As word trickled out on April 11 that longtime Baylor basketball coach Scott Drew had turned down interest from Kentucky to replace John Calipari, BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe figured it was just a matter of time before KU athletic director Mitch Barnhart turned his attention to a former Wildcat great, Cougars coach Mark Pope.
He was right; he just didn’t know how quickly it would all transpire.
Later that night, Pope called Holmoe and let him know he was taking the Kentucky job, the realization of a dream that the 51-year-old Pope had carried since he helped lead the Wildcats to the 1996 national championship.
Holmoe told the Deseret News at the Big 12 football media days last week in Las Vegas that he was “thrilled” for Pope, and knew immediately that he couldn’t match the salary — a five-year deal worth $27.5 million, plus incentives and potential bonuses — that Kentucky was offering.
Holmoe said Pope didn’t ask him to match the offer. Nor did the AD ask for that opportunity.
“But it wasn’t about that,” Holmoe said, recalling that second Thursday in April when he immediately began the process of searching for a replacement, which turned out to be Phoenix Suns assistant Kevin Young.
“I can honestly say that when we signed Mark (on April 10, 2019), we didn’t put into his contract a no-team-buyout clause. We knew about his love (for Kentucky). We literally (knew) about that, but said, ‘Hey, we would like you to be here for a long time.’
“In talking with Mark five years ago, he said the one team that I would leave for, would be Kentucky, and I said, ‘I understand that.’ And I still do understand that.”
Holmoe said when Pope informed him of the Kentucky offer, “it wasn’t a situation where you are going to sit there and noodle back and forth. That was his dream.”
BYU’s AD since 2005, Holmoe’s first major hire was football coach Bronco Mendenhall that same year. Then he replaced Steve Cleveland with assistant Dave Rose a few months later, another successful hire. The hiring of Pope also has to be considered successful, although Pope didn’t stay around as long as the other two.
Holmoe replaced Mendenhall with Kalani Sitake in late 2015.
“I think a lot of the success at BYU in football and basketball, and a lot of our other sports, is the stability and the long-term stays of our head coaches,” Holmoe said. “I mean, you look at LaVell (Edwards). And Bronco had a good run. And you look at Dave Rose, he did too.”
“Like, I am the AD at my alma mater. You can’t beat that,” Holmoe said. “Mark was a national champion there at Kentucky. It is something in your blood, and he should have that chance. And the fact that they wanted to come and get him (played into it). I wouldn’t have been able to match it, in the first place.
“But it was something that was good for him,” Holmoe continued. “He needed to do that. If he hadn’t taken that job, and stayed, that would have haunted him for a long time. He did the right thing.”
