BYU just hit an early bye week after playing only three games in the 2026 season. Yeah, you read that right. After a quick start, the Cougars are off the field, only to face a brutal nine-week grind starting October 3rd at TCU.
This Schedule Shuffle Is Different, But Sitake’s Not Sweating It
Most coaches would be tearing their hair out over a schedule like this. An early bye, followed by nine straight weeks of grind? That would not appear to be “optimal,” as the source article puts it. But is Kalani Sitake panicking? Nah, not even a little. He dropped a bombshell in his weekly presser, stating flat out, “We will make it a competitive advantage for us.” That’s the kind of confidence you love to hear from a coach, right? He knows he’s not the one making the schedule, but he’s absolutely going to squeeze every bit of juice out of it. Last year, they had a Week 3 bye too, and bounced back to smack East Carolina 34-13. Sitake says they’ve been prepping for 13 weeks straight since day one, adjusting their workload for wherever the bye landed. “It’s not really that big of a deal because our guys are trained,” he said. They worked all offseason to be ready for 14 weeks straight, or 13 with a championship game at the end.
The Horned Frogs Are On Notice, And BYU’s Already Working
So, how do you turn an early bye into an advantage? Simple: get a head start on the next opponent. TCU is playing UCF this Saturday, but BYU is already locked in on them. Sitake says they’re treating this week like any other “work week.” We’re talking meetings, practice, hitting the weights, getting better. It’s an “early start on our opponent,” as the coach put it. The stakes for that TCU game are already high, especially after the Horned Frogs embarrassed BYU with a 44-11 beatdown in Fort Worth just two years ago. This year, the Cougars (1-0, 3-0) get their shot at redemption on October 3rd at 5 p.m. MDT, televised on ESPN or ESPN2. This game is also wild for another reason: it marks the first time in 21 years BYU will play on the Saturday of the semiannual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, kicking off an hour after the second session wraps up. That’s a huge deal. And it’s clear this team’s bond runs deep, with Sitake sharing they “prayed for him as a team and we prayed pregame and we prayed postgame, and we also prayed at the hotel before we left to go to our game. We just really, really love everything that Harrison’s about.”
The Cougars are heading into a grueling stretch, but Sitake’s got his guys believing this early bye is a weapon, not a hurdle. They’re trained, they’re ready, and they’ve already got their eyes firmly set on TCU. This nine-week gauntlet kicks off soon, and you know they’ll be fired up for it. Get ready for some serious college football!
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
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