Bronco on his mentor and the Rivalry

During Tuesday’s weekly Mountain West Conference teleconference, BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall was asked about his relationship with Rocky Long, who resigned as New Mexico’s coach Monday.
Mendenhall and Long are close friends and the two worked with each other for five years at New Mexico, and before that at Oregon State.
Mendenhall said Long “shaped my coaching philosophy more than any other coach I have worked with.” He also provided insight as to why Long resigned, explaining the lack of support from fans in Albuquerque. Mendenhall added that what Long “accomplished in 11 years at New Mexico will not be replicated or duplicated.”

Yesterday, Mendenhall brushed off the notion that there’s more pressure on Utah to win Saturday’s game, given it is ranked in the top 10 and vying for a BCS berth.
“What I think that you’ll find is that both teams will acknowledge that, yeah, this is an important game from a conference perspective, from a national perspective and a local interest perspective. But if it comes down to acknowledging how the teams are going to prepare, you’ll find they’ll prepare as close to what they’ve done to reach 11-0 and 10-1 as they possibly can …
“Both programs, but I can speak for ours specifically, we do our best every week to win every game. To think now that there’s going to be some increased motivation, we try as hard as we can every week to get our team ready to play. The level of scrutiny and interest in higher.”

Quarterback Max Hall was asked if he and his teammates still harbor hopes of playing in a BCS game.
“We know if we can win the conference, and I think it would take a couple of other teams to lose for us to get there, but all we can do is give it everything we have to finish off the season, to win this game and to have a conference championship and let everything else fall into place,” Hall said. “It is in the back of our heads that it is still a possibility. Not a big possibility, but maybe a little one.”