We all know college football is king in college athletics. And yes, historically speaking football has been the most important sport at BYU. But never before has it been more clear to me that the best path forward for BYU sports to have a real shot at national prestige and notoriety is with basketball. It's time for the school and the administration to really double down on hoops and invest in becoming a serious basketball school. Here are the reasons:

College football is rigged, March Madness is not 

• Gonzaga, Butler, VCU, George Mason, Wichita State, Cincinnati, Memphis, all in recent years... Tarkanian's UNLV, Majerus' Utah, Calipari's UMass in recent decades. We have seen time and again that programs from outside the power conferences in college hoops have a shot at the summit.
• It is far more realistic for BYU basketball to dream of becoming a consistent top 25 program (in the mold of Gonzaga or Butler) than it is to become a consistent top 25 program in today's college football landscape.

BYU basketball already has elite facilities and the arms race in college hoops isn't as expensive as Football

• The Marriott Center is one of the largest college basketball arenas in the country and this fanbase has proven numerous times that when the team is doing well there is no better home court anywhere.
• The MC Annex is a state of the art practice facility (that the players actually get to use whenever they want!) 
• Stepping up on a recruiting budget to fill a roster of 14 isn't as expensive as filling a roster of 85. You can also get more creative in basketball recruiting to make an elite roster than you can in college football via international recruiting and finding elite shooters who can level the playing field.

We have a young superstar coach in the making

• Mark Pope is young and energetic.
• He is extremely charismatic with players, media, and fans.
• He is super smart (the man was a Rhodes scholar candidate and got into Columbia medical school) and passionately believes in cutting edge coaching and advanced analytics.
• He hires hungry young coaches who have designs on advancing in college basketball.
• What he has done this season with a program that just last year was totally lost, failing to make even the NIT and getting destroyed by San Diego in the conference tournament... it's truly remarkable. It's even more remarkable when you consider the amount of adversity this team has dealt with in the form of suspension and injuries.

Moral of the story...

BYU, PAY THIS MAN!!! AND GIVE HIM ALL THE ASSURANCE HE NEEDS TO KNOW THAT YOU HAVE HIS BACK 100% IN BUILDING BYU BASKETBALL INTO A POWER!!!