BYU Cougars | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Position: | Athletic director | ||||||||||
Personal information | |||||||||||
Born: | Los Angeles, California, U.S. | March 7, 1960||||||||||
Height: | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | ||||||||||
Weight: | 190 lb (86 kg) | ||||||||||
Career information | |||||||||||
High school: | Crescenta Valley | ||||||||||
College: | BYU | ||||||||||
NFL draft: | 1983 / round: 4 / pick: 90 | ||||||||||
Career history | |||||||||||
As a player: | |||||||||||
As a coach: | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
As an administrator: | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Career highlights and awards | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Career NFL statistics | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Head coaching record | |||||||||||
Regular season: | 16–39 |
Thomas Allen Holmoe (born March 7, 1960) is an American college athletics administrator and former football player and coach. He has been the athletic director at Brigham Young University (BYU) since 2005. Holmoe played college football at BYU and then professionally in the National Football League (NFL) with the San Francisco 49ers from 1983 to 1989. He served as the head football coach at the University of California, Berkeley (Cal) from 1997 to 2001.
Holmoe starred in both basketball and football at Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, California. He accepted a football scholarship to BYU, where he played as a cornerback and safety from 1978 to 1982. As a sophomore in 1980, he led the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with seven interceptions, and went on to earn all-WAC honors as a senior in 1982. The Cougars won the conference championship in each of his four seasons at BYU. At BYU, he was a teammate of Super Bowl winning quarterback Jim McMahon and Super Bowl winning coach Andy Reid.
Holmoe was drafted in the fourth round of the 1983 NFL draft by the San Francisco 49ers. He played seven seasons for the 49ers, winning Super Bowls with the team in 1984, 1988 and 1989, before retiring due to a knee injury.
After retiring from playing, Holmoe entered the coaching ranks, having been urged by LaVell Edwards to return to BYU as a graduate assistant. In 1992, Holmoe accepted an offer from Bill Walsh to join his staff at Stanford University as the defensive backs coach. Holmoe remained at Stanford for two seasons, helping the 1992 Stanford Cardinal football team become the Pacific-10 Conference champions with a 10–3 overall record, including a win over Penn State in the Blockbuster Bowl.
Holmoe then returned to the 49ers, serving as George Seifert's defensive backfield coach for two seasons, where he coached such players as Deion Sanders, Merton Hanks and Eric Davis. As defensive backfield coach, he won a fourth Super Bowl in 1994. In 1996, Holmoe joined the staff at Cal as defensive coordinator under Steve Mariucci.
Following Mariucci's departure to the NFL in 1997, Holmoe was named his successor. Holmoe, by his own admission, was an unsuccessful head coach. [1] During his five-year tenure at Cal, he compiled a 16–39 record overall with a 9–31 mark in Pac-10 play. His final season, 2001, saw the Golden Bears finish 1–10, then the worst season in school history (the Bears went 1–11 in 2013). Holmoe went 0–5 against rival Stanford and failed to reach a bowl game. Holmoe resigned at the end of the 2001 season.
Shortly afterward, the Bears were found guilty of major NCAA violations when it emerged that a professor retroactively added two football players to a class he had taught the previous spring in order to keep them eligible. Athletic department officials knew that the players were ineligible, but did not disclose it to anyone. [2] As a result, the NCAA slapped Cal with five years' probation, stripped the Bears of their four victories from the 1999 season, banned them from postseason play in 2002, and took away nine scholarships over four years. [3] When Jeff Tedford led the Bears to a 7–5 record in 2002, they were not allowed to play in a bowl game.
After resigning from Cal, Holmoe returned to BYU to serve as associate athletic director. In March 2005, he was appointed as BYU's 12th athletic director, and the first to oversee both men's and women's athletics (previously women's sports had its own athletic director). Under Holmoe's leadership, the Cougars have achieved success, winning 14 conference championships in the 2006–07 academic year alone and many others in subsequent years.
