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He left BYU, changed his name, sold shoes, bused tables and bagged groceries. Now D’Angelo Mandell is back, and he’ll start Saturday at UMass

Provo • After leaving BYU’s football team in the summer of 2017 because he “just wasn’t ready to be here,” the defensive back known at the time as D’Angelo Gunter bagged groceries at a Sprouts store, was a busboy at a sushi restaurant and worked as a shoe salesman in the greater San Diego area.

“I worked a lot, and I hated it,” he said. “Every second of the day I was like, ‘why am I doing this?’ I just knew it wasn’t for me.”

Then the former football and track standout at Del Norte High realized that playing football at BYU was for him, and that abruptly leaving in the middle of preseason camp in 2017 after signing with the Cougars in February of that same year was not the best move he’d made in his difficult life.