Bronco goes to Rome

Many of you might have heard Bronco Mendenhall on the Jim Rome radio show, a nationally syndicated program.

Mendenhall was on the program for more than 12 minutes. I had a conflict during this interview and while I am working on a column and preparing to go to football practice, a fellow Desnews worker, Ethan Thomas, took the time to help collect quotes from the interview for this blog and I thank him.

Here are some excerpts of the back and forth:

Q. I’m still thinking about that big win over UCLA 59-0. A win over a team that beat Tennessee. What does that tell you about your team?

A. “We are certainly learning a lot about where our team is every week and I am certainly not clear how good Tenn. is or how good UCLA is at this point but what I do know is I have been with these kids going on my fourth year and I believe it is the best football team that we had to this point and we are certainly not perfect yet but that is as close to a complete game as we have had this year and I think we still have room to improve.”

Q. Have you ever had a team play a more complete game than that one?

A. “I don’t think so. usually when you have the emotion and the physical nature we played with, you sacrifice the execution along the way. Sometimes when you have the execution and position mastery you sacrifice some of the emotion. That was probably the first time since I have been here where there was that unique combination of both at the same time.”

Q. Max Hall had an amazing game, well three quarters, where he pretty much did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Did you know that after that first drive against UCLA that that was the way it was going to go for him?

A. “We had played UCLA twice last year, once early and once late. We had quite a familiarity with what they were going to do defensively and they had success against us, one of the only teams that last year. So we thought we better devote an off-season to possibly coming up with ideas that might be able to help us against the schemes that they ran. So our offensive staff did an excellent job and once we saw that come into fruition on that first drive we felt very confident that it was going to be a positive day for us.”

Q. Managing expectations has got to be part of the program. Any concern now that they might be reading their own press clippings, that everyone is blowing them up and telling them how great they are, and that they could get tripped up?

A. “Certainly that is a concern. I think maybe less of a concern here then at other places when you consider who these kids are that I am coaching. There is over 70 of them that are return missionaries, who have gone across the world speaking different languages and over 30 of them are married. So you have a more mature type of young man. But we have a unique strategy in that most of our team meetings are run by our players, I certainly supervise them, but to hear what they have had to say over the past few days it is clear that they are aware of what they call the pride cycle, of once you start feeling that you are better than you are, then you are going to be humbled at some point. So I think they certainly acknowledge and are aware of those challenges and I think they have the maturity, and my job is to just keep driving them so that all they can think about is their next opponent. I think with that combination we have a chance, it doesn’t guarantee it, but we have a chance to continue our consistency.”

Q. Talk about the type of player you are recruiting. For instance if you were in another program in that conference, or in another conference would you recruit differently and what type of man are you looking for?

A. “It has been an amazing experience to be here at BYU and I was here through the three straight losing seasons as an assistant before I had the opportunity to take over as head coach. I learned a lot through that experience and I learned that it had to be about alignment, meaning bringing the right people to this place. You are talking about an institution that first and foremost acknowledges and develops the faith of young people. So before the academics, before the football, before the social life this is why people come here, because of the values and the faith based nature. It is specific in most cases to one faith, we do have non-members and kids who are not Mormon on our team but you are considering that element, and you have to have kids who are good students, roughly 3.0 out of high school. Then you have to find kids who want to live the honor code here, which is no alcohol, no tobacco and no premarital sex. So we find about 35 players per year that we think would self select. So if we bring those type of kids we can ask them for the world. Then I put the pressure on coaches to put schemes in place which will deliver this type of kids. That has been a unique model for us. Could I recruit the same kids elsewhere? I am not sure that I would like to coach any other type of young man, besides the ones here who are so conscientious and diligent.

A. Wow. I think that is awesome. How challenging is it to find those 35 that are willing to make those sacrifices and fall through with something so regimented and so demanding?

A. “It is amazing because football here is only one of the things here that kids do. It is hard and we have a very unique recruiting strategy, unlike any other and we have developed it as such since it is such a unique place. But when you consider these kids lives here. They are very strong students, most have callings in the church, which means they are doing other things during the week for their faith and as I mentioned they are married or looking to get married in a lot of instances, so football we really put fourth on the priorities scale of what they come here for. But we also would love to play football on the highest level. So our practices are very short and efficient and we really try to maximize the time we have with these kids because they have other things going. It is really fun to see how much they are willing to give when they know we are looking out for the other areas of emphasis as well.”

Notes:

Mendenhall also explained quest for perfection. How it is part of the universities mission and said that in his first years. basically that it doesn’t have to do with just a perfect record like we have heard him explain before. he went on.

“I do believe we have a chance to win every game and I could not say that previously. But I think we have enough talent and the systems are in place that we can do it. That doesn’t mean we wont be upset or lose a game. But for the first time I think we have an opportunity in every game that we play.”

Bronco also said that he thinks that those in the non-BCS conferences do have to go undefeated to make it to the BCS or they wont get the respect or consideration unfortunately…. so he offered his own

“I’m not a proponent of a play-off but what I am of is that the two non-BCS ranked teams and have a bowl game to play into an additional BCS game. I think then you don’t have the issues of trying to manipulate your schedule to be undefeated if you have a good football team. It allows you to measure yourself and lets the kids have opportunities to play teams that wouldn’t have a chance to normally play against.”