the truth in it.

You say that "he was always Pope's for the taking." I remember when we lost a recruit to the U recently and he was pals or teammate of Chandler. It had appeared to many that Burgess's departure from BYU had been the cause of that defection and could possibly affect Chandler as well. Well, it didn't happen, so we began to believe that Chandler wasn't tied to Burgess. Then all this coaching change happens and Chandler asks to be released from NLI and signs with UK.

So was it totally Pope or was it the allure of playing for UK? I don't know. On what basis do you believe he was always a Pope guy and if Pope had gone to SMU or some other open position that he would have followed him? I don't know if you know or are guessing, as most of us do based on what we see. It could have been a allure of UK combined with having a HC that participated in recruiting you--both.

One of our challenges is that we've had coaches leave that haven't taken anyone--Steve Cleveland. Pope, when he did leave BYU for UVU, there were players that transferred, but that was already an established pipeline for BYU players that wanted more playing time. Bronco left and while he did recruit against BYU, he didn't take players with him that I remember, so this Pope experience has been somewhat new for us BYU fans.