what, exactly is out there, and moving forward when he leaves.

I'm happy with the Sitake hire and expect him to do well, but, in fairness, it's a little early to decide if he's been successful or not.

Letting Mendenhall go (i.e. not fighting hard to keep him/match UVA/give him reason to believe BYU would) when he got another offer was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and, at this point, probably the right thing to do. But firing him, a coach with a 700 winning percentage at a program that hadn't done consistently better than that since the Reagan administration, is a different animal altogether. You don't fire a guy like that unless you're absolutely sure you have a highly successful/qualified (i.e. already successful as a HC) replacement. Such a replacement did not, in fact, exist.

IMO, BYU did this right and I think Mendenhall did it right too. He no longer had strong support in the program, he saw that and left to go resurrect someone else. BYU wanted someone with more energy who was likely to bring in the players Mendenhall was missing. With him leaving, the program gets it's chance to do that.

Also, firing a guy with a 700 winning percentage is inevitably going to make the next hire(s) more than a little skiddish, more likely to decline the job or to use BYU as a stepping stone than if they think they have relatively good security.

I'm looking forward to the future. I think/hope Sitake is going to do great.