National Football Foundation

Tom Holmoe came full circle, playing for BYU and earning First Team All-WAC honors in 1982 as a defensive back and then returning in 2005 to head the Cougars athletics department. He now earns First Team honors on the administration side of the ball as the 29^th recipient of the NFF John L. Toner Award.

Holmoe took over the BYU department on March 1, 2005, which makes him the third longest-serving FBS athletics director in the country. He oversees a nationally recognized program with 21 intercollegiate sports, involving more than 600 student-athletes and a 220-person staff. Since his appointment, BYU has captured 128 conference regular-season and postseason championships, and more than 300 student-athletes have earned All-America status.
 
Throughout his 17-year tenure, BYU has had an average ranking of 36th in the annual NACDA Learfield Directors’ Cup, ranking all athletic programs in the country. For the 2020-21 athletic season, BYU finished No. 17 in the Directors' Cup standings. In the fall of 2022, for the first time ever, BYU finished No. 1 in the Directors' Cup standings for fall sports.
 
Under Holmoe, the football team has won an impressive 66.8 percent of their games, ranking in the final Top 25 seven times and appearing in 16 bowl games. Holmoe recruited Bronco Mendenhall to take over the program, leading the Cougars back into the national spotlight and amassing an overall record of 99-43. In 2016, Holmoe tapped Kalani Sitake, a former BYU fullback for College Football Hall of Fame Coach LaVell Edwards, to head the program. Sitake has crafted a 56-34 record heading into the 2023 season.
 
In 2011, Holmoe made the difficult decision to become a football independent, allowing the Cougars to play higher level opponents and gain more national exposure. The move culminated this season with BYU becoming a member of the Big 12 Conference. Two College Football Hall of Famers, Gordon Hudson (2009) and Ty Detmer (2012), and two NFF National Scholar-Athletes Matt Bauman (2009) and Taysom Hill (2016) have been honored by the NFF during his reign.
 
A native of La Crescenta, Calif., Holmoe first came to BYU on a football scholarship in 1978. He earned first-team All-WAC honors as a senior in 1982 and was selected in the fourth round of the 1983 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers. Over a seven-year NFL career, he played on three Super Bowl championship teams with the 49ers in 1984, 1988 and 1989.
 
After retiring from professional football, Holmoe returned to BYU to serve as a graduate assistant under Hall of Fame Coach LaVell Edwards from 1990-91 and later accepted an offer from Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh to become the Stanford secondary coach in 1992, where he remained for two seasons. In 1994, he returned to the 49ers as defensive backfield coach for two seasons, where he earned a fourth Super Bowl ring. Two years later Holmoe joined the University of California staff as defensive coordinator and later became the head coach from 1997-2001.

In July 2001, he returned to BYU as Associate Athletics Director for Development. As part of his responsibilities, he supervised the Cougar Club, served as the department’s liaison with the LDS Foundation, served on the BYU Alumni Association Board of Directors and worked on the capital campaign to raise funds for the university’s new athletic facilities.
 
Holmoe graduated from BYU with a degree in Zoology in 1983 and received a master's degree from BYU in Athletic Administration in 1995. He and his wife, Lori, have four children and 10 grandchildren.