PROVO, Utah -- On the Sunday after BYU's thrilling 24-21 win over rival Utah, a few dozen senior citizens gathered in the courtyard at Jamestown Retirement Community.
Two local students and some of their family members put on a concert, with favorites like "Brown Eyed Girl," "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and "Wagon Wheel" played in front of the delighted crowd.
Some of those in attendance realized that among the four crooners were BYU teammates Bear and Tiger Bachmeier, who transferred to BYU from Stanford this summer and have been in perfect harmony with their new surroundings ever since.
"There's a woman who looks up at him and breaks into tears of joy," said Don Bachmeier, Bear and Tiger's uncle. "She said, 'I love God, I love America and I love football.'"
There's a lot to like at BYU these days, with the team 9-1, No. 11 in the CFP rankings and Bear Bachmeier surging into the national spotlight as perhaps the next great Cougars signal-caller.
Bachmeier wearing No. 47 as a quarterback -- a nod to his early days as a tailback and linebacker -- has worked in concert with his endearing quirks that have made him a sublime fit in Provo. From his unique number to his unique name and a mop of hair that flops down over a baby face, Bear has quickly become the face of BYU football.
"I thought it was perfect for Bear," senior receiver Chase Roberts said of his true freshman teammate's number. "Just his personality and the way that he carries himself. There's no better number than 47 for a guy like that."
Bachmeier grew up the second-youngest of five siblings in a family that's been forged by its rollicking size. "Chaos," he told ESPN with a laugh in a recent interview in Provo. "Somebody would always have a bloody nose, and somebody would always be crying, and my mom would always be screaming. That's how the Bachmeiers lived, which is awesome."
Along with Tiger playing at Stanford and now BYU, Bear's oldest brother, Hank, was a starting quarterback at Boise State, Louisiana Tech and Wake Forest. Chasing around his older siblings ended up being the perfect incubator for Bear, who won the starting job in short order after transferring to BYU from Stanford in June.
Bear expected to compete for the backup spot, but starter Jake Retzlaff's sudden departure amid an honor code violation put him in position to win the job. From there, both he and BYU have improbably soared.
"Once our players got to know him, he was the undeniable leader of our offense," BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick said. "It's amazing how they were attracted to him, guys on the team who are 21- and 22-years-old following this kid."
And in short order, he has helped push a veteran BYU team into the College Football Playoff picture and singing on the sport's main stage.
One night when Bear Bachmeier was around age 7, he played older brother Tiger in chess. Tiger graduated from Stanford with a degree in computer science in 2½ years and is considered the genius of the family. He'd always crush Bear in chess.
After months of losing, Bear finally beat his brother. A typical scene unfolded.
"I just remember him flipping over the table and the pieces flying all around," Bear recalled with a laugh. "Again, my mom was screaming. Tiger's got anger issues when he loses. I mean, we all do. That epitomizes the competitive nature we grew up with."
That competition certainly manifested itself in sports. Hank recalls Bear being able to dribble a basketball between his legs at age 2 or 3. Growing up, he was a constant guest at his older siblings' sporting events. He'd walk up to strangers with a whiffle ball, get in a batting stance and say, "Throw me the ball."
As a first-grader, Bear played basketball with the fifth- and sixth-graders, in part to be with his older siblings. Childhood was filled with impromptu competitions such a home run derby with a rolled-up sock, WWE ladder matches and tackle football beginning at age 5. Summers were filled with games of King of the Lily Pad on the lake.
Quickly faced with fight or flight choices at home, Bear chose to fight.
"They didn't toss him around much," Don Bachmeier said. "Bear has been able to hold his own as long as I can remember. There's a dynamic in these guys with competitiveness and toughness. You could see it all when they were young."
Bear's birth name is Michael, which is after his father. His family began calling him Bear the day he was born. He said his grandmothers are the only ones who don't call him Bear. His mother's mom, June Smith, refers to him as Donald and his father's mother, Patricia Bachmeier, calls him Cakes. Bear said he didn't know where Cakes from, but Hank pointed out a reason with a chuckle:
"Because of his lower body," he said, referencing Bear's prominent backside. "She's called him that since he was born."
For the record, Tiger's real name is James. The youngest brother, known as Buck, is a high school freshman. His birth name is Charles, but he also goes by Cougar. Hank's first name is William. "The joke now is that they need those animal titles for intimidation," Hank said with a laugh. "I never needed such a title."
Bear is now 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, a collision of genetics and competitiveness, his rise as one of the sport's best young players raises the question of whether it was nature or nurture. Bear says it was both, as his mother, April, "demanded good grades" and "instilled in us to be a great person." His father, Michael, was an officer in the Marines and preached "attacking life" and "commanding presence." Sports were always taken seriously.
Heading into Hank's freshman season at Boise State, he was in competition for the starting quarterback job in fall camp. At the same time, Michael Bachmeier was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He did not tell Hank about the diagnosis until the day before he went into surgery, as he didn't want to distract him from the quarterback competition.
"I told him I didn't want him coming back and leaving fall camp to go to my surgery," Michael Bachmeier said. "I'd been working on him since he was 3 or 4 years old. I didn't want him to potentially lose the battle to go and see his dad."
Hank did end up going to see his dad -- with the encouragement of his coaches at Boise -- and looks back at his father pushing the kids through athletics with appreciation. (Along with the three college scholarship football players, Ella Bachmeier also ran track at Redlands.)
Hank, 26, and his fiancée have a young son, Bronco, and it has reframed how he viewed his father pushing he and his siblings.
