Yeah, big twelve Football media days next week in Dallas, Texas will be down there as you're home of the Utes.
Myself and Sean O'Connell.
Have you taken care of We'll do back to back days of like seven.
Hours of radio, so it should be a good time.
It's kind of the unofficial start of the college football calendar for the University of Utah. Our next guest covers college football and some other things.
We'll do mostly football today.
E Buddy Kyle Bonagura from ESPN on a Tuesday, Kyle, Happy Tuesday man, what's going on? I do?
Good? Spens and Jorge Summer and kind of gearing up for the season talking season starting.
I guess yes, indeed, yes, indeed.
So the big news around here over the past well past number of weeks, but a different kind of tone and tenor and direction. As a judge has granted a joint motion from BYU quarterback Jake Rhetz Laugh and his accuser to dismiss the civil suit against him. You and Pete Thamill doing a great job as always covering this. In addition, Jake has told his coaches and teammates he is now looking for a new place to play as
a result of facing a seven game suspension. Just kind of unpack your thoughts on this whole thing, the whole process, and what you think comes next.
Yeah, I mean it's really it's really complex, right, It's it's sensitive, it's complex. There's a lot of moving pieces here, you know, for for for college football fans, Like the bottom line kind of where we kind of left off here, you know this week, is that Jake retzlof fan, like you said, the woman who accused him of rape, they they their their case was dismissed. What the indication is is that there was probably some sort of a settlement and they agreed to kind of go their separate ways.
And so what for redsoft this means is that as part of his defense and maybe you guys to talk about this, is that he admitted to you know, his defense was that the encounter was a consent, was consensual sex, which of course is a violation of b U i US honor code. We've seen a number of cases or instances in the past where you know, athletes, you know, admitted to having sex and we're forced if they forced
into a suspension or kicked off the team. So as soon as as soon as this was I guess last Friday, when that defense publicly surface, I think it was pretty easy to kind of see that a suspension was coming. Then I was able to confirm it. You know, seven games was the expectation, and for Jake faced the seven games suspension in his final year of eligibility, a year that he hoped to develop into an NFL prospect. I think he made the decision pretty easy to ask, to
decide to transfer from the UYU. And now we'll see, we'll see where he ends up. Right, There's a stigma now attached to him as a result of the accusations, right, and so we'll kind of see where that goes. I think we'll have a pretty good sense to the next week or two where where he winds up. And I do expect him to find a home before the season begins.
So I am not a lawyer, and Kyle, unless I am mistaken, neither of you correct.
Just spend too much time reading legal filings without the education to make sense of them completely.
For sure, for sure.
But I'll ask and if there's not much here, we can just move in another direction. Maybe you can enlighten us on how this process kind of played out lawsuit filed. Okay, that we had you on pretty quick after that because the details that you guys were reporting on at BYU
as far as her accusations were, they were horrible. And then you know, Retz left is an attorney, and his attorney they filed kind of their side of things and they were very adamant that this was consensual and that included some pretty heavy language in the direction of this young lady as well. And then we have this situation where again the you know, it's kind of assumed that a settlement was reached, but we don't have any information in that direction. Now the judges is signing this to
kind of just dismiss the whole thing. Can you enlighten us in kind of how this process works, and you know, how they kind of came to this resolution, if that makes sense, Yeah, and I.
Think you can, like and the process is pretty similar, not just this case in particular, but like all all civil cases that are similar, right, they all follow a very similar kind of order of events. Right, the complaint is filed by the accusing party, she remains nameless, then you have a certain amount of days to reply, right, And so you know, I don't know what the exact number is, but that period time is thirty sixty days or some period you know in the within those parameters.
