Mormon For Hire: The Rise of BYU Basketball and AJ Dybantsa

Brigham Young University (BYU) is best known amongst many in my generation for viral Tik Tok videos, however that is about to change. BYU is about to become a March Madness powerhouse. The NIL era of college sports has seen basketball programs rise and fall as competition to land the best players becomes who can offer the most money. While schools do not directly pay players, donors to the school can form a collective or “booster” program that will pay players to come play for them. BYU’s basketball team has been the beneficiary of a major NIL collective called The Royal Blue. Ryan Smith, a young tech billionaire, avid sports fan and owner of both the Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth has been the largest donor to the BYU NIL collective. Smith was the co-founder of Qualtrics, a data collection and data analysis service for businesses. Qualtrics was sold to SAP for $8 billion back in 2019, giving Smith more time and money to help BYU basketball. While the BYU Cougars have certainly had great times in their programs history, never before had they been close to landing the number one overall recruit. That changed when they managed to secure the signature of AJ Dybantsa ahead of the likes of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Kansas and Alabama. UNC, Kansas and Alabama all have a rich history of NBA alumni while BYU does not. UNC can boast Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Vince Carter as the most notable of their 103 NBA players in program history. Kansas can brag about Wilt Chamberlain, Paul Pierce and Joel Embiid as the elite group of their 87 NBA players. Even Alabama can bring up Brandon Miller, Collin Sexton and Latrell Sprewell amongst their 38. BYU does not have that same level of talent in their program history both in terms of the number of NBA players they have produced (25) and in terms of the names they have produced. Jimmer Fredette is likely BYU’s most famous basketball player in the twenty-first century, despite not having had success at the NBA level. Other famous BYU basketball alumni include former NBA player and current Utah Jazz CEO Danny Ainge along with Devin Durrant. No, that is not a typo. Durrant is a 6’7” white man from Utah who played for BYU including a season where he averaged 28 points per game, I did not just mistype Kevin Durant. Jimmer Fredette will soon be overshadowed by AJ Dybantsa as the program’s most famous alumni in the twenty-first century. Dybantsa is the first consensus number one recruit to choose BYU, as well as he is the eighth player to ever receive a perfect prospect rating on 24/7 Sports. Dybantsa’s perfect score has him joining the likes of Cooper Flagg, Chet Holmgren, RJ Barrett and Andrew Wiggins as recent prospects to receive a perfect score. Dybantsa is a truly elite prospect, the likes of which BYU never could have landed prior to NIL. Dybantsa will tell you that it is coach Kevin Young’s NBA experience (only as an assistant coach) that convinced him to choose BYU. Something tells me it may have been the $7 million BYU offered for one season. That seems like a more convincing pitch than the NBA experience of a guy who has never been an NBA head coach. That is not meant to be a statement shaming Dybantsa, if a cult-like school offered me $7 million for one season I would absolutely take it and run. It is interesting to see how NIL money is changing the college basketball landscape. Rather than seeing a consensus number one player committing to a school that churns out NBA talent like Kentucky, Duke or UNC, we are seeing an 18 year old from Massachusetts attending services at the Church of Latter-Day Saints in exchange for $7 million. BYU has cash to spend, so expect them to be a major player in March Madness for years to come. While Dybantsa may be their first number one ranked player I would be surprised if he was their last.