Community Star Joel McHale Credits BYU’s Mark Pope For Move Into Comedy

PROVO, Utah – Who knew BYU head coach Mark Pope crossed paths with comedian Joel McHale of The Soup and Community fame during his prep career? We learned that little tidbit courtesy of McHale on his podcast, “The Darkest Timeline.”

Pope was one of the nation’s best high school players when he was playing at Newport High School in Washington state in the early ’90s. McHale prepped at nearby Mercer Island High School during the same time while Pope was one of the nation’s most coveted recruits.

McHale got on the topic of his basketball playing days as a power forward with his co-host and fellow comedian Ken Jeong because of “The Last Dance” documentary chronicling Michael Jordan and the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls.

We learn in this conversation between McHale and Jeong that if it wasn’t for Pope, we maybe don’t see McHale as the comedian we know him for today.

Joel McHale remembers playing against Mark Pope in high school

“I played high school basketball on a pretty good team in Washington state,” McHale said on his podcast. “I was always like, ‘we’re good.’ I didn’t get in too much. That’s how good we were. Our starting guard was usually like, 6-foot-5. But I always thought, I’m pretty good [at basketball]. I’m good in a game. I wasn’t a starter but then I thought, ‘those guys [starters] are really good.’ [But] then you realize who’s going to the NBA.”

McHale continued, “There was one guy [in our league]. This guy named Mark Pope, who ended up on the Pacers. It might as well have been a 10th grader showing up to play 2nd graders. He was so far ahead of us.”

Pope’s play made McHale realize he needed to pursue comedy

To this day, Pope is second all-time in scoring at Newport High School with 1,316 career points. He’s number one in career rebounds with 958 boards and number one in career field goal percentage at 56 percent.

Those stats highlight how dominant Pope was in high school ball and McHale saw that first hand. Pope’s play made McHale realize a career in comedy was going to be a better path after he saw Pope dominate.

“I was like, ‘oh, this is how good you have to be. I need to go write fart jokes, a lot of them,'” McHale said. “He was also the nicest guy you’d ever met. But he would just dunk every time he got the ball if he wanted to. It was, yeah, it was great.”

*****

Pope signed with the hometown Washington Huskies out of high school then transferred to play for the Kentucky Wildcats where he was a member of the 1996 National Championship team. After his college playing days, Pope was a second-round pick in the NBA Draft by Indiana Pacers. Pope went on to play in the NBA for nearly a decade.

For McHale, he grew notoriety through tv shows The Soup and Community. Recently, McHale was a host of a bonus episode for the popular Tiger King series on Netflix.

Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for sports.ksl.com and host of the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (Saturday from 12-3 pm) on KSL Newsradio. Follow him on Twitter: @Mitch_Harper.