to him to be authentically kind and respectful to everyone, including his players, opposing players, fans, and all walks of life. He is truly a good person. However, even good people can be not so good sometimes, when they are under duress. And I for one, will always be disappointed by how he treated Ty Detmer. Ty is also a noble person, and was so incredibly professional in not reciprocating, and throwing KS under the bus, which could have potentially damaged the BYU program a lot if it had become big news, mainly because Detmer is so respected. And Detmer knew the negative impact it could have, so he stayed completely away from it, and just took the lumps, as is his character, IMO, rather than risking dividing the players and / or fanbase with a spitting match with KS.
And perhaps that experience changed KS for the better. But, I feel like he really threw Detmer under the bus, and I think he knows it. The veiled and sometimes blatant comments about where Detmer was at fault for the offensive struggles, all season long. Detmer became the scapegoat, and KS was to willing to make him that, when Detmer was trying to prop up an offense with a ton of key injuries, on his 5th string QB, working with years of poor recruiting on the Oline, and thus an Oline was like a collander, letting opposing defenses completely dominate them. And, Detmer had not nearly the quality of skill players that BYU has on offense today. Not saying that the firing (to move in a different direction) was unwarranted. Sometimes you gotta shake things up. But the way in which KS constantly laid almost the entire blame at Detmer's feet, and then the dismissal without even a word of thanks, or anything positive at all, was not in keeping with the respectful parting Detmer deserved, IMO. Of course, KS was feeling extreme pressure to engineer a better product on the field, and people (including myself) don't always demonstrate our "best selves" when we're under pressure, or when "fear" of scary consequences are in play. And I don't think the firing of Detmer was KS's best moment.
But we all can learn from our shortcomings, and I believe KS has done that, and is much more consistently the type of noble person that he always aspired to be, and I can respect that.