It is very difficult for athletic departments at universities in the United States to be excellent at numerous sports, particularly both football and men’s basketball — generally the sports that make money at schools.
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As such, oftentimes schools will focus on one at the expense of the other, and thus will get labeled by the public as a “football school” or a “basketball school.” Utah, for example, would certainly be identified as a football school right now, as that program is much stronger than its men’s basketball program. In the late 1990s, it was the other way around.
Over the past few years, BYU has been very good in both major sports, which leads to the question: Is BYU a football school or a men’s basketball school?
Earlier this week, The Athletic’s Joe Rexrode wrote a piece in which he labeled each Power Four school. Most he labeled either a football or men’s basketball school, although some he identified with other sports (it could probably be argued that Utah is as much a ski school as anything else, as it has won seven national championships since 2017).
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Rexrode identified BYU as a football school, writing, “If this weren’t a football school, would Kalani Sitake have been able to turn down Penn State late last year? He has things set up for consistent success like they haven’t seen in Provo since the height of the LaVell Edwards era.”
Of Utah being a football school, Rexrode wrote, “Rick Majerus, Keith Van Horn and Andre Miller may have pushed a different sport to the forefront long ago, but Urban Meyer’s brief stint and Kyle Whittingham’s expansive follow-up left no doubt.”
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Rexrode also added that the BYU-Utah rivalry “is among the sport’s fiercest.”