Dick Harmon
Dick Harmon is a long-tenured sports columnist for Deseret News, now in his fourth decade reporting on college athletics. His work is distinguished by close, sustained attention to BYU sports and their conference context, blending game analysis with program-building, leadership and structural change. He writes as an insider on the Cougars’ trajectory while bringing in advanced metrics, historical perspective and national benchmarks, such as win-conversion and success-rate analyses for BYU and Utah.
BYU football and Big 12 competition
Harmon’s core focus is BYU football, especially its transition and performance within Big 12 competition.
His columns regularly frame games around matchups and rankings, including pieces on No. 10 BYU’s road test at TCU and the grit required to preserve an unbeaten record. He uses question-driven headlines and analysis to probe the state of the team, such as examining what is most encouraging and most concerning about a No. 9-ranked BYU squad, or what the Cougars can learn from a season opener against FCS Utah Tech. He also writes about BYU’s national statistical profile, highlighting measures like success rate and broader win-conversion matrices that compare the Cougars and Utah against national peers.
Game previews and recaps are often built around specific strengths-versus-strengths narratives, with columns on BYU’s clash with TCU and early-season contests against Big 12 opponents like Arizona. Harmon regularly incorporates predictions into his football coverage, as seen in pieces that forecast outcomes against TCU and analyze quarterback Bear Bachmeier’s deep passing, framed by the insights of a “quarterback guru.”
He emphasizes personnel and positional groups, writing about BYU’s receivers, offensive line, linebackers and the impact of players like freshman running back LJ Martin, whose breakout performances he documents and contextualizes. His work on Big 12 receivers compares the league’s top pass-catching units with those in the SEC, illustrating his tendency to situate BYU’s environment within a national competitive landscape.
Coaching leadership and program building
Beyond game results, Harmon devotes substantial reporting to how leadership, contracts and organizational choices shape BYU football.
He has written on head coach Kalani Sitake’s role in building the program through culture, relationships and persistence, noting how those traits produced 23 victories across two seasons and a preseason top-15 ranking. In a separate column, he examines the far-reaching impact of Sitake’s renewed contract, explaining how external interest from Penn State translated into long-term benefits and stability for the BYU program. His coverage extends to athletic department restructuring, outlining how BYU’s operations are being remade to resemble NBA and NFL models in response to paid players and the professional traits of modern college sports.
These pieces focus on resources, governance and institutional support as critical variables in competitive success, rather than treating wins and losses as isolated events. Harmon shows particular interest in whether promised resources reach the football program and how organizational changes affect coaches’ authority and relationships.
The tone is analytical and explanatory, connecting administrative decisions to on-field outcomes, and offering readers a view of BYU as a program navigating rapid changes in college athletics rather than just a team preparing for the next opponent.
BYU basketball and player development
Harmon also covers BYU basketball, with emphasis on player development, character and how new additions fit into the team’s identity.
He has written about AJ Dybantsa and Richie Saunders as bright spots in a season that fell short of expectations, focusing on how they shined on and off the court. In another column, he leans on the perspective of longtime AAU coach Tim Davis to break down BYU’s new Latter-day Saint players, highlighting details like size, previous schools and mission experiences as part of the roster evaluation. These stories show an interest in the personal and developmental side of the program - how individual trajectories and backgrounds contribute to the team’s competitiveness and culture.
His basketball coverage often presents BYU within the broader recruiting and developmental ecosystem, using voices from AAU and other levels to explain how players are expected to translate to the college game. Harmon’s framing keeps the focus on specific athletes and their roles, rather than abstract discussion of schemes, which makes these pieces useful for understanding how coaches and insiders view BYU’s depth chart and future.
Golf, athlete welfare and the wider college landscape
Although BYU football is his primary sub-beat, Harmon periodically widens his lens to cover golf and broader issues affecting athletes.
He writes about former BYU golfers and Utah ties at PGA Tour events such as the Bank of Utah Championship, following how local players perform and climb leaderboards. He has also covered visiting international contingents, including Scots competing in Utah’s golf scene, using those tournaments to connect local interest with professional circuits. These golf pieces reflect a sustained secondary interest in the sport and its ties to the college programs he covers.
On athlete welfare and regulation, Harmon has examined the case of Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby and the complexities of gambling and eligibility in college sports. In that column, he argues that Sorsby is not the first and will not be the last high-profile athlete entangled in sports betting, positioning the episode within a pattern of systemic challenges.
Across football, basketball and golf coverage, he consistently treats players as participants in evolving systems - whether those systems involve conference realignment, NIL-era professionalization, or the pressures of compliance and discipline.
Voice, format and credentials
Harmon’s columns frequently originate in the Cougar Insiders newsletter, giving his BYU football analysis a recurring, insider format aimed at readers who follow the program closely. Newsletter-originated pieces include breakdowns of what is encouraging and concerning about BYU’s team, as well as contract analyses and roster evaluations.
His headlines often pose questions or highlight a specific tension - such as learning from a lopsided early-season game or weighing Big 12 receivers against SEC counterparts - before unpacking those questions in detailed prose.
He brings long experience and national-level credentials to this work, described as a sports columnist who has spent four decades covering college athletics for Deseret News. He is noted as the author of four non-fiction books and as a Heisman Trophy voter, signaling recognition beyond the local beat and a career that reaches into the broader college football community. Earlier in his career he worked as a sports editor and columnist at a separate daily newspaper, with a focus on college football and basketball.
Taken together, his tenure, newsletter presence, and national voting role distinguish his coverage from a generic beat reporter, grounding his BYU-centric analysis in both local familiarity and wider college football context.
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