5 Fun Things About Mark Pope, Kentucky Basketball's new coach
Tomorrow afternoon, Mark Pope will be introduced as the 23rd head coach of the Kentucky Men’s Basketball team, the eighth in the “modern” era which began with Adolph Rupp in 1930. By now, you know that Pope captained Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team, played in the NBA, and eventually got into coaching, most recently for five seasons at BYU. If you’ve dug a little deeper, you know that Pope roomed with Jeff Sheppard at Kentucky, was a Rhodes Scholar candidate who went to medical school before dropping out to pursue coaching, and runs an offense some compare to a video game due to its focus on three-point shots and playmaking big men.
Now that the news about Pope becoming the coach is official and the dust is settling, I spent part of my day researching the most ridiculous facts possible. I’m sure we’ll get more as the days go on, but here are five to start with.
He’s a girl dad to four daughters
Pope is a proud #GirlDad to four daughters, all of whom are active in sports. Ella plays basketball at Ohio University, Avery plays tennis at BYU, Layla dances, and the youngest, Shay, plays volleyball. Following the passing of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna in 2020, Pope started a father/daughter basketball camp at BYU. He says being a father to four girls is the “greatest blessing in [his] life, bar none.”
His daughters have also had an impact on his musical taste (more on that later) and dominate his social media feeds:
His wife used to work for David Letterman and is a coach’s daughter
The other important woman in Pope’s life is his wife Lee Ann. The two met in the late 1990s through Lee Ann’s brother, Damon Archibald. Lee Ann was working as David Letterman’s personal assistant at the time and Damon told her that Pope, who was playing for the Indiana Pacers, would probably contact her for tickets.
“When my brother met Mark, he was like, ‘I just met the male version of you,’” Lee Anne told Deseret News. “He’s you, but he’s a dude. And he’s going to call you for ‘Letterman’ tickets.’”
Sure enough, he did, and the two eventually met at a Pacers game. The rest, as they say, is history. The two married in 1999 and about a decade later, when he considered quitting Columbia Medical School to get into coaching, Lee Ann was the perfect person to help him with the decision. She is the daughter of the late Lynn Archibald, who was the head coach at Idaho State and Utah.
“At that point, he wasn’t even a coach,” Lee Ann said of her husband. “We made that decision together. My dad got hired and fired. I’ve seen all of the ugly parts of this. I’m fully aware. There’s nothing fun about that. I still have the list of pros and cons on my phone. We’ve made those decisions together and we’ve made it work together. I chose this, too. Probably with eyes more wide open than Mark.”
“He wasn’t that interested in coaching,” she added. “I didn’t see him as a coach or not as a coach. But when you think about the qualities, 100% I could see it. He’s a leader. He would have been a great doctor. He didn’t know that he wanted to do that for the next 25 years. He was always 10 steps ahead. The fact that there hasn’t been a moment since we got back into basketball, not even a milli-second of would of, could of, should of with medicine. He would have been great. But coaching is what he was meant to do.”
Lee Ann played an active role in the BYU program as a coach’s wife and, as Pope puts it, his “No. 1 mentor.” For more on her, I’ll point you to this excellent feature from 2020.
He’s a Swiftie (Taylor Swift fan)
Move over, Drake. Kentucky Basketball has a new favorite artist, arguably the most popular one in the world. Thanks in part to his daughters, Mark Pope is a huge Taylor Swift fan, opening up about his affection for the pop superstar after BYU’s win over UCF in the second round of the Big 12 Championship in Kansas City last month.
“I didn’t share this with the guys before, but this is really important. When I was in this building seven months ago I talked about how we were excited to be picked 13, because it’s Taylor Swift’s favorite number. This morning I found out courtesy of the greatest statistician SID ever, that our first game against UCF was on January 13th, our second game was on February 13th, and so we knew that with our third game on March 13th, like, the deck was stacked against these guys, man, it’s not even fair. It’s not even fair. Plus we’re in Kansas City. I mean, what? It’s beautiful. If I had told you guys that before the game would be like, our dude has lost his mind?”
I’m a little bummed his introductory press conference is on April 14th, not the 13th, so we could have continued this journey. If you’re curious, Pope told CBS Sports his favorite Taylor Swift songs are:
- “Cornelia Street”
- “New Year’s Day”
- “Karma”
- “All Too Well” (10-minute version)
- “Cruel Summer”
He used to work alongside Ryan Lemond
After captaining The Untouchables on the 1996 national championship run, Mark Pope graduated and actually covered the 1997 team’s tournament run for WLEX-18 alongside — you guessed it — Ryan Lemond. Lemond shared his memories of working with Pope on yesterday’s show (including how he took his shirt off on the ski slopes when the Cats were playing in Salt Lake City) and then after for iHeart’s Mario Maitland.
The rest of the old LEX-18 crew also shared their memories on social media:
He raps?
In the hours after the news that Kentucky was hiring Mark Pope broke, clips of Pope started circulating around the internet, including this one of him rapping Hamilton.
Pope isn’t just inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s beats. At BYU’s Midnight Madness event in 2022, he rapped Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”
Time to run it back at Big Blue Madness in October?
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