Players matter more than coaches. Any one who has done any coaching at any level understands that the best way to look smart as the coach is to have the best players.
Suppose two college football teams spend 15m each. One team spends 10m on coaching- say 5 or 6m to the head coach and 4-5 to assistants while spending 5m on players. The other team spends 1m on coaching and 14m on players. Who would win? I’d wager on the team spending 14m on players would beat the team spending 5m on players to win 80 or 90% of the time.
College football is accustomed to very expensive coaching and very cheap players. Now that players are becoming expensive, and that financial resources will nearly always have limits, the balance is going to shift more towards spending on players rather than coaches.
Utah’s coaching staff appears to have been paid something like 14-15m in 2024- roughly 6+m to Whitt and 8-9m split between everyone else. I don’t know much the players were paid but we heard a lot about Rising getting the bulk of the $ and that he was paid something like 1m. Perhaps the players something like received 2m.
This is all based on the old way of doing things and ought to be reversed. Get the best players by giving them coaching level $ and get the best coaching staff you could find for 2m. The team would be much more competitive.
Look at it this way- suppose Denver Broncos were going to play Utah St. but the Broncos would be coached by a randomly selected Utehub member. Who would win? The Broncos would win regardless of who was coaching or even whether the Utehub coach remembered to show up.
It is the Jimmy’s and Joes not the X’s and O’s.
Time to spend the money that way.
BYU @ 
Utah 
.
