PROVO, Utah -- When Kalani Sitake sees another coach, he simply can't stop himself.
Sitake, the BYU coach entering his 11th season at his alma mater, will beeline for his colleagues, usually with outstretched arms. He welcomes any opportunity to interact with other coaches, regardless of the stakes. He doesn't engage just to be polite (he famously is), or to gain some competitive insight or edge for an impending game.
He just likes hanging out with other coaches and they like him.
Sitake, who turns 51 in October, often wants to learn about their lives and backgrounds, teams and philosophies. Sitake has won more games in the past two seasons (23) than all but four other FBS coaches. But at heart, he's still a football enthusiast, living in what he describes as a "dream state."
"Before I was the head coach of BYU, before I was a player for LaVell Edwards, I was always a fan, so the fan is the one that wins out," Sitake told ESPN this spring. "Maybe my style can be a little uncomfortable, but I don't know how uncomfortable it can be when I'm just trying to be your friend."
Sitake has become a friend to many around the coaching ranks. There's a good chance he's your favorite coach's favorite coach, especially if you root for another Big 12 team. Even as BYU has become a league title contender, knocking on the door of its first College Football Playoff appearance, Sitake's popularity among his primary competitors continues to grow.
"The beauty of Kalani is that he's just authentic and he's just always himself," Arizona coach Brent Brennan said. "He doesn't worry about whether that comes off good or not. But he's a really good dude. He treats everybody with respect and kindness. He's just got a great way about him."
Added West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez: "He's a football person first and foremost, but you could just tell he's got a great heart."
Sitake's style resonates in a cohort known for competitiveness, standoffishness and, for some, suspicion of anyone wearing another color. He's not seeking popularity or praise, though. His desire to connect has been nurtured at BYU, going back to Edwards, whose name is on the stadium where Sitake now coaches.
Edwards won a lot -- 257 victories, 19 league titles and the 1984 national championship -- but his success didn't sully interactions with coaches. Sitake, who played fullback for Edwards in the 1990s, has tried to walk a similar path.
"I know we're supposed to be competitors, we're supposed to want to beat each other, but that doesn't mean I have to dislike you," Sitake said. "I couldn't even try to hate somebody. There's always a level of respect. I'm not doing it to get it reciprocated. I'm doing it because it makes me feel good, and I'm doing it because I love how LaVell did it.
"That's been my main motivation."
Sitake is carrying on his coach's legacy at the school they both loved, and he has the chance to become the first BYU coach since Edwards to get the program within range of another national title.
But nine months ago, he was nearly out the door.
JOEY MCGUIRE WANTS to make one thing clear about his friend Kalani Sitake.
"He wants to beat the hell out of you," the Texas Tech coach said.
McGuire is wired the same way. He also coaches the team to beat in the Big 12, the deep-pocketed defending league champion that thumped Sitake's BYU team 34-7 in the title game Dec. 6. If there's any Big 12 colleague Sitake wouldn't want to buddy up to, McGuire might be the one.
But the two have grown close. Their interaction on the field at AT&T Stadium before the Big 12 championship was not unlike those at league meetings or at functions put on by the agency they share.
"We're always messing with each other, and we get along really well because we're a lot alike," McGuire told ESPN. "He's got a big personality. I just love him, man. He's always so positive."
Their origin stories couldn't be more different. Sitake was born in Tonga before moving to Hawai'i and then attending high school outside St. Louis, while McGuire is a lifelong Texan who didn't play college ball but became a "legend in high school coaching," as Sitake put it. But they bonded easily.
For McGuire, being around Sitake is similar to how he feels hanging with his Texas high school coaching buddies.
"We're just football geeks," McGuire said.
Sitake knows the backgrounds of his colleagues, whether they were championship high school coaches like McGuire, sons of longtime college coaches like TCU Sonny Dykes or Pro Football Hall of Famers like Colorado's Deion Sanders. When Sitake met Sanders, he told him: Coach Prime, I loved watching you play. I actually loved you more as a Niner than when you were a Cowboy.
"Getting stories from him, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the best corner that ever played the game, and I'm talking to him, and he's a coach,'" Sitake continued. "How can you not geek out over that moment?"
