PROVO, Utah — BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe spoke at Education Week in front of a sold-out crowd at Kimball Tower.
The presentation looks much different now than it did in his early years as BYU AD. Holmoe, who has led BYU’s athletic department for 20 years, used to spend 30 to 45 minutes answering questions from the Education Week audience, which consisted of fans and supporters.
After the pandemic, Holmoe’s presentations revolved around slideshows created with Canva and 10-15 minutes of questions and answers.
Still, during the slideshow portion of his presentation, Holmoe discussed various topics related to his athletic department. Particularly notable was Holmoe’s discussion of BYU, which is entering the second year of its “Big 12 era.”
BYU athletics wants to live up to its standards
“Last season was about making a good first impression. If you were here last year, I said, ‘I think we’re going to be good with a lot of our teams. … But we’re not just going to sit there and wait. We’re not going to take a year off.’ I think our team went into it tough and combative,” Holmoe said. “Now we’ve learned a lot and it’s time to go. This season is about living up to that standard.”
When it comes to BYU football, the standard for the program is to win. During Holmoe’s presentation, he mentioned that BYU ranks ninth nationally in wins over the last 50 years. Missing bowl games is not common for the Cougars.
They have a packed schedule entering the 2024 season that includes two non-league road games against teams that combined for 20 wins last season (SMU, Wyoming), and their schedule is one of the most demanding Big 12 schedules in the league.
In its first year in the Big 12, BYU track and field captured a conference title thanks to the women’s cross country program last October.
Holmoe believes BYU athletics has “met the challenge” of its Big 12 competition in its first year
The first team Holmoe presented, the women’s soccer team, reached the College Cup. That being said, it was a light year in the trophy case for BYU athletes. It was a very different picture from what they were used to in the less important leagues they played in for decades.
“Believe it or not, when we got to the Big 12, some Cougar fans said, ‘I wish you would just stay in the WCC because we always win.’ That’s not what we’re made for, folks. We just pushed for a power conference because I felt it was in the best interest of our student-athletes to compete against the best players in the country week in and week out.”
Although BYU only managed to win one league title in its first year in the Big 12, Holmoe believes BYU’s teams are “up to the challenge” of their competition.
He cited the BYU softball team that beat No. 2 Oklahoma as an example. The Cougars were the only Big 12 team to win in Norman last season.
Here are some more highlights from Holmoe’s BYU Athletics Education Week presentation.
Big 12 with 16 teams
One of the slides in Holmoe’s presentation featured a graphic with the 16 team logos of the Big 12 members, with the caption “Conference Stability.” When one Education Week attendee saw this slide, he immediately muttered, “There is no such thing as conference stability.”
It’s hard to argue with that when outposts like Provo and Morgantown, West Virginia, are in the same league. Still, the 2024-25 sports year ushers in a brand new look for the Big 12 as the “Four Corners” officially join Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
A 16-team national Big 12 is a far better situation for BYU athletics than for football in Independence and the WCC.
“So these are our new friends in the neighborhood, folks. Some of them, you may not really know what this is. Some of them, you know EXACTLY what they are,” said Holmoe.
“I’m really excited about the opportunity to compete against these teams. They are programs with a long tradition and have been around for a long time.”
Another slide showed a picture of Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark. Holmoe said Yormark has done a “masterful job of bringing a conference that was on the verge of falling apart back together and strengthening it to the point where the future now looks so bright.”
Season ticket prices
Holmoe was asked why season ticket prices for football games continue to rise. In 2024, end zone ticket prices remained the same as the 2023 season. However, everywhere else at LaVell Edwards Stadium saw price increases.
“I just think we’re making progress,” Holmoe said. “I’ve had a lot of personal conversations with people. Some people say losing loyalty isn’t progress. But loyalty is also an issue. We have people who have been here for 40, 50 years. When you look at people’s season ticket prices and the amount they’re donating to our department for the future versus what we get with the higher ticket prices. It’s not just about the ticket prices, it’s about your donations.
“So, make no mistake. We’re looking for ways to increase our revenue. People say, ‘Well, we just got into the Big 12 and you get all the money.’ There’s not a single team in the Big 12 that I know of that makes money year in and year out. They don’t make any. The best thing you can do is break even. So if you break even every year, you can’t grow and make the salaries and now the revenue share. It’s changing.
“I’ve had some conversations where we’ve tried to address some loyal issues one by one and change them, and we’ve done some things on that side. I’m not going to say that ticket prices are going to continue to go up, but they’re not going to go down unless our programs start to slip for some reason.”
How BYU Athletics handles revenue sharing
Starting in 2025, college sports will have revenue sharing. Power conference schools can pay up to $22 million back to athletes annually from their media rights, ticket sales and other revenue streams.
Holmoe brought up the topic of revenue sharing in his slideshow presentation.
“These are court cases that have been legally decided. And the revenue sharing that will be implemented in 2025 is part of the future of college sports. There’s a part of it that I don’t really like. I won’t get into the specifics. But what I will say is that before, we were running toward a cliff – all of us – and there was no way out. We were about to run off the cliff.
“The opportunity to share in the revenue somehow. A lot of the revenue comes from college athletes. The opportunity to share that with student athletes was the right thing to do.”
“BYU Athletics has shared our revenue, not in the form of payments to student athletes, but in mental health, our academic center, our nutrition and so many other areas that we felt like we were sharing some of our revenue with them. But at a national level, it needed to be standardized and everyone in the country needed to be able to do this at the same level.”
“We are BYU”
“…BYU is going to deal with it, look at it daily, weekly and monthly, adjust, pivot and — the word of the decade — refocus to see where we belong. We are not other schools. We are not going to be Notre Dame. We are not going to be Texas Tech. We are not going to be like the University of Utah and Utah State. We are BYU. We have achieved a strong position by doing things the way we do them on this campus under the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that is not going to change.”
Mitch Harper is BYU Insider for KSLsports.com and hosts the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (12-3 p.m.) on KSL Newsradio. Follow Mitch’s coverage of BYU in the Big 12 Conference on X: @Mitch_Harper.
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