Elder Brandon Bradley

"Have you heard about Elder Bradley, the missionary who went home in March from here and is now like the hot new thing for BYU Football? We saw a huge newspaper article about him the other day, that talks about how President Urry faxed his signed papers to Coach Mendenhall and now he is finally living there and practicing. I feel pretty proud to know him, and I hope he does really well. He is a good guy."

Brandon Bradley and BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall took a leap of faith this past winter. It remains to be seen if the leap this pair took ends in a pot of gold. But the pact they made was as blind as contracts come when Mendenhall offered Bradley, of Tallahassee, Fla., a scholarship without ever meeting him or watching game film of his career at Florida's famed Lincoln High.

And for Bradley, who signed with the Cougars while serving an LDS mission to Sao Paulo, Brazil this past February, it was equally a matter of trust and faith on a level that's just not done in college football, when dealing with scholarships worth tens of thousands of dollars over four years.

The ultimate blind set-up. When Bradley signed his letter-of-intent and faxed it to BYU, he was below the equator, three time zones away.

Bradley, who signed with Louisville out of high school, set foot on BYU's campus for the first time on March 12, a few weeks after he returned from his mission and a month after he signed.

Read the Deseret News Story