Sitake's approach has resonated with Sanders. Before facing BYU last year, he called Sitake "a dear, dear friend and a God-fearing man, which I adore, a man of standard and a man of principle, a darn good coach and a good dude."
Get Sitake away from the field, however, and he fully blossoms.
At coaches' retreats (often sponsored by Nike) to places like Hawai'i and Pebble Beach, where coaches are looser than on game days, Sitake really lets go.
"He'll go up at the Pebble Beach coach's trip and sing a song. He'll dance. On the Nike trip, he'll do all the cool, fun stuff that you look at and you go, 'Man, I wish I could do that,'" Dykes said. "And he does it. He doesn't care. He's very comfortable in his own skin and who he is and what he stands for and what he's all about. So it gives him a freedom to be himself, and I think everybody really respects him for it."
Sitake ends up being the star of the show.
"A lot of coaches hate going to those coaches' meetings or the Nike trip, but Kalani, it makes him happy," said Tom Holmoe, the longtime BYU athletic director and former college coach who hired Sitake to lead the Cougars program. "... It's such a throwback to the old days."
Sitake's approach toward other coaches isn't noticed only in their circles. "His kids feed off of it, too," said former Kansas State coach Chris Klieman, who became good friends with Sitake while leading the Wildcats from 2019 to 2025. "Everybody's watching everybody. Everybody sees how head coaches interact, and when our players see coaches that can get along -- we're all competitive, but not be a-holes to each other and genuinely care about each other -- players respect that."
BRIAN SANTIAGO WAS worried. He has been at BYU since 2008, taking over as athletic director in May of last year, and had witnessed Sitake's growth as a coach. Santiago knew other schools would come calling.
After firing longtime coach James Franklin in October, Penn State soon targeted Sitake and fully believed it had its replacement by mid-November. Those around Sitake felt the same. A move to State College seemed inevitable following the Big 12 title game.
"I was super concerned," Santiago said.
Sitake's name didn't leak as a Penn State candidate, perhaps because he didn't really profile as one. He seemed like an outsider, never having coached east of Utah or lived east of St. Louis. Plus, he was BYU through and through.
But Penn State loved his success and his character and saw him as the type of coach who could win the big national games where Franklin had fallen short. Penn State also had gone all-in institutionally to contend for national championships and could offer more resources than BYU. As a source familiar with Penn State's search told ESPN, "Kalani was 100%" the top candidate.
Sitake never thought he would leave BYU when he returned in late 2015. But he turned 50 on Oct. 10, two days before Penn State fired Franklin. He started to think about retirement, which wasn't imminent but was nearing, and the things he wanted to accomplish. He also thought about his players, the ones in his program but especially the recruits, some of whom would take Latter-day Saints missions at BYU. If the program couldn't make some changes, could he really tell them he would be there for their careers?
Could he look them in the eye and say he would be at BYU when they're done?
"It just came down to: What are we willing to do?" Sitake said. "I never really saw myself leaving. But the major factors were: Are we committed to taking care of the players? Are we committed to taking care of the coaches and staff? Taking care, it's not just compensation or money. It's resources, it's support. There's a lot of different things that go into it. It's flexibility."
Penn State's pursuit of Sitake surfaced during the final weekend of the regular season. BYU scrambled to keep him.
"There wasn't anything more important for the continuation of the momentum of this program than to retain Kalani Sitake," Santiago said.
Key stakeholders agreed, including Jason McGowan, CEO of the cookie bakery chain Crumbl, who lives in Provo and is an avid BYU fan and donor. On the afternoon of Dec. 1, McGowan posted on X, "Some people are not replaceable. Sounds like it is time for me to get off the sidelines and get to work." He then rallied other key donors to increase support for the program, including NIL compensation for players.
Santiago said Sitake was never the type of coach to demand more money than his peers. But he wanted enhancements in areas of the program -- academics, medical, athlete mental health -- to make it both holistic and nationally competitive. The right people needed to be in the right departments, and the right people needed to remain with him, both assistant coaches and players.
"Compensation comes in different forms," Sitake said. "When you're looking at other places, the compensation usually comes in one form that everybody looks at. I have to consider everything, all of it, together. And once I knew BYU was in it for the long run, it made things a lot easier for me."
After a dizzying few days, Sitake committed to remain at BYU with a long-term contract. At a news conference, an emotional Sitake referenced what his wife, Timberly, called "a love bomb" that BYU supporters dropped to relay their affection for Kalani.
