One of the most frequent is “When is ‘The Cut?’ coming out?”

“The Cut” is a cinematic highlight video from BYU’s Creative Strategies team, detailing not only the big plays on the field but taking fans behind the scenes and into the locker room.

It generally drops on Monday and is highly anticipated by Cougar Nation.

When head coach Kalani Sitake uttered the phrase, “They don’t know, but they ’bout to find out!” “The Cut” was there.

Darnell Dickson, Daily Herald

When former Cougar Tyler Batty gave a passionate halftime speech at Arizona State, “The Cut” was there.

When Will Ferrin kicked the game-winning field goal at Utah last season, “The Cut” was there.

From humble beginnings six years ago, “The Cut” has carved out an important place in capturing the hearts of Cougar fandom and documenting sports history at the school.

Tyson Hutchins is the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Creative Strategies at BYU. He’s in charge of digital and social media, content strategies, creative video and graphic design. More simply put, Hutchins said he oversees the internal creative agency at BYU.

“Instead of our clients being brands or a company, it’s our teams, the Cougar Club and the stakeholders in the athletic department,” he said.

Courtesy BYU Athletics

There are 22 full-time staffers in the Creative Strategies department, which also services all the Olympic sports at BYU. The staff produces other popular videos such as “A Day in the Life” and “Mic’d Up.” When the BYU women’s soccer team rallied from a 3-0 deficit to beat North Carolina 4-3 in the 2023 NCAA Elite Eight at South Field, “The Cut” was there in the snowstorm, trying to stay warm and getting all the important shots.

The football crew consists of videographers Anna Brower, Brandon Despain, Preston Crowley, Stuart Call and Koy Johnson.

“What’s really cool about ‘The Cut’ is it’s such a collaborative process,” Hutchins said. “It started out as a cinematic recap of the games and was kind of just quick content. You didn’t see a lot of long-form story telling. Eventually we gave it a name, our own moniker and our own style. It’s grown into something we’re known for.”

Brower is the lead producer and helps put together the pre-production plan. There are cameras all over LaVell Edwards Stadium to show vantage points that differ from the traditional broadcast angles. As the game unfolds, “The Cut” starts out in document form. Each member of the production team contributes key moments they shoot during the game.

When the final whistle sounds, the videographers deliver all of their best shots to Brower, who takes the first pass at editing “The Cut.”

Courtesy BYU Athletics

“She locks herself in an editing suite for about 48 hours or so building on those story lines from the document,” Hutchins said.

After the video editing is done, “The Cut” is passed on to color and sound design to give it that cinematic feel. Then it’s released to the general public through YouTube and various other social media platforms.

Cougar Nation is watching.

The BYU-Utah version of “The Cut” has been viewed more than 100,000 times on YouTube and last year’s Alamo Bowl win against Colorado has 93,000 views.

“One of the things I love about the feedback is we get all kinds of analytics behind the viewer experience,” Hutchins said. “The watch time for “The Cut” is over 60%, which in the YouTube world is astronomical. Nothing gets that kind of watch time. A significant portion of Cougar Nation will sit and watch 10, 15, 20 minutes.

“The other aspect we love about it is being able to provide another memory for fans to remember a game. We think of ourselves as historians of BYU athletics. Ten years from now someone could say, ‘Hey, remember when we beat Baylor in overtime at LaVell Edwards Stadium?’ and they can dial up “The Cut” and relive those moments.”

Internal video productions like “The Cut” have come a long way since Hutchins became just the second BYU Athletics employee with “social media” in his job description in 2016 (Call was the first). In 2021, Hutchins left for Clemson to be Associate Athletic Director of Creative Solutions. At the time, Clemson, Ohio State and South Carolina were at the forefront in developing a social media presence for athletics. Hutchings took those best practices from Clemson and returned to BYU in 2022.

“I learned a tremendous amount at Clemson,” Hutchins said. “We wanted to embrace some of those things and build something we could be proud of.”

Hutchins said Sitake and other coaches at BYU recognize the value of the social media content, thought Sitake always mentions he wants the videos to be about the players and not himself.

Hutchins said he views BYU athletes as an extension of “The Cut.”

“When we have athletes from LA or Atlanta or Dallas, we know they have a following in those markets we may have never reached if they don’t come to BYU,” Hutchins said.

BYU’s signing of the nation’s No. 1 basketball recruit, AJ Dybantsa, has opened up some new avenues for Hutchins and his team to explore.

“We’ve been working with AJ and his team, and it’s been awesome,” Hutchins said. “He can build his brand beyond basketball. We’re excited about the tremendous opportunities and AJ won’t be the last. We just want to make sure we’re a resource for our athletes.”

The impact of “The Cut” goes far beyond a single game or event.

“Once during a recruiting visit we were taking some folks through the facilities,” Hutchins said. “They said, ‘I saw this on The Cut’ and it kind of clicked for us that this was not just an opportunity for Cougar Nation but for recruiting. The coaches talk about just getting a player to Provo but our goal is to take Provo to those student-athletes through our work.”