BYU basketball has activated the Mormon money cannon

By bringing in a slew of 5-star prospects with no connection to Utah or the LDS church, BYU basketball has shown how quickly a school can change its standing in the modern era of college sports.

Some of the ways college sports are changing are big and predictable and affect everybody in the sport. I like to focus on the specific, surprising ones. Like BYU suddenly turning into the No. 1 destination for elite college basketball recruits.

BYU men’s basketball is ranked and cruising towards the NCAA Tournament. They’re currently on a 5-game win streak, including a win at Arizona and a 34-point win over Kansas, the Jayhawks’ biggest L in over 40 years.

“BYU being good at basketball” is not particularly interesting by itself. The Cougars have made the tourney 30 times. Last year, they were a 6-seed with many of the same players.

And Mormons love basketball. LDS folks, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here, but my understanding is… there are basketball hoops inside the churches? And you regularly get together and go to the church building and play sloppy, aggressive basketball on the carpeted church floor? Am I understanding this correctly?

In many ways, BYU basketball is still BYU basketball. Their new coach, a highly regarded NBA assistant named Kevin Young, is a great-great-great-great-grandnephew of Brigham Young¹. The team’s leading scorer, Richie Saunders, served a 2-year mission before playing his freshman season and is married to a player from the BYU women’s team. They have a dead-eye shooter named “Trevin” who graduated from high school in 2017. That’s BYU as hell heck.

But since hiring Young from the Suns last April, BYU has emerged as a recruiting powerhouse, almost overnight. There are three options here:

1. the Mormon population of America has suddenly started producing loads of 5-star Brigham Ballers. If you can dribble on a church carpet, you can dribble anywhere.

2. Young is simply the single greatest recruiter in the history of college sports, instantly racking up 5-star commits to come to Provo while saying “what, like it’s hard?” like a Mormon version of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. (Elle-DS Woods.) (Sorry.)

3. There are some rich Mormons out there. Like, RICH rich. (There are several reality TV shows about this right now.) And now they can give their money to elite athletes to get them to play at BYU.

The answer is a mix of 2 and 3. And unlike literally everything else in BYU athletic history, the story of BYU’s sudden recruiting dominance isn’t a story about faith at all.

Meet BYU, hoops recruiting factory.

BYU’s Royal Blue chip run started with Egor Demin, a 6-foot-9 Russian point guard who left a pro contract with Real Madrid, committing to BYU in May. Demin is projected as a top-10 pick in this year’s NBA Draft, and has been called “the best passer in college basketball.” Watching a 6’9 guy dissecting defenses out of the pick-and-roll, it feels like you’re watching an NBA team.

A few months later, Demin was joined by Kanon Catchings, the nephew of Hall of Famer Tamika, a 4-star prospect who had previously committed to Purdue. Catchings has actually had a pretty disappointing year, dropping out of BYU’s starting lineup and most mock drafts, which had him as a fringe first round prospect before the season. But it’s easy to see why a 6-foot-9 player who can shoot like this could be a pro someday.

But the really big stars will show up in next year’s class. BYU landed AJ Dybantsa, an all-everything prodigy universally considered the best player in the class of 2025. Every school in the country wanted Dybantsa, but it came down to Alabama, North Carolina, and BYU… and he picked BYU.

Dybantsa will be joined by his prep teammate, Xavion Staton, a 7-footer and 4-star prospect.

And here’s the kicker: None of those recruits they got are Mormon.² (Not even the guy named “Kanon.” Could’ve fooled me!) Elite players with no connection to the state of Utah or the LDS church are choosing to spend their college careers in Provo. That has simply never happened, in any sport.

Typically, recruiting at BYU has been a challenge.

Lots of religious institutions have universities with sports teams. (Remember when Notre Dame and Southern Methodist University were in the College Football Playoff a couple months ago?) But BYU is, like, really connected with its church, in its policies, its populace, and in public perception.

