KSL turns potential Pulitzer article into utter trash piece.

[CincyUte]

Many of you know Mitch Harper as one of the best journalists and finest football minds in the state.  He recently wrote an amazing article for KSL.com pointing out some concerns with BYU’s football recruiting.  It was an article worthy of a Pulitzer prize.

However, after he submitted his article for publication, KSL.com dramatically revised it so as to make him sound like a 12-year old BYU-homer:

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=39739067&nid=272&title=sitake-brings-byu-into-new-world-of-recruiting

Isn’t this revised version one of the worst-written pieces of journalism garbage you’ve ever seen?  I feel real bad for Mitch.

Anyway, I’ve obtained a copy of the original draft with KSL’s redline edits.  If you take the time to read through the edits, I believe you will find the original draft very interesting and clearly superior to the revised version.  Try to ignore the underlined portions (KSL’s edits) and pay particular attention to the unedited and strikeout portions (original text).

***

SITAKE BRINGS BYU INTO NEW WORLD OF RECRUITING

PROVO — Recruiting is the lifeblood for all programs in major college football. With the hire of Kalani Sitake as BYU’s next head coach, the Cougars really need are starting to start running run their recruiting efforts like a those in major college football program. But that’s. In a way, it’s a whole other new world for BYU football.

That’s the world of recruiting that Sitake and his staff hope to imitate have placed BYU into, and it was needed for the Cougars if they want wanted to have a chance to beat Utah ever again. This is something elevate their program to new heights. Heights that BYU and their fans continue to covet and hope for.

When Tom Holmoe looked for a new head coach to replace Bronco Mendenhall last December, Holmoe stated that recruiting was a huge part of the head coaching job. BYU needed a coach to not only attract top LDS talent but also improve the depth on the roster and open new recruiting doors for the program.  So Holmoe made a list of potential coaches who could improve recruiting.  He then contacted each person on the list, one by one.  When they each laughed and said “no,” Holmoe said “screw it” and hired Kalani.

With Sitake’s desperation to keep up with Utah, BYU has decided to expanded its recruiting efforts by adding additional support staff that had not been seen with previous regimes — highlighted by the hiring of former BYU and NFL tight end Tevita Ofahengaue as director of recruiting operations. Ofahengaue (, or “T.O.” as other members of the staff call him because his favorite player is Terrell Owens), was a surprisequite the coup for Sitake as Ofahengaue had better options than joining BYU’s staff—such as remaining as the wide receivers coach at Orem High School. is one of the most connected men in high school football in the Beehive State.

With the larger support staff and the new commitment to recruiting, BYU’s coaches have tried to hit the ground running by recruiting and are not afraid to recruit kids who are already might be receiving interest from real football programs throughout top schools in the country. As BYU’s defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki said back in January regarding recruits, “It doesn’t matter who’s recruiting them, we’re going after them.”  Which is a true statement.  Sitake and his staff, dating back to his days at Oregon State, often offer recruits who already hold offers from bigger programs like Utah.  Utah has a reputation for finding hidden talent, so offering those same recruits after their Utah offer may yield a defection from time to time.

This past February, according to Rivals rankings, BYU closed on their 2016 recruiting class landing four 3-star prospects and a 4-star prospect in Handsome Tanielu who was once a Utah commit and who had turned down the likes of the Utes and Texas to sign with BYU. Tanielu was Sitake’s first commit and was the first sign of this new recruiting approach.  Tanielu ultimately was promised he’d be a starter by the BYU coaching staff and that’s what swayed his decision.  That was a promise Utah couldn’t make as it looks like they’ll have a top 20, if not top 10, defensive line in the country and the best in the PAC 12that this new and improved recruiting approach was working for the Cougars.

BYU’s 2016 class was the 51st ranked class in the country according toon Rivals.com team rankings, the highest ranking for the Cougars since 2010. However, that pales in comparison to Utah.  Utah’s 2016 class was ranked 34th with an average star rank of 2.56 while BYU’s was a sub 2 average rank of 1.72.  It also shows that while BYU can get 3-4 notable recruits, the rest of their class is quite poor.  From 2010 to 2016, Rivals average recruiting class ranking for BYU was 60, while Utah’s was 40.

