati 26-14, then came home and put up 41 on UCF in a 41-21 win — three weeks that looked like a team peaking. Then Texas Tech happened, a 7-34 loss on the road that resembled nothing around it, before the Georgia Tech bowl win salvaged the finish.
There's no run to point to now — the record is 0-0 and stays that way until tonight — but that finish, mostly dominant with one flat no-show and a coach who got the last word, is the only tape anyone has on this team heading into the opener.
Sitake's new boss has a name, and he's framing it as an upgrade
The vice president running football's reporting line is no longer anonymous. BYU shifted Sitake's chain of command from athletic director Brian Santiago to advancement vice president Keith Vorkink, a move Brett McMurphy first reported on August 27 and that the Deseret News and ESPN filled in this week. Vorkink cast it as support, not a demotion for anybody: "Given today's dynamic athletics landscape, we feel it's important to be providing more administrative support, not less," he said. "We've made recent hires with that in mind, and we're also organizing in ways that we believe will support BYU's world-class programs."
The backstory explains the timing. ESPN reported Sitake spent the summer pushing on resource allocation, telling Cougar Sports Media the program "has been given the challenge of doing the most with the least" — a rare public airing of exactly the tension a reporting-line change is built to smooth over. Sitake himself isn't taking the bait publicly; asked about no longer answering to Santiago, he kept it to the locker room, per the Deseret News: "My job is to be the head football coach at BYU and take care of these young men, and try to give the fans what they deserve. That's what I'll be focused on."
Utah Tech shows up off a 54-point beatdown, and the number opened accordingly
Utah Tech's season is one game old and it was ugly — a 54-0 shutout at home to defending FCS national champion Montana State in the Trailblazers' Big Sky opener on August 29, a game they never threatened. That's the resume BYU is favored on tonight vs. Utah Tech, and the line opened at BYU -47.5 with the total set at 54.5 — a gap wide enough that the game itself is really about how the Cougars look, not about who wins it.
A week later the schedule gets real: BYU is back home on September 12 vs. Arizona, a Wildcats team priced at just -6.5 with a total of 51.5 — the first look at whether tonight's depth chart holds up against somebody who can hit back. One game at a time, but Provo will find out fast whether the No. 14 ranking is a real number or a mirage.