Four-Star OL Austin Pay is Officially a BYU Cougar

Credit: Twitter @AustinPay74
Credit: Twitter @AustinPay74 /
In this story:

On Wednesday, BYU announced the signing of offensive lineman Austin Pay. Pay, a legacy recruit, is a four-star offensive lineman per Rivals. Pay committed to BYU over fellow finalists Oregon and Oklahoma. He also picked the Cougars over competing offers from Auburn, Baylor, Florida, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Utah, Stanford, UCLA, and Duke among others during his recruitment.

Austin Pay is the younger brother of current BYU starting center Connor Pay and reserve offensive lineman Trevor Pay. Their father is Garry Pay who played along the offensive line for BYU in the late 80's and early 90's.

Austin Pay is one of the top in-state recruits in the 2025 recruiting class. He is ranked fifth in the state according to 247Sports. Pay is one of the most important players to commit to BYU in the 2025 recruiting class.

New BYU offensive line coach TJ Woods deserves a lot of credit in this recruitment. While Pay is a legacy recruit and the connections to the program are obvious, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Austin would end up at BYU. Had BYU not replaced Darrell Funk with TJ Woods, Austin probably would have ended up at Oregon or Oklahoma.

BYU has had a lot of great tackles over the last few years. The last three left tackles were selected in the NFL Draft: Brady Christensen, Blake Freeland, and Kingsley Suamataia. BYU's current left tackle, Caleb Etienne, is also trending towards being an NFL Draft pick. Recruits like Austin Pay have the potential to continue that pipeline of BYU tackles to the NFL.


Published
Casey Lundquist
CASEY LUNDQUIST

Casey Lundquist is the publisher and lead editor of Cougs Daily. He has covered BYU athletics for the last four years. During that time, he has published over 2,000 stories that have reached more than three million people.