He brought excitement back to the Marriott Center. He brought a fresh new approach that BYU needed. His first year at BYU was incredibly fun and much needed.

He also had showed a lot of flaws and chinks in the armor for a few seasons. Our WCC records were not good and it started to make his seat warm. And many started to get bugged by his salesman like hyperbole every time he was being interviewed was no longer cute and funny once the honeymoon phase ended. Most of us thought there was no way he’d turn the program around especially heading into the gauntlet that was the big 12. But somehow, he pulled together a team that overachieved and had pieces that were doing things that were so unexpected and fun. It made us forget about the struggles of the few years prior.

Just like many of us that work for companies we don’t own, we certainly want to see the company succeed, we want to be a part of the reason why it’s improving, and in many cases we do this with a portion of it being with our own personal interests in mind. Pope was no different. He wanted BYU to succeed, but it was party for his own self interest. Then when he left, we could finally say that his hyperbole was unbearable and it was now clear and undeniable that he always had his self interest in mind. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t want BYU to succeed while he was a part of it or that he tried to sabotage it on the way out, or that he didn’t really like his time at BYU.