This article highlights the accomplishments and legacy of retiring BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe, emphasizing his ability to impress football legend Bill Walsh. Holmoe's 20-year tenure at BYU saw him navigate the complexities of college athletics at a school with unique religious considerations. The article also touches upon his successes, including fostering a strong Utah-BYU rivalry and supporting athletes across various sports.
Gordon Monson: At BYU , retiring AD Tom Holmoe did what 49er great Bill Walsh instructed and expected him to doThe voice on the other end of the phone belonged to a man who was one of the most innovative and enlightened football coaches of all time, an NFL Hall of Famer. And with great enthusiasm, he wanted to talk about Tom Holmoe .And so, he was, heaping praise on his protege.
But Tom Holmoe managed to do exactly that — with Walsh and with a whole lot of others, particularly at and around BYU, where he hacked a trail through the complicated matters of college sports at a school with extra layers of complication for 20 years as its AD. It’s not easy leading an athletic department with authoritative religiosity up top, down low and all around.
Blowing past just BYU pride, though, Holmoe said after so many years he’s felt a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of fulfillment in helping along not just coaches and quarterbacks whose names most readers would recognize, but also thousands of hurdlers and outfielders and setters and strikers and divers and shot-putters and vaulters you’ve never heard of, but who worked at their own pursuits equally as hard.
Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune BYU's athletic director, Tom Holmoe, once said he was happy with the move to independence in football and that he would do it again. “It has given us new energy and additional opportunities. We were in a good spot before, but I believe we are better off now.”
But the road en route was occasionally as much a pie-in-the-face as it was pie-in-the-sky. Whoever’s idea it was for BYU to leave the Mountain West for independence in football and to enter the WCC in basketball had half a mind to shove BYU’s major sports to lunacy’s edge. In describing Holmoe, former 49er great Ronnie Lott told me: “You can have a discussion with him and walk away feeling better, feeling like this is a good, good guy. If there’s an Opie out there, Tom’s it. … Integrity is first and foremost with him.”
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