He's had about the same prep, with the exception that he's been a moderately successful HC at UVU and now a sub-.500 coach at Cal, where he had the luxury of playing in probably the worst P5 conference in the country (yes, I know, the program was worse before he got there). We don't have any solid evidence that Mad Dog is a good coach, or that he'd be a good coach at a school he's never been remotely interested in.

Not that this needs repeating, but NONE of the candidates will have a long, consistent track record of success. None of them. But Pope didn't, either, nor any of the coaches before him...except Ingles, who won a natty as a HC before coming to BYU and winning one. single. game.

When Pope took BYU to a glorious fourth-place finish in the WCC, behind San Francisco, just a year ago, to say "unlikely that there is a better LDS coach than Pope" would have provoked gales of laughter on this board, and rightly so. This year was better, yes (and halelujah). Maybe--MAYBE--next year would have been better still. But to say that Pope was a miracle-worker or some kind of Dean Smith is just...well, let's call it "wildly unsupported by the evidence". Not that I don't love the man, because I do.

I'm fairly confident that BYU will end up with a head coach of roughly the same caliber as Pope was when he got hired. And then we gotta pray he'll get better...just as Pope did.