Penn State has become the butt of the joke in college football. The first of many high-profile programs to fire its head coach this season after an 0-3 start to Big Ten play, and now the last to fill its vacancy. On Monday, athletic director Pat Kraft zeroed in on BYU’s Kalani Sitake as his primary target, and by Tuesday, BYU donors, including Cumbl Cookie CEO Jason McGowan, had swooped in to save the day.
On Tuesday night, it was announced that Sitake is staying in Provo with a new deal expected to pay him roughly $9-9.5 million a year, along with a $10 to $15 million NIL fund on top of the full allotment of revenue-sharing. That’s a steep financial commitment for a very good coach, but one who is more valuable to BYU than any other school in the country.
So, while it seems that Penn State has been left at the altar and is running out of options as its top targets have nearly all decided to stay put for a significant raise, it was a good thing that Kraft didn’t get into a bidding war over Sitake.
Pat Kraft was right not to engage BYU in a bidding war over Kalani Sitake
Any head coach can fail. That’s not an indictment of Sitake, who has had a really impressive run over his 10 years at his alma mater; it’s just a reality of the sport. He has never coached outside of the mountain or Pacific time zone in his career, so maybe he wouldn’t have been a good fit. Maybe a million different things could have happened to make his tenure in Happy Valley go south, so in an era when your money is best spent on the field, it’s good that Penn State didn’t pay top dollar for a coach who is uniquely vital to the school he’s at.
It’s not an official university policy, but the head coach at BYU is traditionally a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, as Sitake is. So, assuming that the school would stick to that tradition in a coaching search, its pool of potential replacements for Sitake would be significantly limited. That’s why he’s uniquely valuable to BYU, and anytime that’s the case for whatever reason, you’re inherently going to overpay to hire them away.
Not committing a huge deal to Sitake will keep Penn State’s resources available to be allocated on the roster. Sitake at nearly $10 million or Jeff Brohm or Brian Hartline at $7 or $8 with less guaranteed money and a smaller buyout, shouldn’t be a tough decision. Big Ten rivals can laugh at Penn State getting Charlie Brown’d by BYU, but as the price got driven up, Kraft was wise to move on.
Now, nobody would be complaining about a few million-dollar overpay if Sitake hit the ground running in Happy Valley. It’s a results-based business, but hiring a head coach is all about process, and while Penn State emotionally firing James Franklin after a three-game losing skid one year removed from a College Football Playoff semifinal run is questionable process, not compounding that potential mistake by overpaying his replacement is a step in the right direction.