That's what happened last week. So so Jake's hires an attorney, they file a response to why they think it should be dismissed or the or here's their defense that that's all standard. Right, is when when you're talking about civil cases, it can go a number of ways. Right, it can be flat out dismissed by a judge like hey, on its merits, we don't see anything here, there's not enough
to proceed there is. It can go to trial, right, you all move forward, and that that could take a couple of years to wind through the court system to
a point where we actually have a jury trial. That was the the quote unquote demand in the original complaint, which is all standard in the third like really common door to go through as a settlement, right, And I think that the based on the language that was included in the joint motion to dismiss, it's hard to come up with any other scenario to why they would have filed that unless they had come to some sort of a settlement. It's likely a financial settlement. And the territory
you start treading into there. Its like in those cases, both parties agree not to ever discuss it, right, it would violate that the terms of the agreement. So the woman and her legal team are not allowed to discuss it. I'm sure there's some sort of financial penalties if they were to do so, And I think it's probably the same on the other side, where where Jake or his legal team is also not at liberty to discuss the numbers, right,
And so it's easy to make the assumption. I think anyone understands that's probably what took place based on how it's being unfolded. But there's just not going to be any more details just because of the kind of the way the things are structured.
Any inside at all.
And I am just asking to ask because I honestly don't know. I mean, if you read the tea leaves d YU, the institution must have read Jake's court filing and what he had to say about, you know, the events that took place, and when he admitted to consensual premarital sex. I just am assuming that that's when the punishment came down and it was going to be seven games. Is that just a say safe way to assume how this went.
Yes, I honest, I can say that I in talking with sources and durnal reporting problems, I know that Jake met with the school prior to the reply last week being filed. So, like b YU was not caught off guard by what was outlined in the reply where he admitted publicly that this you know, his or his stance publicly was that that the sex was consensual. So by the time Friday rolled around the universe, he had already been able to discuss internally what the appropriate punishment should be.
And like how they settled on seven games, it feels a little arbitrary to me, but you know, I don't have a great sense of how they determined that was the number, but but it was relayed to him last week. I believe on Friday that the number would be seven and at that point, Yeah, I think it was a very easy decision for him to move on. And like, I don't think he was caught off guard by it either. Right, there's the precedent is there at BUYU that like this
stuff is, this is how they deal with it. There, there's the honor code that you kind of you know, you can we can have a longer conversation about the merits of it, but like, that's what you sign up for when you go to that school, and so you kind of have to live with the consequences if you break the honor code. So that's and that's kind of where we are.
Yeah, and the problem And I've said this quite frankly,
I said when the story came out. I've been doing radio in this market, coming off this follity years and my most unfavorite things to cover are BYU honor code violations from players when things like this take place, because there are so many angles where you feel, at least I feel that you need to be fair to everybody involved in you know, the community of people that decide to go online and take victory laps if you're a UTAH fan or accuse this woman of extorting or lying,
if you're a BYU fan, the whole thing. The whole thing feels really gross to me, Kyle. I don't enjoy it. But to your point about having a bigger conversation about whether or not the honor code is antiquated, whether or not it needs to be adjusted, I find that to be a moot point. You know what, you get into when you go down there. I had five siblings that
went to BYU. I mean, and there's no ambiguity, by the way, Like it's there's no gray area, Like if you're going to go there, you're expected to behave a certain way, and if you don't, you need to understand, like things like this could happen to me.
That's just kind of the bottom line.
Yeah, I think it's it's it's very clear, right, And that's why I don't think he was surprised that there was a suspension. I mean, starting quarterback at IT for a program with very high aspirations this coming year, and
and and that didn't matter, right. I Mean we saw it however many years ago with with Brandon Davies, like getting suspended when the basketball team was twenty seven to two and ranked number two in the country, right, Like that's just that's that's how it works there, and so you have to kind of accept it if you're going
to play it there. It does complicate things though, you know that that he's not that he's not Mormon, right, that he's you know, there was you know he had by J trademarked last year because he was such a unique uh, you know, dynamic for to have a Jewish starting quarterback at BYU for the first time ever. Uh, it was you know interesting if nothing else. And so uh the fact that it's you know, not of that faith, but you know, is being punished for you know, the
beliefs of that religion is also like a very interesting conversation. Right. It's not football related at all, It's it's it's society and it's uh, you know everything that goes into that. But you know, from a from a college football standpoint, you know, it would have been very easy to avoid this scenarios Surgypop, and now he's just got to deal with it.