"There's some method to the madness," Hank Bachmeier said. "Him pushing our boundaries and pushing us to be our best. In the grand scheme of his vision, he got us to where he wanted us to be. The essence of that, I really admire that now."
Bear Bachmeier has thrived in a culture that BYU coach Kalani Sitake describes as "Love and Learn." While the players and coaches identify Sitake as the tone-setter, he sees himself as the caretaker of the culture he played in under legendary coach LaVell Edwards.
To illustrate how far ahead Edwards was with the way he ran the program, Sitake tells the story of his first year as head coach. Sitake had started 1-3, with three one-score losses in a row, and was riding the team bus to a home game against Toledo.
A voicemail flashed up. 6:38 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2016. Sitake felt unsure in his early tenure as coach, and he wondered what Edwards could want on a game day.
He still has the message, and plays it now as an illustration of the type of love that Edwards fostered.
"I'm sitting on the bus going to the stadium right here in Provo and to the stadium named after him," Sitake told ESPN. "I listened to this voicemail: 'I want you to know you're doing a great job, and I really feel really encouraged about the future of football [here]. Good luck tonight."
BYU won that game 55-53 and finished that season 9-4. That kick-started a tenure that has included a remarkable transition from independent program to the Big 12, as BYU went 5-7 in its Big 12 debut in 2023 and quickly improved to 11-2 last year. This year, it is thriving again and on the cusp of the program's first CFP bid.
As Sitake has taken the program to the highest levels of contention in college football, he has kept the spirit of his old coach close by.
A few months after leaving that voicemail for Sitake, Edwards died. At his funeral, Sitake recalled being at the church and talking with a cluster of BYU legends -- Andy Reid, Tom Holmoe, Jim McMahon, Steve Young and Ty Detmer. Sitake quickly noticed how thick the connective tissue was between different eras.
"We're all speaking the same language," he said. "You would've thought that we all played together because we were all on the same page. It was kind of like we were just one big family, and we're all working together."
That ethos has permeated and reverberated to the point where Sitake's current players point out that it's incumbent on them to hold up the Love and Learn standards.
"He's had the same vision ever since I arrived, but the players hadn't grasped onto it," BYU's Roberts said. "So I think these past two years we've been able to buy in and it's coming not just from Kalani, but from the leaders and they're starting to live the culture and express it more and more to the younger guys, to everyone else."
It took only about 10 days of fall camp for Bear Bachmeier to separate himself in the quarterback competition.
Roberts recalled a two-minute drill that came amid a run of the defense dominating BYU's offense. Bachmeier came into the huddle and delivered a fiery speech, and then went out and, as Roberts put it, "diced them up and scored."
Sitake called that two-minute drill a seminal moment in Bachmeier winning the job, as he showed a mastery of timeouts, when to spike the ball and the pace needed to score.
"It was like, 'Do we even have to coach this kid?'" Sitake joked. "It was super special. You're just sitting there going, 'Man, does this guy know what the stakes are' and no nerves."
That caliber of performance has carried over to the season, as Bachmeier has thrown 13 touchdowns with just four interceptions and rushed for 10 more TDs. He has accounted for 2,177 passing yards and 479 rushing yards.
It's not a surprise to Roderick, the veteran offensive coordinator. When Bachmeier arrived in mid-June, he needed to quickly catch up on learning the playbook. Assistant quarterback coach Matt Mitchell spent the most time with him, and it became clear that Bachmeier could digest information at an elite clip.
"Matt and I both noticed right away, he's as advertised in terms of his ability to process information," Roderick said. "We couldn't give it to him fast enough. He knows it, and he can he apply to field and play fast."
That flashed in comeback wins at Colorado (down 14-0), at Arizona (down 24-14), Utah (down 14-10 in fourth) and at Iowa State (down 24-10).
And as Bachmeier kept playing with nerve-less verve, he began to conjure up both BYU's recent and past quarterback lore. Along with legends like Young, Detmer and McMahon, BYU has also a strong recent history under Roderick.
"He's had Zach Wilson, Jaren Hall, Kedon Slovis, Jake Retzlaff and now Bear Bachmeier," Sitake said of Roderick, who came as pass game coordinator in 2018. "The first three are all NFL guys. It's not a coincidence. He's done an amazing job, as it's not easy being a coordinator at any level, especially an offensive coordinator at BYU."
This might be Roderick's most impressive work, as he both integrated Bachmeier to BYU's offense and tailored it to his dual-threat skill set.
The BYU wins and production have fostered optimism for what Bear Bachmeier can become. For all the attention, Roderick marvels at the quirky person who will randomly belt out Creedence Clearwater Revival lyrics -- "I was born on the Bayou!" -- in the middle of quarterback meetings.
There's a running joke in the BYU fan base that Bachmeier is a centaur, stemming from comments by Portland State coach Bruce Barnum after BYU's 69-0 win. This Halloween, BYU fans dressed up as centaurs with blue No. 47 jerseys.
In BYU's game against TCU last week, Roderick saw that Bachmeier took a hard hit on his lower body when a TCU defensive player dove at him. Roderick joked with him on the sideline: "That guy didn't know he was hitting a centaur."
Bear shot back, straight-faced: "Yeah, he probably messed up his face, too, and hurt his neck."
Roderick burst out into laughter, as Bachmeier broke from the day-to-day humility.
"There's a sincerity about him you can feel," Roderick said. "The humility is something that's really refreshing in this era. He's not real impressed with himself."
Everyone else is impressed, from fans in the senior homes to people across the college football landscape. And the chorus of those singing his praises is only growing louder.
"I'm a little bit reluctant to try and predict what he can become," Roderick said. "If he keeps improving, he's going to be up there with the great quarterbacks who have played at this school."