Price and Mendenhall met as coach and recruit 20 years ago

UTEP coach Mike Price recruited Bronco Mendenhall while the BYU coach was playing at Snow College.

The two explained that experience today during a bowl press meeting in Albuquerque.

“It is hard to explain,” said Mendenhall. “I remember I was playing junior college football and we were traveling, the only time we got to travel by airplane at Snow College. We were traveling to play Northeast Oklahoma and Tulsa, Coach Price and Coach Arslanian from Weber State were flying on the same plane. It was a charter plane and they were sitting next to my parents and I remember that like it was yesterday and I think about when was that. I’m 44 years old now. That’s over 20 years ago. Coach Price has seen a lot of players since then and now to think I am coaching against Coach Price, it’s bizarre.”

Price, who has made many coaching stops since leaving Weber State two decades ago, explained it this way:

“It’s amazing isn’t it? He was 18-19 years old and his brother was on my team at Weber State and they were playing in a bowl game in Tulsa. We didn’t have the rules like we do now so I just jumped on the team plane with him, bought a ticket from the boosters club and went to Tulsa to watch the game because I was trying to get a bunch of players off their team.

“I sat with his parents, got to know them and I got an offensive tackle and defensive back out of the deal. Not him, but I did pretty good. Now all of a sudden he grew right up in front of me and hopefully not past me. I still got a little gas in the tank.”