I wonder how.
And you know, this is where we get into this like slippery slope with this conversation, you know, because out here we're used to this, and certainly, whether you're a member of the LDS Church or not, if you live in this state, you have to find a way to exist in the ecosystem that's dominated on every level of state by the religion that essentially you know, settled here hundreds of years ago. So out here something like this goes down, you know kind of like yeah, that's the
BYU experience. I wonder how you would articulate the reaction from somebody who's an outsider looking in And look, you've covered BYU and maybe you're the wrong the wrong guy asked this because you do you are familiar with Salt Lake, you've covered Utah in the PAC twelve, and because you've
covered BYU stories. But when something like this happens, how do you think it's kind of digested and optically it looks from the outside looking in from somebody who may not be familiar with how this stuff works.
Yeah, that's an interesting question because like, yeah, like I'll just say none of this kind of common appy that I've been around it enough to have like understand kind of the state of play for the most part. So I feel like I had a decent understanding for being an outsider. But like imagine telling someone this and like the South right, like the college football quarterback. You know, your quarterback is suspended because he had sex, like pad
pre marital sex. It's insane. Like I think there's like an expectation that like, yeah, he's the quarterback of a college of like a ranked college football team that is challenging for uh, you know, conference titles. There's a you know, there's a perception of what that individual social life might be, right, that comes with being a high profile athlete in college sports, especially the quarterback, right, and so if anything, you know, you would be I think you have a lot of
people surprised if the starting quarterback wasn't having sex. Right, That's just that's just the reality of what the perception is nationally about about about that. But but again, so I think, yeah, there's some people that of course a're not going to agree with it, and they're gonna think it's weird, and that's just the way it is, right.
There's there's no uh, you know, there's there's no way, no other way to explain it, right, There's just cultural differences, and you know it's in you know, in the United States, there's so many different subcultures that are that are so different, and college football has a way of bringing them all together, which I think most of the time is actually a really good thing and exposed to you to different backgrounds in areas of the country, which which mixes them all together.
But certainly you're gonna have this, uh, you're gonna have some shock at times when stuff like this plays out.
Do you think there's anything about this, and again, just covering this whole thing and trying to trying to talk about it appropriately and cover all sides of it appropriately continues to feel weird. And the fact of the matter is, Kyle, as you know, ever since n I NIL became a reality, BYU has been able to recruit at a very high level. Their twenty twenty six class, as a result of another commit is currently top twenty five according to the ESPN rankings.
They've got the best college basketball freshmen in America playing in Provo next year. So the weird kind of dichotomy here is on one side, they've been able to find this lane with deep pocketed donors writing big time checks to pay what you need to pay to attract talent. Do you think something like this with the Jake stuff could have an adverse effect on the program when people kind of dig into it and to your point, might look at this as antiquated or weird.
I think so yeah. I mean, I think if you put yourself in the shoes of a bunch of eighteen year old kids, right there are some of them who are not going to want to go into that sort of environment. That's just the reality of it, right, and so but I think that was the case before, Like this is just the most recent example of like, hey, it's front and center. It kind of refreshes the idea of like, hey, like this is kind of the environment that you're signing up for, and it's going to some
people are going to shy away from it. But I do think that BUYU has benefit as much as anyone
in college athletics by the way things have developed. From an analys standpoint, I mean, look at basketball, look at football, like you know, and I talked to some people over at UYU and they see it as look like UIU is like the church is very like sees this as an opportunity to help church, right, because the more high profile BUYU athletics is, the more front and center the LDS religion is, right, That's just it's it's pure marketing, right,
and so there's an investment into football that benefits the church in that way. There's just like, look, you also want to be successful in sports. This is an opportunity. There's a lot of money there that can be using and is be and is being used to help fund these programs. And so I think like on balance, BYU is benefiting from this, but certainly like this event if you're gonna have any negative repercursions as well, but the launder methodsill be right.