Holmoe has had notable successes with his head coaching hires, including for football and men's basketball. He hired head football coach Bronco Mendenhall, who returned BYU's football team to national prominence, and head men's basketball coach Dave Rose, who led BYU's men's basketball team to consistent conference championships and NCAA tournament appearances. Following Bronco Mendenhall's departure to the University of Virginia and Dave Rose's retirement, Holmoe hired Kalani Sitake as head football coach and Mark Pope as men's head basketball coach, both of whom have led their teams to Top 25 national rankings in the end-of-season AP polls.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, BYU's independent football schedule was drastically altered at the last minute as several conferences decided to play league-only games. Holmoe had to quickly piece together a full season of games. He was able to fill BYU's schedule and the team finished the year 11-1 and ranked #11 in the end-of-season AP Poll. [4] His efforts were recognized by The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) who awarded him with the 2020-2021 Athletics Director of the Year award. [5]
On September 10, 2021, BYU accepted an invitation to join the Big 12 Conference for all sports. [6] Holmoe was instrumental in positioning the Cougars for the invitation, having petitioned the Big 12 for membership in 2016 and again in 2021. [7]
Holmoe is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, converting from Lutheranism six years after leaving BYU. [8] He lives in Provo, Utah, with his wife Lori and their four children. Holmoe's brother, Steve, a physical education teacher and assistant football coach at Glendale High School, was a strong safety at UCLA before sustaining a career-ending injury.
Year | Team | Overall | Conference | Standing | Bowl/playoffs | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
California Golden Bears (Pacific-10 Conference)(1997–2001) | |||||||||
1997 | California | 3–8 | 1–7 | 9th | |||||
1998 | California | 5–6 | 3–5 | 7th | |||||
1999 | California | 0–7* | 0–5* | T–6th | |||||
2000 | California | 3–8 | 2–6 | T–8th | |||||
2001 | California | 1–10 | 0–8 | 10th | |||||
California: | 12–39 | 6-31 | |||||||
Total: | 12–39 |
*Cal finished 4–7 (3–5 in conference), but later vacated the wins due to use of ineligible players
Stephen Ray Mariucci, nicknamed "Mooch", is an American sportscaster and former football coach who was the head coach of two National Football League (NFL) teams, the San Francisco 49ers (1997–2002) and the Detroit Lions (2003–2005), and for a year at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ty Hubert Detmer is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL). He won the Heisman Trophy in 1990 while playing college football for the BYU Cougars. Detmer broke numerous NCAA records with BYU, and was twice recognized as a consensus All-American. A late-round pick in the 1992 NFL draft, Detmer played for six NFL teams over 14 seasons, mostly in a backup role. He is currently the Athletic Director at American Leadership Academy – Gilbert North High School in Gilbert, Arizona.
Jeffrey Raye Tedford is an American football coach and former player. From 2002 to 2012, Tedford was the head football coach for the California Golden Bears, where he was twice named Pac-10 Coach of the Year and holds the California program records for most wins, games coached, and bowl game victories. He also coached at Fresno State from 2017 to 2019 and from 2022 to 2023, leading the team to a school record 12 wins in 2018.
Reuben LaVell Edwards was an American college football head coach for Brigham Young University (BYU). With 257 career victories, he ranks as one of the most successful college football coaches of all time. Among his many notable accomplishments, Edwards guided BYU to a national championship in 1984 and coached Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer in 1990.
Marc Bronco Clay Mendenhall is an American college football coach who is the head coach of Utah State University. He was the head coach at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Lobos in Albuquerque for the 2024 season. He previously coached at the University of Virginia. He stepped down after the 2021 season. Mendenhall joined Virginia in 2015 after spending the previous eleven seasons as the head football coach at Brigham Young University (BYU). He has a career record of 135 victories and 81 losses and has recorded fourteen postseason bowl game appearances with seven victories.
The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football team represents the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in NCAA Division I FBS college football. It was part of the Western Athletic Conference until July 2012, when the team joined the Mountain West Conference. From 2000 until 2013, the team was known simply as the Warriors. The Rainbow Warriors were the third team from a nonautomatic qualifier conference to play in a BCS bowl game, playing the Georgia Bulldogs in the 2008 Sugar Bowl and lost 41–10.
The California Golden Bears football program represents the University of California, Berkeley in college football as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference at the NCAA Division I FBS level. They were previously a member of the Pac-12 Conference. The team plays its home games at California Memorial Stadium and is coached by Justin Wilcox. Since beginning of play in 1886, the team has won five NCAA recognized national titles - 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1937 and 14 conference championships, the last one in 2006. It has also produced what are considered to be two of the oddest and most memorable plays in college football: Roy "Wrong Way" Riegels' fumble recovery at the 1929 Rose Bowl and The Play kickoff return in the 1982 Big Game.
