God Loves Underdogs

Good morning! It is an amazing time to be here at BYU! That’s true generally, but it is especially true today. You see, January 2025 is special because starting later this year we will celebrate 150 years of BYU’s existence.

In this, our sesquicentennial year—the year we celebrate the beginning of the second half of our second century as a university—we will work tirelessly to become the “Christ-centered, prophetically directed university”¹ that President Spencer W. Kimball prophesied about nearly fifty years ago at the celebration of our one hundredth year as a university.²

As we get closer to the kickoff of our celebration, beginning in the fall semester, we will have more details about how you can be part of this historic celebration. But for now, I want you to begin to feel the excitement about this important mark in time as we begin this 150th year.

As we approach this milestone in our history, we want to focus on the light with which you all shine as we look forward to this next chapter in BYU’s history. And we will do so by saying, “That light groweth brighter and brighter”³—“that all may be edified of all.”⁴

Now you—and each of you within the sound of my voice—are the “brilliant stars”⁵ that President Kimball talked about in the beginning of this second century, and we look forward to the ways that you will share your light as we celebrate our 150th year. We will keep you all posted about details at the website 150.byu.edu.⁶

I love being here. With each of you. During this very special time. And I look forward to celebrating our 150th year together. Now, on to my remarks.

God Loves the Impossible

Most PhD programs around the country require taking a Graduate Record Examination—or, as it’s more commonly known, the GRE. When I was contemplating graduate school, I took the GRE with hopes of a score high enough to get me into the graduate program in statistics at Texas A&M University—the only school to which I applied.

After taking the exam, I knew my math score was strong. But I also knew that my verbal and analytical scores were on some sort of different scale. Even though I knew I had excelled in the math portion, I was nowhere near as confident about my score on the verbal section.

So you can imagine that when I got a phone call from the graduate coordinator at Texas A&M, my heart skipped a beat because I thought perhaps he was calling to offer me admission and maybe discuss fellowship funding with me. You see, Texas A&M gets many more applications for its PhD program in statistics than it accepts—it is highly selective. So when the graduate coordinator called me that day, I thought to myself it absolutely had to be good news! It became clear, however, that the graduate coordinator had a few questions for me.

The graduate coordinator started by congratulating me on my math score—exactly the kind of score, he said, that would serve me well in a PhD program in statistics. At one point during the call, however, he literally asked me if English was my native language—because apparently that year all the foreign students who had applied to the program had a higher verbal score than I did. It was a humbling phone call to say the least. Thankfully, the school admitted me despite my English score, and my ability to stand here today and string together coherent sentences is evidence that the Lord strengthens even the weakest.

This is true beyond the GRE. As a freshman at BYU, I could never have imagined one day becoming a faculty member, let alone the fourteenth president of Brigham Young University. Such a scenario was not only improbable—it was, from my perspective, simply impossible.

But I have come to believe that God loves underdogs. He loves come-from-behind victories. He loves the impossible.

This year we witnessed some incredible come-from-behind victories on the football field. You’ll have to bear with me as I geek out a little bit about some of our BYU sports statistics.

You see, this season BYU was an underdog in four of its first eight games. In other words, for half of its first eight games, BYU was actually supposed to lose. By winning all eight games in a row, BYU became only the second college football team to ever defy such steep odds since 1990⁷—a year that is well before most of you were born.

Now, in two of those eight games, BYU trailed in the fourth quarter with less than one minute left on the clock. The likelihood of victory became so slim in both instances that ESPN’s live win probability tracker gave BYU less than half a percentage point chance of victory. In fact, in one of those games—very, very late in the game—the chance that BYU would lose was 99.9 percent!⁸

And yet in both instances BYU went on to retake the lead with only seconds to spare. While watching those last-minute victories from the sidelines, I felt like quoting Lloyd Christmas: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance”!⁹

The annals of sports are of course replete with thrilling instances of improbable victories, but what I want to emphasize today is that God’s grace goes beyond improbable victories—God wins impossible ones.

“With God,” Christ taught His disciples, “all things are possible.”¹⁰ Peter walked on water.¹¹ Imagine it. With Christ, Lazarus¹² and Jairus’s daughter¹³ rose from the dead. With Christ, five thousand were fed from a few meager loaves and fishes.¹⁴ With Christ, the multitude in the Book of Mormon went “forth with their sick and their afflicted, and their lame, and with their blind . . . ; and [Christ healed] every [single] one.”¹⁵ With Christ, miracles happen.