So it does come after a season where b caught a lot of people off guard with how well they played. And you know, interestingly enough, and we've talked about this so we don't need to look back on it, but the two games they lost like they they weren't that far off from having like an extra ordinary season, cracking
a sea up here, what have you. But they stumble down the stretch at home to Kansas and then they lose an absolute dogfight Arizona State, they beat Colorado and the Alamo Bowl they go eleven and two.
So now we move over to what could be next for them.
You know, the interesting thing is Jake was eleventh in the Big twelve and QBR oftentimes they were able to win in spite of some really bad decisions he made. So when you look at you know, the quarterback room, McKay Hillstead is a Utah State transfer of tracing Borgay and Bear Bachmeyer. I don't know who's going to get the job, but the football takeaway, as we awkwardly now make this a football topic because it's just so weird
to talk about all this stuff. What do you think this means for BYU football this year in the Big twelve?
Yeah, So it's it's hard to say, right because like we just don't know how good the other quarterbacks will be. And it's like as good as Redsoft was, he wasn't like it was a set of the world on fire. I think he was a competent quarterback who who didn't lose games and and you know that's actually like a really valuable like aspet to have, right, Like he he made the mistakes at times and wasn't perfect and and and showed flashes at times where where I thought he
was really good. I think there was a lot of uh, you know, a stock being and put into him coming back as the starter, right and and not being the same quarterback that he was last year and being able to have that that year of starting experience under his belt where now he's able to kind of make the step next step and be it more just be a better player. Right with him gone that it's a it's a complete unknown. I mean, I think l J. Martin is actually a really good back. Like like I think
he's progressed pretty well over the last two years. Like, so I think a lot more will be put on him than probably would have been expected if if rets Off was was coming back. But yeah, it's it's it's a complete DOWNNWN with with with who the other quarterbacks are. You know, you got three different transfers, so we'll see.
Like I still think, you know, this is a team that won with defense last year, right, They had the best defense in the Big Twelve, if I'm not mistaken statistically, If not, you know, one of the best of the country, really, and so when you're making your money that way, I think a lot of that is Schematically they're very sound, and you know, they've got some really important players to replace.
But at the same time, there's enough coming back to where I think the expectations the defense should still be very good. So with all those factors, I still think buyu will will head into this year with really high expectations. But and we talked about this in the past that it's like it's just so hard to predict college football
now with all the rosters turnover. Yeah, there's a lot like reading the telia, they should still be pretty good, but you know, they were expected to come what like thirteenth in the conference last year and almost won it. So what do we know?
Not not a lot, I guess, and that's the problem.
I mean.
Now, I want to ask you about your thoughts on the Big twelve, but it is July first, and I to imagine that you've read some of the same predictions I've read. Phil Steele came out with his annually. He's got Baylor winning the conference, Utah at two. There are a lot of preseason predictions that have Utah in the area of like four to seven. I think a lot of people are curious about Texas Tech with the money they've spent. Then there's like the stall words k State,
Iowa State. Obviously we have to talk about Kenny Dillingham and the team that won the conference a year ago. But on July first, Kyle, what's your gut tell you about this conference? It just seems to cannibalize itself, just like the PAC twelve US too.
Yeah. I was actually going to make the tactical comparison. As you're kind of reading those lists up, you can make the like you can make the case for all those teams and feel pretty good about it. Right, And I think that's actually why I really like the Big Twelve and like, like it's really an interesting conference to start paying more attention to because it is wide open.