The university is owned and operated by the Church of Latter Day Saints, and the school asks students to adhere to an honor code based on Mormon religious practices. It’s not a requirement to be a Mormon at BYU, but 99 percent of the student body is. Just this week, Arizona had to apologize for its fans doing anti-Mormon chants at a game against BYU. Other religious schools don’t have to deal with that.

BYU has had occasional non-Mormon athletes on its teams for decades. The most prominent example is surely Jim McMahon, a beer-chugging free spirit whose parents apparently thought going to BYU would put some sense into their wild child. That strategy didn’t work out, but football did, as he became an All-American QB. In basketball, it’s probably Krešimir Ćosić, the Yugoslavian superstar and Olympic gold medalist who would go on to make the Basketball Hall of Fame… but Ćosić was mainly interested in escaping Communism and did not seem to realize that BYU was a religious institution when he showed up in Utah. (And he eventually converted, even translating the Book of Mormon into Croatian.) Last year’s BYU team had three Muslim players. (Devout Muslims don’t drink alcohol either, so they fit right in!)

I visited Provo in 2023 (and appeared on their pregame show!) and had a great time—genuinely, the most surprising great experience I had on my big dumb road trip. I recommend a trip if your team ever plays a road game there. The people were incredibly nice and wanted to make it clear non-Mormons and other outsiders are welcome. (When I told them I was Jewish, they were very excited to tell me about their Jewish backup quarterback… who became their Jewish starting quarterback in 2024, picking up a Manischewitz endorsement along the way.) But I still knew I was an outsider. I wonder whether that feeling ever evaporates for the few non-Mormon athletes who choose to go there, or whether it just deepens.

But friendliness and good intentions can’t erase the church’s policies, or its history. BYU is not afraid to suspend prominent athletes due to lengthy honor code violations for things students at other schools do without issue. Non-Mormon running back Jamaal Williams had to sit out for an entire season after “having a girl in his room”—and he’s the all-time leading rusher in school history! And while the school and the church have disavowed the racist policies against allowing Black people to join the LDS church, which stayed in place until 1978… the person who put those policies in place was Brigham Young, and the school is named Brigham Young University.

And even if we look past all the reasons non-Mormons might play somewhere else, BYU has not had a 100 percent hit rate on recruiting elite Mormon prospects, who sometimes choose to play places where they’ll have a better chance at winning or going pro. It’s happened in football (Manti Te’o, Penei Sewell, Jaxson Dart, Tanner McKee, and many more.) In basketball, Jabari Parker was considered the best player in his class, but he chose to play for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. In 1996, BYU head coach Roger Reid was fired shortly after a story leaked where the coach told All-American star Chris Burgess that he had “let 9 million Mormons down” by choosing Duke over BYU.³

The school’s insularity historically put a cap on BYU’s ability to win. BYU’s moments of legit basketball glory have been pretty rare, and almost exclusively limited to the moments when America’s LDS population produced a true superstar. They’ve never made the Final Four, and their two most recent Sweet 16 appearances came in 1981 and 2011, both seasons when they had the National Player of the Year—Danny Ainge and Jimmer Fredette, both members of the LDS church. That’s a pretty narrow path to success.

Paying players has changed the entire paradigm of BYU recruiting.

Let’s be real. Only one thing could possibly convince players with no connection to Utah or the LDS church to pick BYU over North Carolina or Real freakin’ Madrid, and we all know what it is… that’s right, the gorgeous views of the Wasatch Mountains.

Hold up. I am being told it’s actually money. Demin wasn’t considering college basketball at all, but was lured by NIL money and chose BYU over Arkansas and Illinois. He reportedly got something close to $1.5 million.

And the financial battle to land Dybantsa has been well-reported. CBS’ Matt Norlander wrote about how Dybantsa is likely the most expensive recruit of all time, with a $5 million asking price for what will likely be one year of college hoops. Even his high school career was a money decision–last year, Dybantsa moved to Hurricane, Utah (that’s deep in Utah) to play his final season of high school ball at a school called Utah Prep, allegedly receiving $600,000 and an ownership stake in the school. The idea was to make Dybantsa the face of a sports factory which would attract elite prospects from all over the country… although things haven’t gone as planned. I haven’t seen any reports on Catchings or Staton’s NIL cut—maybe they just love Cougar Tails.