"It's hard to leave when you have something so special," the coach said that night.
Sitake's decision brought relief to BYU, but there's more work ahead to achieve his vision. During an interview last month, he said the staff has been challenged to "do the most with the least." BYU lost defensive coordinator Jay Hill to Michigan but did not have any major player departures and signed three top-100 recruits. Asked by reporters last week about BYU's resources, he said his agent would handle those areas, adding, "As long as I'm the head coach at BYU, I'm going to fight like crazy to make this a premier program."
He also deflected a question about his relationship with Santiago, saying it's all about taking care of the team.
"We're a lot closer than we've ever been," Santiago said. "1984 was remarkable. It's the anchor that is kind of set in stone. But what's happened the last two years where, arguably, we could have, or should have, been in the CFP. [Sitake's] resolve is one of the things that I love the most about him. It's not sour grapes. It's like, 'OK, how do we take that next step?'"
WHEN BYU PREPARED for home games in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the hosting process began on Friday nights for LaVell Edwards and his wife, Patti.
"The biggest-name coaches, when they would come to Provo, Patti, Lavell and whoever the coach was and their wife, they'd go out to dinner, or they'd have them to their house for dinner," said Holmoe, a star defensive back for Edwards who began his coaching career under him in 1990. "Think about that, wow! If that happened one time this year in college football, it would be a miracle."
BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick played wide receiver for Edwards in the late 1990s, when he was teammates with Sitake, and then served as a graduate assistant during Edwards' final years as coach. In 2000, BYU traveled to Jacksonville, Florida, to face Florida State.
Before the game, Roderick stood on the field with Edwards.
"I was just talking to LaVell since I didn't have a lot to do in the warmups, and all of a sudden, [Seminoles coach] Bobby Bowden and [actor and former FSU player] Burt Reynolds come up, and I got to stand there and listen to those guys talk," Roderick said. "You could tell their friendship was real."
Roderick remembers Edwards talking regularly on the phone with longtime Texas Tech coach Spike Dykes, Sonny's father. Edwards' approach even extended to the Holy War, BYU's series with Utah, where bitterness between the fanbases runs hot.
But the rancor didn't extend across the sidelines.
"We were huge rivals, and yet LaVell and Ron McBride were friends," said Roderick, referring to the Utah coach from 1990 to 2002.
"I watched them," Sitake added, " and realized: There's something to that."
Sitake carries a similar bond with Kyle Whittingham, who led Utah from 2005 until leaving for Michigan in December. Whittingham had Sitake on Utah's staff from 2005 to 2014, and said in 2024 that he and Sitake remained "the closest of friends."
"Kalani's brought that back, and most coaches would like it to be that way," Holmoe said. "It's just the stress and pressures of their jobs these days. Fans and alums would probably discourage it. They'd go, 'Wait, wait, wait. What are you doing?'"
Sitake might channel Edwards in his interactions with other coaches, but he's different with his own team. While Edwards was always the good cop, Sitake has "a hard edge," Holmoe said, which he learned to mix with Edwards' style of coaching through kindness.
Holmoe said Sitake didn't reflect all sides of his personality early in his head coaching career. He had great mentors and wanted to absorb their best traits. Ultimately, he had to be his own man.
"He loves Lavell, but he's not Lavell," Holmoe said. "Their two coaching styles are way, way different. ... Kalani came to this point where he was kind of the fire and the ice all in one."
The blending of traits could allow Sitake to elevate BYU in the prime of his career. Of the nine FBS teams with 23 or more wins the past two seasons, BYU is the only one that hasn't yet made the playoff. Buoyed by Sitake's return, the Cougars retained quarterback Bear Bachmeier, running back LJ Martin and other top players from the 2025 team, while adding notable transfers like linebacker Cade Uluave (Cal) and tight ends Walker Lyons (USC) and Roger Saleapaga (Oregon). The program's clear next step is making the CFP and inching closer to a national title.
Sitake's popularity among other coaches is undeniable, but so is his competitiveness when the ball is kicked.
"There's times when he'll look across the field at that coach during the game, and he might get into a shouting match," Holmoe said. "But no matter what happens in the game, he's going to go over there [afterward] and hug up the coach."