There isn't the established powers. I like the parody, and it doesn't it's not necessarily great like for national prominence not to have just like a bell cow at the top. You can rely on to the top five or whatever. But you know, Arizona State was a great story last year. They were I think picked to come second to last in the conference and to go to the playoffs and showed well I thought in the playoff. Yeah, so yeah, I'm gonna I think, I ask you, you know, for me,
they're very interesting. At course they've got a lot of production to replays. But then the most intriguing team I think has to be Texas Tech because in this era of college football, money matters, right, Like if you look at salary caps like an unsalary caps sports, but the teams to the highest payrolls are usually the best teams. Like it's a really easy correlation to make you have the most money, you get the best players. Texas Tech
is that team. Like we've seen reports that you know, maybe thirty forty million dollars on their roster and whatever. The exact number doesn't really matter. Like the takeaway is it's a lot, and it's more than most other programs, not just in the Big twelve, but it's among the elite spenders in college football. Uh so that's gonna that's gonna help you out. Even all that stuff matters too, but the talent, at the end of the day is
the most important aspect of winning football games. And so for me, I would probably pick textas tech as as a favorite. And then you know, confidence level on that like not a lot, because again, there's just this is just so hard to premit.
All right, before I say you loose, let's talk about and unpack what you wrote concerning you know, and thank you for not writing about Bill Belichick and Jordan Hudson.
I don't really need to read about that anymore.
But you did write about Bill Belichick, uh, you know, obviously no longer in pro football. He's moved to the College of Ranks of Carolina, And you wrote about a you know, coach that people around here know of course, and Bill Walsh and kind of drew a parallel between how this could how this could look for Belichick. So I want you on pack what you wrote, and then I'm wondering if you think we will see more coaches
maybe try this path if the NFL door closes. Now that things are a little bit different in the college game, that feels a little bit more professional.
Yeah. So it's the short result for a lot of fun to report. I grew up in the bear age, you know, and like follow the forty nine Ers dynasty and all that. Bill Walsh is just kind of a legend. I mean the legend everywhere, but certainly here in the Bay area. And so they have a chance to talk with a bunch of coaches and players who were on his Stanford team in ninety two. Was just a funny assignment for me to do. It's it's the parallels are
are pretty cool. It's this guy who oversaw dynasty coach the best quarterback in the NFL in NFL history at that point in Joe Montana, you know, steps aside, reasons are different, and then decides he wants to get back into coaching and returns to college football. He had you know, he had been the coach at Stanford before. So it's not the same as Belichick going to the college game
for the first time. But it is the same that you have the guy who is essentially the defining genius of the sport schematically at the time, you know, becoming a college football coach and trying to you know, reverse engineer what he did in the NFL for the college level. They had a really good year in ninety two. They finished ranked in the top ten, which is obviously very difficult to do at Stanford. I have a lot of really good anecdotes and stories in my piece that published today.
You know, Tom Holmo, that you know, just obviously step down as the idea of BYU recently told had a few of those. I mean, he talked about getting a call from Walsh we played for with the forty nine ers. He had just finished two years as a as a
grad assistant at BYU. He's trying to break into the next stage of his life and Walsh calls the BYU facility in nineteen ninety at the end of ninety one or early ninety two, maybe January of ninety two, tells Tom, Hey, I'm going to Stanford and you're coming with me something like that, right, And Tom's like, okay, great. He calls his wife, and she's asking them all sorts of questions like how much he getting paid, what position are you coaching? All these things, and he's, I don't know, I have
no idea. I didn't ask him many of those questions. But it's Bill Walsh. It's my first job, full first full time job, you know, after playing for football. I'm going to take it. He tells another story about going down to louis the Dam on a recruiting trip with Walsh, and there it's the small town in Louisiana. They're after this big time defensive back, and the high school coach parades them around town, stopping by all the establishments. Eventually
it takes into a restaurant for dinner. That night. They're sitting at this long dining table and it's roped off, and so they sit down for dinner, and then the restaurant fills up with people. There's people standing five deep in the restaurant just to watch Bill Walsh have dinner at this small town in Louisiana with with with Tom Holmo next to him as this rookie, as this rookie college football assistant coach. There's a bunch of other stuff that's really fine and cool, so I would I would
encourage people to go check that out. And so it's up on espn dot com right now.
Well, good stuff as always, Kyle, thanks for the time today, man, have a good week, all right, sure thing, all right?
All right.
Kyle Bonager covers college football for ESPN. Consistent guest on the show. At Bonnager at ESPN is where you find him