Tom Sorenson will come home twice.
And that is the best news BYU football has received, outside of the invitation to play in the Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 22, since a season-ending loss to Utah in LaVell Edwards Stadium.
Sorenson is the first transfer to commit to BYU's football program in 2005, which will lean heavily on mid-year transfers next month. This could especially prove key in a search for junior-college cornerbacks that Bronco Mendenhall hopes will be in the mold of Tim McTyer and Omarr Morgan.
Sorenson, however, is no junior-college transfer. The former all-state lineman at Brighton High, ranked by Rivals100.com as the No. 15 center in the country out of high school, started for Vanderbilt and played nine games, earning all-SEC freshman honors before serving an LDS mission in Vancouver, B.C.
For the past 18 months, Sorenson has been the property of Vanderbilt. But like other missionaries, such as former Cougar Ben Olson, he became recruitable once he passed the 18-month mark. Sorenson used that window to commit to BYU this past week, according to his father, Chris Sorenson.
Tom Sorenson, a 6-foot-5, 305-pound center, will miss spring practice at BYU since his mission won't end until the second or third week of April. If current Cougar center Lance Reynolds Jr. does not get a medical redshirt year and return, Sorenson's SEC experience playing against the likes of Tennessee, Florida and Auburn could come in the nick of time for an O-line that returns most of its talent and will add highly rated Travis Bright.
Sorenson is expected to join his brother, Brighton High senior running back Jeff Sorenson, in BYU's offseason workouts. Jeff will walk on after playing in the backfield with Cougar recruit Mike Hauge.
"Vanderbilt has been very good to Tom, and they were cooperative with him going on his mission," according to his father. "But Tom has always wanted to play at BYU, and this is his chance to return home where he's always wanted to be."
Part of the decision to leave Vanderbilt has to do with Tom's father, Chris. Since the last time Chris saw his son play in all nine of his starts at Vanderbilt, Chris has gone blind, the result of a battle with diabetes.
"It makes sense to return home to be closer to the family," according to Chris. "But this isn't about me, it's about Tom."
So, what about Tom and why didn't he go to BYU out of high school?
Sorenson was named the Outstanding Offensive Lineman at BYU's summer camp for two years, so it was very disappointing when he was asked to walk on without a scholarship by then head coach Gary Crowton.
That recruiting class of 2003 at BYU included just three offensive lineman offers, and they went to Jason Speardon, Dallas Reynolds and R.J. Willing.
Utah's Kyle Whittingham offered Sorenson a scholarship with the understanding of a mission departure, but new coach Urban Meyer, new to handling missionaries, withdrew the offer, sending Sorenson looking for a scholarship and place to play. Vanderbilt, a program trying to rebuild, stepped forward.
"Playing in the SEC was a great experience for Tom," said his father. "Playing before more than a hundred thousand at Tennessee was something he will never forget."
While the time for either Utah or BYU and Sorenson was not to be in 2003, it couldn't have come at a better time for the Cougars and Sorenson this time around. Where the Crowton regime was strapped to bring in a class that included receiver Todd Watkins, Mendenhall's coaches apparently found a luxury in offering an experienced SEC center a job.
For Chris Sorenson, it's a blessing to have his son on a mission. It will be a blessing to have him close to home with the family this spring. Chris Sorensen will never see his son play football again, but the father will have plenty of neighbors, friends and family to fill him in the next three seasons, and he won't have to take the time and expense to fly two time zones away.
That's a deal the Sorenson family can live with.
So can Mendenhall.
E-mail: dharmon@desnews.com