To quote from one of our forum speakers from fall semester in 2024, “God does impossible math.”¹⁶ And I promise miracles will happen for you this semester as you exercise faith in Christ, “who is mighty to save.”¹⁷

Of course faith without works is dead. But, as President Dallin H. Oaks has taught us on this campus, “works without faith is even deader.”¹⁸

All the many works we do here at BYU must be inspired and driven by our faith in Jesus Christ and guided by prophetic direction. It is this faith that has carried us to this point in our journey of “becoming,”¹⁹ and it will be this faith in Christ that propels us to become the “Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of prophecy.”²⁰

“Never Stronger Than During Times of Crisis”

President Merrill J. Bateman, the eleventh president of Brigham Young University, observed that “the faith of BYU’s founders was never stronger than during times of crisis.”²¹

We’ve known something of what it means to be an underdog in our history at BYU.

President Bateman recounted that in 1884, when the school’s only building burned down, Reed Smoot, the future apostle and United States senator, cried out, “Oh, Brother Maeser, the Academy is burned!”

“No such thing,” Maeser replied. “It’s only the building.”²²

He was right.

Some years after Maeser’s passing, the university once again faced financial struggles. To finish the construction of the new Maeser Memorial Building on Temple Hill and to keep the university afloat, it was decided the best path forward would be to sell all the university’s remaining land to the north of the building to balance the budget.

Alfred Kelly was the student graduation speaker assigned to endorse this plan. But Kelly was unsettled about the assignment. In the days leading up to his graduation speech, he decided to walk to the area they called Temple Hill, above the Maeser Building, and pray. As he surveyed the valley, a vision unfolded before his eyes.

“Gradually the morning light advanced across the valley floor toward the spot where I stood. I closed my eyes partially to the advancing light and was startled by the strange vision that seemed to appear before me. The advancing sunlight took on the appearance of people, thousands of young people who approached me, their arms laden with books. I turned around to find the area behind me illuminated as well. In that light I saw hundreds of buildings, large and beautiful temples of learning. Those young people passed by me and entered in. Then, with cheerfulness and confidence, they turned toward the east and lifted their eyes heavenward, where, again becoming part of the sunlight, they gradually disappeared from my view.”²³

You see, Alfred Kelly saw you and he saw me.

The audience that day was stunned. Longtime BYU benefactor Jesse Knight rose to his feet and pledged his financial support, declaring, “We won’t sell an acre. We won’t sell a single lot.”²⁴ The faith of Alfred Kelly—a student just like you—helped see us through.

Two decades later, after the stock market had collapsed in 1932, it was similar faith from a faculty member that reassured our campus amid times of economic uncertainty. Some worried whether the university could continue or whether the Church had financial funds to support it. But around that time, BYU religion professor Sidney B. Sperry shared a dream he had had while studying in the Holy Land. He later recalled:

I was up high, looking down on the foothills of Y mountain, but it was a time farther in the future. The campus I saw was not the tiny cluster of buildings I had known, but a great array of many, many buildings. . . . I was amazed at Brigham Young University, and I thought, “How much is going on in those buildings, with thousands of students and teachers, and much research. What a power for good it is!”

Then I scanned the foothills and saw that the university spread northward, with many more buildings, . . . where they adjoined a white temple, and I thought, “So we will have a temple here as predicted!”²⁵

He knew the university would be safe.

Our institutional challenges look different today, but the solution will be the same—an unwavering faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in His Church, and in His chosen servants. It is through this faith that we will become the “Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of prophecy.”

And miracles will occur on this campus and in our personal lives. This means that each of us must become the miracle in the lives of those around us.

I plead with you today to take the time—during this devotional or later tonight as you pray, or perhaps later on than that in the house of the Lord—to ponder and think upon specific ways that you will be a miracle to someone around you this semester.

Be the Miracle Someone Else Needs

When Christ shared the parable of the prodigal son, He described the joy the father had when his son—who had spent his father’s money in riotous living—finally came home, humbled and penniless. Seeing his son’s return, the father called for a ring to be placed on his finger, a robe to be wrapped around him, and a fatted calf to be killed to celebrate.²⁶ This was a miracle he thought surely was impossible. “For this my son was dead,” the father said, “and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”²⁷

Christ could have ended the parable there, and it would have still inspired sermons throughout the centuries. But Christ told us of a brother who felt aggrieved and who refused to celebrate the return of his prodigal sibling. When the father came to entreat him, the angry son protested:

Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me [even] a kid. . . .

