A lot has happened since 2019. Andrew Gentry isn’t the same kid as he was back then, and BYU isn’t the same football program. Today, both are bigger and better — and a perfect fit for each other.
“I didn’t want to go to a program where I wasn’t going to win,” Gentry told the “Y’s Guys” podcast, citing BYU’s postseason challenges as a football independent coming out of high school. “The big expectation was to see if we could make a New Year’s Six game.”
Gentry and his 6-foot-7, 315-pound frame had bigger plans.
“I wanted to win. Bronco (Mendenhall) was pushing Virginia in a good direction. My senior year in high school they went to the Orange Bowl,” he said. “A lot of good things were happening.”
Gentry turned BYU down in 2019 and signed with the Cougars former coach to play power conference football in the ACC. While serving his church mission in Orem, Utah, in 2021, Mendenhall resigned at Virginia. With his parents overseeing the process from their home in Littleton, Colorado, Gentry reopened his recruitment to BYU and Michigan.
The Cougars went all-in, but again, Gentry turned them down for Jim Harbaugh and the Wolverines because “of where they were at” as a program contending for national championships. He even won one as a freshman in 2023 when Michigan beat Washington.
With Harbaugh moving on to become head coach of the San Diego Chargers on Jan. 24, 2024, Gentry played one more season in Ann Arbor. Seeking something new, he chose the Cougars because of “where they are at.”
“After last year, you really see a shift from ‘let’s make it to the playoff’ to ‘let’s go win the playoff,” said Gentry after watching the Cougars finish 11-2 during their second year in the Big 12. “That’s the way our coaches coach. That’s the way our players are working, so that’s impressed me and that’s the big reason why I wanted to come to BYU.”
With two years of eligibility remaining, Gentry sought a winning culture like the one he had with Harbaugh.
“I didn’t want to go to a culture that wasn’t pushing for a national championship, and BYU is. I really, firmly believe that,” he said. “We are working for that goal. I see a lot of similarities from the team I played on in 2023 at Michigan to what BYU is doing right now — just the level of urgency that is present at BYU.”
Lunch with Harbaugh
No matter how things go for Gentry in Provo and with his potential NFL career, the 45 minutes he shared with Harbaugh at Tucanos restaurant in Orem on Dec. 7, 2021, will be tough to top.
Once Gentry reopened his recruitment, Harbaugh pounced at the chance to meet him face to face. The only hitch was Gentry was still on his mission.
“I had a mission president that really encouraged Coach Harbaugh to come out,” Gentry said. “He said he should see what you are doing. This is not just a good opportunity for you to make this decision, but just for the church in general, for a very prevalent coach in football to see what a missionary does every day.”
Harbaugh is no stranger to recruiting mission kids. He signed Taysom Hill out of high school in 2009 to play at Stanford. While Hill served his mission, Harbaugh left the Cardinal for the head job with the 49ers, which opened the door for BYU to pursue him.
On the day of Harbaugh’s lunch meeting with Elder Gentry, the former four-star offensive lineman and his companion spent the morning working at the Giving Machines at the University Mall. Harbaugh’s private jet landed at the Provo airport. The coach drove to Tucanos where they met up for a 45-minute power lunch.
“He’s awesome. The stories you hear about him — they are all true. He’s a little crazy, a little quirky, but he’s the best. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He doesn’t fake one thing and be another thing. That’s who he was at that lunch. He was just super honest with me,” Gentry said. “He asked me so many questions about my mission. I think we talked about the mission more than recruiting.”
At the end of the meal, Harbaugh made his pitch.
“What’s your decision?” he asked. “I really want you at Michigan.”
Gentry didn’t waste any time.
“Yeah, I’m going to come to Michigan!”
“Great!” said Harbaugh. “That’s awesome! Now go back and start teaching people again.”
That was it.
“He left. We left,” Gentry said.
BYU was also left — right where it had been left before — in second place.
Signing with Sitake
After playing in 26 games at Michigan, Gentry entered the transfer portal on Dec. 9 and the first call he received was from the coach he had turned down twice before — and that impressed him.
“Even when I committed to Virginia in the first place and then committed to Michigan, there are a lot of coaches that would probably have been upset, especially with the family pedigree I had at BYU,” he said. “It just seemed natural for me to go to BYU, and then for me twice to turn them down when they had been really supportive, it would have been really easy for a coach to say we are never talking to that kid again, we don’t care, they turned us down twice.
“As soon as I entered the portal, I heard from Coach Sitake. That’s the kind of coach both of them (Sitake and Harbaugh) are — caring about the players and building great relationships.”
Sitake and Harbaugh are different on so many levels, but Gentry sees similarities too.
“They both love football. I don’t think I’ve met two people who love football more than Coach Harbaugh and Coach Sitake,” Gentry said. “They are in there all the time studying and they care about their guys. You can tell they love their players, and the players come first. That is something I can say about both programs that isn’t true about every program.”
Gentry still has a lot of maize and blue in him, just a little more of the latter and a different shade. He’s big and his game has grown bigger since high school — just like BYU, which is why he believes they have evolved into a perfect fit.
“BYU is now really pushing to be a powerhouse,” Gentry said. “It shouldn’t be in the back of (our) minds whether we are going to be in a bowl game or not, it should be how late are we going to be playing in January? That’s my goal.”
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com