...but also he got very loyal with a certain group of assistant coaches and stopped attracting the up and coming hot young assistants that marked his earlier years. Coaches like Scovil, Kragthorpe, Tollner, Reid, Billick, Leach, Holmgren, Whittingham Sr, etc were on to bigger and better things and I think the assistant pool got a little stagnant.

Coaches like Felt, French, Schmidt, Reynolds, Ramage, etc hung around and hung around. Chow eventually moved on to other gigs but none of these guys were getting bigger or better offers. Some of that may be due to their loyalty to Lavell but he might have gotten too loyal to them too and kept them around way past their effectiveness.

Lavell's coaching tree withered and died in the 90's. BYU's never had a coaching tree since.