But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.

And [the father] said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.²⁸

Perhaps on Instagram it can appear as if someone else is always getting the fatted calf, the robe, or (dare I say, ahem) a ring before you. In other words, miracles are happening in somebody else’s life but not in mine or yours. In such moments, please become a miracle for someone else. When you are someone else’s miracle, God’s grace will fill your soul. You will witness miracles because you will be one.

I’ve seen this happen as I’ve been teaching University 101—a course on campus that seeks not only to foster student success but also to create covenant belonging and a deeper appreciation for BYU’s inspired, Christ-centered mission.

In the classroom, students have performed what might seem like small acts, but we know that mini miracles cascade into miracles of greater magnitude. I witnessed a student get up out of their chair and make space at a group table so another student sitting alone could join. Futures were saved this semester by fellow students, peer mentors, staff, and faculty who went out of their way to help someone who was struggling.

One such example came to me recently from a superb faculty member teaching this course. I share the email with permission, modifying details to preserve the privacy of all those who were involved.

This professor wrote me and said:

When our UNIV 101 course started, one class member did not attend for the first several sessions. Our peer mentor mentioned in one of our early planning meetings that he’d had an impression to reach out to this student personally. When he didn’t receive a response, he reached out again. Eventually the student politely responded that his plans were likely to change and that he would probably drop his classes and find a path away from BYU.

The peer mentor was undeterred. “Put off dropping out,” the peer mentor suggested, “and let’s meet to talk this through.”

With the peer mentor’s encouragement, they met on campus. This student is a first-generation college student and works nearly forty hours a week to support his family. He served an honorable mission, but this fall he was at a loss over how to pay for school and find time for studies. He was overwhelmed and without much hope. . . .

In the days that followed, the peer mentor helped him complete an application for financial aid (he was unaware of available resources), personally brought him to class, introduced him to the good people at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) for needed support, and taught him to use Learning Suite and other resources needed to succeed. I have watched with deep admiration as this peer mentor has quietly and consistently and creatively walked with this student through an exceptionally difficult transition.

This student came to the professor during office hours and shed tears of gratitude. Although the path wouldn’t be easy, the student felt a sense of hope and saw a path forward, thanks to the miracle of a peer mentor and a faculty member who cared.

We don’t need to be designated as a peer mentor or a professor to be the miracle someone else needs. We simply need to take inspiration from the ultimate miracle: our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Born in humble circumstances in an obscure town, the Lord held no property, no governmental title, and no scholarly distinction. He wrote no books and produced no art. And yet today, people around the globe reverence His birthplace, and houses of worship the world over bear His name. Governments mark their calendars by His life. No other person has been the subject of more books, more art, and more scholarship.

Why? Because Jesus Christ chose to be the single greatest miracle in each of our lives. May we go and do likewise in our own small sphere.

Christ taught:

Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.²⁹

I testify that God loves you—and God loves underdogs.

This semester we will hear from a remarkable group of inspired devotional and forum speakers. One of them happens to be BYU’s football coach, Kalani Sitake.

I was struck recently reading a social media post from Coach Sitake’s sister, Pamrose, recounting the challenges their family faced after the parents split up and the children moved with their dad to the United States. They couldn’t afford tickets to BYU football games, so Coach Sitake’s dad, “Pops,” would often park near the stadium and just listen to the broadcast and hear the roar of the crowd.

In a single generation, this family of faith went from listening outside the stadium to having one of their own coach the team inside of it.

Through faith in Christ, we can defy the odds. Even sin and death lose their sting. “It’s Jesus and the Atonement that will give us strength,” Coach Sitake has taught his players. “Those difficult times will make our rushing-the-field moments even better.”³⁰

My friends, God loves you and knows you by name. Expect miracles by being the miracle for others this semester. I promise you that God’s grace will attend you. And all that is unjust or wrong in this life, Christ will make right through His perfect Atonement—He is our Savior and Redeemer.

I so testify and express my love for each of you as we embark on this miraculous semester together, in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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