​FRISCO, Texas — BYU athletic director Brian Santiago was a busy figure at the recently concluded Big 12 football media days held at The Star, after completing his first full academic year at the helm of BYU sports. Succeeding longtime BYU AD Tom Holmoe in May 2025, Santiago spent Tuesday chatting with dozens of coaches, fellow ADs, and media outlets as the Cougars were showcased alongside seven other programs in the 16-team league.
“I just love how much blue I see in this place,” Santiago said, glancing around the Dallas Cowboys’ indoor practice facility, roughly 40 miles from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. “It’s fantastic. Let’s go.”
In a discussion with the Deseret News, Santiago reiterated much of what he shared in a mid-May interview about his first year at the helm, describing BYU sports as in the “golden age” in many respects. “There’s never been a better time to be a BYU fan. Cougar Nation is alive all over the world. I don’t think there’s ever been more interest than there is right now, in BYU sports,” he said. “Our responsibility is to keep that momentum going. There’s this wave of positive momentum.”
Santiago noted that BYU president C. Shane Reese and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—an organization that supports BYU—continually “talk about the amazing momentum” BYU sports have built in recent years.
Recently, BYU finished No. 25 in the Learfield Directors’ Cup Division I standings for the second straight year and led the Big 12 in that metric for overall athletic department success for the second consecutive year. “I love that alignment, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we have the right people in the right places to carry on that momentum,” Santiago said. “It will always come back to our coaches and players, and our responsibility in the athletic department is to ensure we have the right coaches in place.”
Santiago stressed that nothing in his first 14 months as AD has surprised him or shocked him, given how prepared he was by Holmoe. Yet he acknowledged a difference between being the No. 2 administrator and the No. 1 boss. “Until you’ve sat in this seat, you don’t realize all the things that come at you on a day-to-day basis. They’re calling me, right? When you’re there for 20 years as a deputy AD, you don’t get a lot of those calls. You’re involved in a lot. But when you actually sit in this seat, you realize, hey, any challenge that comes, it’s coming at you. But overall, I feel like Tom prepared me a lot.”
Here’s more from our Q&A with Santiago on a range of topics related to BYU sports; some answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. DN: You finished No. 25 in the Directors’ Cup for the second consecutive year, and you led the Big 12 in that ranking for the second straight year, highlighting BYU’s broad athletic success and the sustained momentum across programs.