do you have to be mormon to run at BYU?

You're absolutely correct - Jake Retzlaff is the first Jewish person to play QB at BYU. Back in the 1980's, Jim McMahon, was the first Catholic to play QB.

I believe the Honor code rules are pretty strict & are the same for both Mormon & non-Mormon student-athletes: No alcohol, no illicit drugs, no caffeine, no premarital sex. 😲

You are forgotten the really important one. No facial hair! I'm not kidding

The answer is ‘No!’. They’re on the podium annually because of Ed Eyestone.

Not only, he certainly was not the type to abide by set rules...especially alcohol.

Have you ever been to Utah? 50% of women over the age of 20 are addicted to diet coke

Beer drinking, tobacco dipping, weed smoking and fornication were no stranger to Jim while he was at BYU. He used to drive up to Weber State and party hard. His head coach was fully aware of it. The won/ loss record was more important than the code of ethics.

Caffeine infused soda is sold on campus. A BYU student can drink cherry coke all day long. LDS faith seems to have a problem with hot beverages. Whether that also applies to Swiss Miss and hot apple cider (and not just coffee and tea), I can't say.

No shave chits are easy for black football and basketball players to acquire at BYU.

Caffeine is okay. The prohibition is on coffee and no tea that comes from the tea plant. Herbal teas are fine, green tea and black tea are not.

The actual wording this is all based on is “hot drinks” from the early 1800s. Some time later it was decided “hot drinks” only means coffee and tea from the tea plant. In the 60s and 70s some said no caffeine at all, but that was never official and has gone away. Some expect the current prohibition on coffee and tea to also go away, but it doesn’t seem imminent. Regardless, anecdotally many report that younger Mormons are drinking coffee and tea and still consider themselves otherwise all in on the religion.

LDS thinking on "vices" like caffeine is largely tied to the church investment fund. Once they acquired a sizeable position in Coca-Cola, it suddenly became acceptable to imbibe the once forbidden soda.

Not even a nearly trimmed mustache?

What about the Elders of the Church - no neatly trimmed beards? 🧔

The legendary LaVell Edwards recruited McMahon - which I believe would have been the first non-Mormon QB recruit in the history of the school.

The current HC at the University of Texas is Steve Sarkisian, who was also non-Mormon (Catholic) & played QB for Edwards in 1995-96 seasons (JC transfer).

Back in the ‘80’s, a Samoan-American football player from my high school received a scholarship to BYU. I know that the Mormon church has a presence within the Hawaiian and Samoan population, but I don’t know if this guy was Mormon himself.

He was kicked out/expelled/asked to leave the team & the school (I heard different versions of the details) after he knocked up his girlfriend.

What about Jared Ward's mustache?

A lot of these questions could be answered through a few minutes of research rather than asking a group of posters on letsrun.com.

I'll still say, you don't have to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to attend BYU or participate in sports. Obviously there are a lot of members at BYU in the athletics programs because normally only members of the church have ambitions of attending here.

I am studying in an engineering major currently and one of my close friends who I do a lot of labs with is not a member of the church. He takes the mandatory religion courses and is fine with learning about the religion, and he is clearly aware what he signed up for. He doesn't have any plans to convert as far as I am aware, and no one is forcing him.

There is an honor code, which is clearly outlined on the BYU website. It is pretty much what everyone has said - don't cheat, follow the standards and rules outlined, be chaste, and you are required to keep the standards whether you are a member or not. And yes no beards, but interestingly you are allowed mustaches. Something I wish would change, because I think most people can't pull of mustaches lol. I say it should be all or nothing, but that is my personal opinion.

It is a private religious university run by a religious institution, not a public university, so yeah there are differences. And yeah there is controversy surrounding the policies, and the religion, and its history, and about anything that has to do with the church, and there are plenty of anecdotes about being treated unfairly regarding the honor code. I would just say, wherever there is a culture, there are both counter-culture types and mainstream types, and there are both nice people and mean people on all sides of the debates (and I am talking about internal disagreements between members of the church).

While acknowledging I hope all that has been done wrong may be made right in the future, I still choose to be a member of this church even after I graduate, and hope things continue to get better.

There is a lot of complexity to any religion. I recommend you learn about one deeply rather than rely on hear say! In one of my elective classes here on World Religions I read a good chunk of the Quran, and it was quite an experience to learn about what Islam has to say for itself rather than relying on what your neighbor down the street heard about Muslims on fox news. However, I have learned you can count on most people to criticize before even talking to a real life "mormon", let alone opening up a Book of Mormon, or even just learning where the book actually came from.

The running is cool here. Just saw Connor Mantz and Clayton Young at the indoor track a couple of days ago. The mountains and elevations are awesome. Saw Jared Ward on a neighborhood run with Clayton Young while I was running a couple months ago.

Anyways, I am wasting time right now when I should be studying for a midterm before thanksgiving break!

they aren't against caffeine

Isn't YouTuber Mark Rober a BYU alum? Are there posters of him in the walls there?

Don't think he runs though.

How do you feel about having to take many, many credits of a religion that you have studied for thousands and thousands of hours through Sunday school and more? Don't you think that you already had a very good foundation before all those byu classes? Are byu students particularly dense and need additional courses on their religion above those many years of Sunday school and seminary and home study? Wouldn't you rather spend those course hours learning how to be a better engineer, assuming that you already knew how to be a good mormon? Also, why no beards? Brigham Young certainly had a beard. So Brigham Young would be expelled from his namesake school? Also, what about all the "soaking" and "humping" that goes on. Aren't they honor code violations and aren't you required to rat out your fellow students for doing them?

They signed one of the top Discus throwers in the US last year, he’s Catholic