What you hear in the background now, ladies and gentlemen, is the dramatic organ chords playing the opening theme music for the latest episode of … da-da-dum, “As the Disappointment Turns.”
The show’s star is Chris Burgess, the latest character in our story who is turning and returning the … what, the favor? The fervor? The frenzy? The furor? The freakout?
The f-something or other.
Let’s all take a deep breath here and ready, set, go …
When the LDS high school basketball star who infamously spurned BYU back in the day, leading to then-coach Roger Reid informing him that he, a teenaged prep player from Southern California, was disappointing millions of Mormons, and then he reported to the press that Reid said that, all hell broke loose. Reid was subsequently fired for a variety of reasons, and Utah fans got a good laugh out of not just that, but the fact that the Cougars went on that season to win just one game. BYU basketball was in shambles.
That was just the beginning.
Thereafter, the player-coach chronology went like this: Burgess, the Duke player turned Utah player turned BYU assistant turned Utah assistant turned BYU assistant, again, recently came back to Provo to coach under new Cougar head coach Kevin Young, who agreed to leave as top assistant for the Phoenix Suns to coach BYU basketball on account of a seven-year, $30 million contract. That departure lit a fuse under Utah fans, probably the sons and daughters of the fans who got a kick out of the turmoil Burgess caused long ago at BYU, and now leading to an explosion of concern a generation later over a possible Ute basketball collapse.
Did we get that straight?
Da-da-dum. I think we did.
Either way, as was predicted in this corner when Young was hired, Burgess was happy to come back to BYU, where dollars and attitudes about what to pay coaches are nowhere near as tight as they used to be. And as a result, Burgess has now made millions of Mormons, at least the ones who are Cougar hoop fans, the opposite of disappointed, leaving that adjective in the lap of Utah fans.
A strange turn — return — of events.
function onSignUp() { const token = grecaptcha.getResponse(); if (!token) { alert("Please verify the reCAPTCHA!"); } else { axios .post( "https://8c0ug47jei.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/newsletter/checkCaptcha", { token, env: "PROD", } ) .then(({ data: { message } }) => { console.log(message); if (message === "Human