When Dybantsa committed to BYU, people immediately credited Ryan Smith, the LDS tech billionaire and BYU alum who has bought basically every pro team in Utah since selling his company in 2018. (And also bought the Arizona Coyotes and moved them to Utah.) He was recently the subject of an ESPN profile about how he’s not like the other billionaires, he’s a cool billionaire. He was heavily involved in getting Young to leave his NBA job for BYU⁴, and per ESPN, he regularly plays morning pickup games in BYU’s basketball arena with BYU all-time leading scorer Tyler Haws⁵. However, Smith is not allowed to contribute to BYU’s recruiting efforts, because he owns an NBA team⁶. He’s publicly stated that his financial contributions to BYU hoops is limited to buying tickets, and his part in getting Dybantsa to BYU was apparently limited to talking to him.

As it turns out, there are a lot of rich Mormons. The head of BYU’s NIL collective was quoted as saying “there are 5 billionaires that live within 20 minutes of LaVell Edwards Stadium, and they’re all fans and supporters of BYU.” (And no, donating money to BYU or its NIL collective does not count as tithing, although I’m sure somebody has tried to make that argument.) BYU plays in the Marriott Center. That’s not a sponsorship—it’s named after the guy who founded the hotel chain because he gave so much money to BYU.

This phenomenon may be unique to BYU basketball… or a vision of the future of the sport

This could be a hyperspecific moment at one program.

This isn’t happening with BYU football. Their incoming class is standard BYU, a mix of middle tier prospects led by a single 4-star recruit named McKay Madsen. Checks out.

And it wasn’t happening under BYU’s last coach, Mark Pope. Pope, an LDS church member and former NBA player who also achieved success at Utah Valley University literally down the road from BYU, did a pretty solid job recruiting and deserves a lot of the credit for the way this team is performing. He was a good enough coach to get hired away by Kentucky… and even he he wasn’t bringing in 5-stars. Dybantsa and Demin have both spoken about how Young’s NBA background was a big factor for them.

But I think we can learn something about the future of college sports here. When money is a factor, the intangibles matter less. These players might not be swayed as much by how good a school’s parties are or how many championships they’ve won. How much can the school pay them? How good a job can that school do of preparing them to get paid in the NBA? There’s a lane for a school with wealthy, passionate fans and a good coach to drastically improve their standing in the sport.

Historically, it’s hard to link anything about BYU sports to trends in college sports at large, because of how unique the school is. The nature of the school funneled the best LDS athletes towards Provo and scared lots of other players off. But in the Cash Era of college sports, a school can buck everything that’s always been true about them, as long as they can afford it.

1. This makes him cousins several times removed from Steve Young, although they probably aren’t close—Brigham is estimated to have about 30,000 living descendants. Steve’s quote on Kevin’s hiring was “I’m not sure we are related.”

2. At the very least, they haven’t spoken publicly about their Mormon faith. And LDS people tend to talk about their faith!

3. Burgess is now an assistant on BYU’s coaching staff… and successfully recruited his nephew, 4-star prospect Chamberlain Burgess. I didn’t mention him among the other blue chip recruits BYU has landed recently because he’s taking a 2-year mission before coming to BYU and is expected to join BYU in 2027

4. While writing this article, which mentions BYU billionaire Ryan Smith and his relationship with BYU head basketball coach Kevin Young, I accidentally called one or the other “Kevin Smith” at least twice. To be clear, Kevin Smith, the director of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and other cult classics set in suburban New Jersey, is neither a billionaire nor a basketball coach, nor is he a member of the LDS church.

5. This detail made me realize BYU’s leading scorer is not Jimmer.

6. This is the same reason Smith had to divest from the RSL Academy, a sports high school he acquired when he bought Real Salt Lake… which then changed its name to Utah Prep, moved locations from Salt Lake City to Hurricane, Utah, and paid Dybantsa $600,000.