Mendenhall working on capturing hearts and minds at Virginia
Bronco Mendenhall has often talked about “winning the hearts and minds of his players,” which is a mantra he adopted from organizational guru and author Paul Gustavson.
Mendenhall has captured the hearts and minds of his charges at all of his college football stops: Oregon State, Snow College, Northern Arizona, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico and BYU as a defensive coach, BYU and Virginia as a head coach with his commitment to accountability and structure of team building.
Winning over the fans in Provo took time – some would argue that he never quite did that – and Mendenhall is faced with another difficult task in Charlottesville. At BYU, the challenge was returning to glory; At Virginia, it’s been more about providing consistency and getting to the next level.
The Cavaliers men’s basketball coach, Tony Bennett, is the standard of excellence when it comes to sports in Charlottesville. Football has always fallen short and fans are less inclined to believe the program is going to be good every year.
“Prove it.”
Damon Dillman is the managing editor of CavsCorner, which covers Virginia football. He said no one had any idea Mendenhall was going to replace Mike London, who was 27-46 in six years at the helm, in 2016.
“Nobody saw that name coming,” Dillman said. “We were hearing Mac Brown, Mark Richt, Jeff Brohm, Matt Wells … a lot of the hot names as part of the coaching cycle that year. And then ‘Boom’ there is was. Players, media and fans, everybody was in shock and scrambling.”
Virginia had beaten the Cougars and Mendenhall in Charlottesville in 2013 and some of the players wondered, “Is this an upgrade?”
Last summer, Dillman wrote a fascinating three-part series called “Setting the Standard: An Oral History” about the first several years Mendenhall spent reviving the Virginia program. Player interviews paint of sober picture of Mendenhall tearing down the players to build them in his own way.
Mendenhall had a different task in front of him as the Cavaliers hadn’t had much previous success. He took away the logos and numbers from the players workout gear and told them they had to earn those privileges.
Just after Mendenhall was hired, he spoke to Virginia fans at halftime of a men’s basketball game at John Paul Jones Arena.
“His big closing remark was, ‘I’m not accustomed to being home for bowl season.’ He was telling fans to be ready to go to a bowl game and that drew a big reaction,” Dillman said.
Of course, the Cavaliers lost their home opener to Richmond and went just 2-10 in 2016.
“I think that gave Bronco a different perspective on just how challenging it would be to win here,” Dillman added.
Mendenhall had his missteps at BYU as well with the “Quest for Perfection” slogan that became a punch line in 2008 and the “Tradition, Spirit and Honor” uniform fiasco in 2013.
Well intended ideas but difficult to deliver.
Mendenhall’s Virginia team got to 6-6 in 2017 and earned a trip to the Military Bowl. Virginia was 8-5 in 2018 and won the Belk Bowl. In 2019, the Cavaliers won the ACC Coastal, advanced to the Orange Bowl and finished 9-5.
The coronavirus season of 2020 saw Virginia post a 5-5 record and this season the Cavs are 6-2 heading into what amounts to a reunion game against No. 25 BYU in LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturday.
As for the rest of the former BYU coaches who left for Charlottesville with Mendenhall, it sounds like more of the same. Defensive coordinator Nick Howell is still more or less ignoring interview requests – Dillman said the first chance the media had to talk to Howell was in Year 4 before the Orange Bowl – and offensive coordinator Robert Anae is still an enigma with his offensive play calling.
“He drives people nuts,” Dillman said. “On paper, the seasons Brennan Armstrong and Dontayvion Wicks are having, those numbers really jump out on you. But if you watch the games in real time, there are situations where Anae won’t run the ball. His tendencies early in his tenure was that he ran lot of screen passes that everybody saw coming. That has a way of getting on the fan’s nerves.
“But in the quarterback record book all of the guys have done well since he’s been here. Kurt Benkert was the first Virginia quarterback to throw for 3,000 yards, then Bryce Perkins broke his record for total offense in just two years and now Armstrong is on pace to set records, too.”
When Mendenhall took over at BYU in 2015 he busied the players with team activities like hiking the Y and super games, competitions that taxed them both mentally and physically.
Former Cougar Cameron Jensen watched Mendenhall’s transition from defensive coordinator to head coach as a team captain.
“When I look back at what he was able to do after three losing seasons, he was really changing the mindset of the team,” Jensen said. “We were more cohesive and he was bringing back the BYU of old. He brought back the blue and white and the stretch Y. I mean, he was the guy at that point in the program. I couldn’t picture anybody else doing the things he did in the locker room, hiking up to the Y, the super games and changing up where people’s lockers were.
“He loves the building part, taking a program and building that up. He knows how to do that, how to get the right players to buy in to the team goals. He creates a purpose and a mindset that gets everyone going in the same direction.”
Harvey Unga played running back for Mendenhall (2006-09) and is now BYU’s running backs coach.
“It’s kind of unreal,” Unga admitted. “My freshman year we had an exit interview. We were going over my goals and plans for the future when football was done. I told him I wanted to coach. Fast forward and here I’m doing what I told him I wanted to do. Not just that but I get to coach against him.”
Unga said capturing the hearts and minds of players is about building a culture.
“At first I was curious about what he was doing,” Unga said. “We did a lot of team building activities in the offseason that were just painful. They were grueling and excruciating. At the end of the day a lot of it was him teaching us to be there for one another. ‘Band of Brothers’ was a term that came about. To this day I have felt like I was among a brotherhood players who played under Bronco.
“Bronco is a great person, a role model and somebody I appreciate. The past few years I’ve been randomly getting a text from Bronco on my birthday. It kind of shocked me because I don’t even know how he knows it’s my birthday. It may not seem like much, but it goes a long way. I’m excited to see him and the rest of the crew. I have a bunch of former teammates and coaches of mine on that staff.”
There has been plenty of discussion on social media about what kind of reception Mendenhall will get on Saturday at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
“I expect nothing short of a standing ovation,” Jensen said. “What he did during his tenure, he gave everything he could to BYU while he was there. He worked extremely hard. I’m thankful for that. He averaged nine wins, went to bowl games and left BYU way better than he found it. I’ll be standing up because he deserves that for what he did.”
ROSS D. FRANKLIN, Associated PressBYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall, middle, gets hugs from players Brian Logan, left, and Matt Marshall in the closing seconds of the New Mexico Bowl college football game Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010, in Albuquerque, N.M. BYU defeated UTEP 52-24.