you can try to be a fan and look for signs of improvement. Nobody thinks last season was anything other than a disaster. The recruiting class directly suffered as a result. Now the job is to rebuild the program, right the ship, and try to put a better project on the field.

There are two major ways to do that. Improve the coaching and bring in proven coaches with high levels of credibility and experience, and who have a proven track record. The AD administration did that. They spent unprecedented amounts of money to bring in quality D1 experienced coaches and are paying the highest BYU has ever paid for its coaching staff. We went to the bank and paid to significantly improve our coaching staff in terms of quality and experience.

The second step is improving who we have in the program. That's hard after a 4 win season. Very few high level recruits want to join a losing program. On top of that we have a scholarship crunch situation with only a handful of new scholarships to hand out. We had a largely new staff with a short time window to find and recruit the players that are out there who didn't sign in the early signing period, so there's not a lot they could do with the 2018 recruiting class in terms of traditional recruiting.

Instead, they thought outside the box. There are always walk-on players that are not recruited but who develop late and make significant contributions. The coaching staff decided we'll sign as many preferred walk ons as possible to increase the odds of finding the one or two guys who will actually contribute. This is the formula Nebraska has always followed. They sign as many walk ons as possible, and they have a good and long history of walk on players being significant contributors. BYU took the same approach this year because it was the one thing they could do. It doesn't cost us anything and we don't lose anything by doing it. There's only an upside to the strategy.