Now the hope challenge for Sitake and his staff is to assemble a somewhat decent an entire recruiting class, with a whole year to do it. The 2017 class had one commit that they inherited with Lone Peak speedster Jackson McChesney, and since then the Cougars have only added a pair of tight end prospects.  BYU needs to hurry and get more players committed as the big time schools nearly have their full classes completed.

BYU’s staff has had to make up a lot ground in terms of offering prospects if they ever want to compete with Utah. Unfortunately for them, as the 2017 class was basically a blank canvas for Sitake to work with. So, they They have been aggressive in California, Texas and of course locally here in Utah. Meanwhile, Utah’s coaching staff has already spent years developing relationships and networks in these It’s not a coincidence that those three states to assist them in recruiting.  BYU, on the other hand, has have coaches on the staff who merely hail from those parts of the country:  and also played at BYU in Ty Detmer (San Antonio, Texas), Jernaro Gilford (Hawthorne, California) and a handful of coaches who grew up in Utah.

Being a program that has some unique challenges, that other universities don’t have, it helps BYU put having coaches like Detmer and Gilford on their staff to try to sell the BYU experience. They because they lived it, and when they arrived at BYU as fresh-faced football players they were also not members of the LDS faith. Opening doors with non-LDS prospects was is critical to BYU’s success in the 1980s. When future. It can be easy to forget that when BYU won the National Championship in 1984, less than 35% of that roster served LDS missions.

With the offers that BYU has extended for the 2017 class, more than 65 percent of those prospects currently hold offers from multiple Power Five programs. That just wasn’t happening in years past.  Unfortunately for BYU, it doesn’t mean the committal rate will go any higher. BYU was identifying prospects that fit BYU and probably no one else. The connections and relationships that Sitake and his staff are forming or are trying to form are highly will play a critical role for BYU if they hope to land one some of these prospects. But I guess you have to commend them for trying, right?.

There will always be little children in Provo players that dream grow up dreaming of playing for BYU, but most of them will never have the size or ability to play DI football. So the Cougars have to continue telling selling themselves and showing they can be a destination again for elite LDS prospects and non-LDS athletes. That’s what made gave LaVell Edwards successful so much success during the late-1970s and early-1980s his legendary career at BYU.

Edwards knew that BYU was a unique great opportunity both on the football field and in life for many kids. Sitake and his staff (who most of them played for Edwards) understand that, and that’s the foundation the build a majority of the relationships on. That’s why it was a stroke of genius from Sitake has decided to take firesides to the summer time. He hopes recruits will Recruits can actually attend and see a the spiritual side of BYU football first hand. That’s basically again the only difference that is taking place within BYU’s football program right now: Bronco did his firesides in the fall, Sitake is doing his in the summer.. BYU’s staff is desperate wired to recruit and it came at a critical time.

BYU tells its fans that Sitake is the Polynesian Lavelle Edwards and that his connection to that culture should keep all elite Polynesian recruits in the fold for BYU and prevent so many of them from attending PAC 12 schools.

BYU football is at a crossroads right now and another loss to Utah (which would be six in a row) would be crippling.. They have a had a consistent program that consistently wins a lot of football games against G5 opponents, but struggles mightily to simply compete and is competitive with basically anyone else on the field. BYU would have to do a million things differently throughout its program, such as But there needed to be an increased effort in recruiting, to reverse that trend. Because as any great coach will tell you, it’s not always about the Xs and Os; it’s about Jimmys and the Joes that win ball games. Sitake knows that, and BYU is better for it scares him to death.

[RedLine]

That’s some excellent scrubbing work by KSL to change the dire implications of the original article.

[Puget Ute]

Nice scrub job to protect the other division of the Corp.

[Tony (admin)]

I’m damn curious how CincyUte amazingly found this?

[Utah man forever]

No matter how KSL tries to scrub this article, the fact still remains that tds is standing on a cliff with no retreat. If the Big 12 doesn’t take them they are a free falling program with no future.

[radioUte]

Good effort.  I should have left at the “edits” but I kept thinking what a same Mitch Harper’s reputation is being dragged down by being associated with such horrible fan fiction grammar.