The BYU Cougars football team is the college football program representing Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. The Cougars began collegiate football competition in 1922, and have won 23 conference championships and one national championship in 1984.
The San Diego State Aztecs football team is the college football program that represents San Diego State University (SDSU). The Aztecs compete in NCAA Division I (FBS) as a member of the Mountain West Conference (MW). The team plays its home games at Snapdragon Stadium.
Kenneth Margerum is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL) for seven seasons during the 1980s. Margerum played college football for Stanford University, and earned consensus All-American honors twice. He played professionally for the Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers of the NFL.
The BYU Cougars are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Brigham Young University (BYU), located in Provo, Utah. BYU fields 21 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) varsity athletic teams. They are a member of the Big 12 Conference for all sports except men's volleyball which is a member of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. They were a member of the West Coast Conference from 2011 to 2022. From 1999 to 2011 they were a member of the Mountain West Conference and before the formation of the MW, the Cougars competed in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, the Mountain States Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference. BYU officially joined the Big 12 Conference on July 1, 2023.
Daniel "Sonny" Dykes is an American football coach, and a former college baseball player. He is currently the head football coach at Texas Christian University (TCU), and previously served in the same role at Southern Methodist University (SMU) from 2018 to 2021, the University of California, Berkeley from 2013 to 2016, and Louisiana Tech University from 2010 to 2012. In his first season at TCU, he led the Horned Frogs to a win in the semifinal and an appearance in the National Championship game.
Kelaokalani Fifita "Kalani" Sitake is a Tongan–American football coach and former player. He has been the head football coach at Brigham Young University (BYU) since 2015, and is the first Tongan to become a collegiate football head coach. Sitake played college football as a fullback for the BYU Cougars under coach LaVell Edwards, and graduated in 2000. Prior to becoming head coach at BYU, Sitake was the defensive coordinator and associate head coach at the University of Utah, and the defensive coordinator and associate head coach at Oregon State University (OSU).
The 2011 Pac-12 Conference football season began on September 1, 2011 with Montana State at Utah and UC Davis at Arizona State. The conference's first game was played on September 10 with Utah at USC, and the final game played was the Pac-12 Championship Game on Friday, December 2. Oregon defeated UCLA to claim their third straight conference title. This is the first season for the conference as a 12-team league. In July 2011, Colorado and Utah joined the conference, at which time the league's name changed from the Pacific-10 Conference.
The 2012 BYU Cougars football team represented Brigham Young University in the 2012 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The Cougars, led by head coach Bronco Mendenhall, played their home games at LaVell Edwards Stadium. This was the second year BYU competed as an independent. They finished the season 8–5. They were invited to the Poinsettia Bowl where they defeated San Diego State.
The 1982 BYU Cougars football team represented the Brigham Young University (BYU) in the 1982 NCAA Division I-A football season as a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). The team was led by head coach LaVell Edwards, in his eleventh year, and played their home games at Cougar Stadium in Provo, Utah. They finished the season with a record of eight wins and four losses, as WAC Champions and with a loss against Ohio State in the Holiday Bowl.
The 2013 Fight Hunger Bowl is an American college football bowl game that was played on December 27, 2013, at AT&T Park in San Francisco, California. It was one of the 2013–14 bowl games that concluded the 2013 FBS football season. The 12th edition of the Fight Hunger Bowl, it featured the Washington Huskies, from the Pac-12 Conference, against the BYU Cougars, an independent team. The game began at 6:30 p.m. PST and aired on ESPN. It was the last Fight Hunger Bowl game played at AT&T Park.
The 2014 Houston Cougars football team represented the University of Houston in the 2014 NCAA Division I FBS football season. It was the 67th year of season play for Houston. The season was the second for the Cougars as a member of the American Athletic Conference and their first playing in their new stadium, TDECU Stadium in Houston. They finished the season 8–5, 5–3 in AAC play to finish in a tie for fourth place. They were invited to the Armed Forces Bowl where they defeated Pittsburgh.
The history of California Golden Bears football began in 1886, the team has won five NCAA recognized national titles - 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1937 and 15 conference championships, the last one in 2006.