Kevin Young is enjoying an era of NIL in college basketball that 70 years ago may have put then-BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson up in arms.
Conservative and moving forward carefully when the NCAA approved paying athletes by name, image and likeness, BYU basketball is now using one of the most lucrative collective NIL operations in the country to sign the 2024-25 roster.
These are the times.
BYU’s critics, particularly the usual naysayers who want BYU out of the sports business, point out that all this currency goes against the university’s mission.
No. It was decided in court, brought by lawsuits against the NCAA. The most recent court settlements state that conferences like the Big 12 plan to pay athletes salaries of more than $20 million per school per year.
“We’re just going to have to adjust and move forward now,” BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe told me in June.
So how does this relate to the approach of 70 years ago?
At that time, BYU President Wilkinson believed deeply in amateurism. He was a purist. He believed that athletes should perform on the field and courts because of their love, passion and dedication to the sport, and any hint of professionalism should be avoided at all costs.
Wilkinson rejected granting scholarships to athletes because it would seem to blur the lines of professionalism.
Imagine.
Shortly after the BYU Board of Trustees hired Wilkinson, a Harvard graduate and lawyer, the Cougar basketball team won the 1951 National Invitational Tournament.
In a meticulously researched book released this summer, “100 years of BYU football,” by Duff Tittle and Brett Pyne (Deseret Book), the authors found a unique chapter focused on the Wilkinson era, in which he resisted the idea of recruiting athletes with offers of benefits.
Wilkinson publicly proclaimed in October 1951: “Athletes should not receive special favors or be discriminated against. Unfortunately, at some universities there has been a double standard in administration, discipline, financial aid and academic standards.”
Wilkinson wanted to ensure that BYU athletes did not receive preferential treatment, more than their “proportionate share” of financial aid from the school and special treatment in “housing, registration and employment.”
In the meantime, other schools were recruiting using all of these benefits and generally destroying BYU in football, especially in the Mountain States Conference, of which BYU was a charter member.
Wilkinson’s initial response to the discrepancies on campus “was to offer more benefits to scholars, debaters, and theater and music students.” He then restricted special treatment regarding athletes’ housing and employment. His move drew praise from some teachers and concern from the athletics department and coaches, who saw it as a disadvantage in attracting athletes.
The following spring, Wilkinson discovered how common it was in the Mountain States Conference to recruit athletes and offer benefits and changed his mind. He worked with the conference to create a uniform set of guidelines for recruiting with benefit offerings.
Shortly thereafter, a national committee on Athletic Policy of the American Council on Education recommended “defending institutions that award scholarships and grants in aid to students based primarily on demonstrating academic or athletic and economic need.”
At that time, BYU athletic director Eddie Kimball worked diligently to convince Wilkinson to put BYU on par with its competitors.
In a letter to Wilkinson on May 11, 1953, Kimball said:
“Students, alumni, and other Church members will lose interest in our teams and our school. Our income will be substantially reduced because people will not pay to watch losing teams, our teams will soon become the ‘doormat’ of our conference. It will be increasingly difficult to find a sponsor for our sports broadcasts; there will be greater public insistence that there will be winning teams or that losing coaches will be fired; we will not be able to field prominent national teams; and perhaps most importantly, we will lose the publicity that has proven so valuable to the Church and the school in proselytizing members and students and creating good will for the Church.”
Legendary and future Hall of Fame coach Stan Watts joined the fight. Watts, who would later recruit Hall of Famer and European superstar Kresimir Cosic to Provo, proved prophetic when, four months later, he wrote a memo to Wilkinson, citing how much Wilkinson’s reticence to level the recruiting field was hurting your program.
“Unless we have similar opportunities to attract outstanding athletes and have equal opportunities as our opponents, our athletic program will rapidly decline. We assume we are following the rules with the guys (recruits) we contact, only to find differences in interpretation, putting us in an awkward position.
“Schools are not interpreting the rules the way we do. When this issue is resolved, the other schools will have the best athletes. Consequently, our athletic program will weaken accordingly.”
It took three years of this kind of lobbying and politicking by Wilkinson to get BYU to what it needed to be. Wilkinson then set the stage for a remarkable period of BYU athletics, both in facilities and in achievements on a national scale, including the 1984 football national championship.
Fast forward to this summer.
In a state-of-the-art basketball annex near the Big 12’s highest-attendance basketball arena, the Marriott Center, Young is leading his team through skill development sessions.
By all accounts, Russian Egor Demin, who Young signed from Real Madrid on a lucrative NIL contract, is proving his reputation as a future lottery pick. He’s demonstrating remarkable flexibility by playing all five positions as a 6-foot-2 point guard, a player destined to bring fans to their feet in the nearby arena.
He joined what is arguably the best recruiting class BYU has ever signed.
In retrospect, Wilkinson, who famously got fans on their feet at Smith Fieldhouse doing push-ups on the court, would actually be pleased.
Either that or he would be spinning in his grave.
His amateur dream not only died long ago, but is a distant memory in the wake of today’s NCAA that has become the true Wild West in recruiting, NIL and the crazy transfer portal.
