Truth is, if you go that route — not only does it kill your fanbase, but these days you can expect morale attrition to come of it as well. Especially at the place like BYU — for kids who are far away from home & outa their element.

What SURE woulda been nice, though, is if the previous coach had set brother Pope up with something a little better than Kolby Lee, Shengzhe Li, Colby Liefson, Nate Hansen, & Hunter Erickson. Although I think Pope would've liked to have hung onto Bernardo DiSouza in 2020 if limits & restrictions woulda allowed it, even Bernardo was probably not the level of recruit Pope woulda offered a scholarship to in the here & now. He passed on a similarly raw but even more athletic player from Wasatch just this last year in Keita.

And we should also all know by now that Pope would NOT have offered scholarships to 2020 role players, Dalton Nixon, Zach Seljaas & Connor Harding (Harding woulda played a bigger role had he been able to stay healthy that year). And for good reason. If BYU's to be as successful in the Big12 as some of you hope (or expect) it should be — these sorta guys will not cut it as scholarship players here.