Rare one-on-one interview with Bronco Mendenhall

This morning I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall (all of the beat writers had the same opportunity) in his office.

That’s a rare thing these days. When I started my journalism career, I could call the BYU football office at almost any time and ask to speak to LaVell Edwards and, more often than not, I’d be put right through to him. Now, media opportunities with Bronco are usually scheduled in advance and the chance to talk to him alone is not a common occurrence. I can understand why, what with with the level of interest in the program being as high as it is. There are newspapers, Web sites, magazines, TV stations and radio stations that all want interviews with him.

So I commend him for making time for those who cover the program on a day-to-day basis. That’s a lot of time to give up, especially considering we’re in the middle of a busy recruiting period. Anyway, it’s appreciated.

During my 30 minutes with Bronco, I asked him a wide variety of questions. I wrote an article that will be in tomorrow’s paper but there obviously isn’t room for everything we talked about. So, over the next week or so, I’ll include excerpts from the interview in this blog from time to time.

We talked a lot about what BYU needs to do to improve. Achieving back-to-back outright conference championships took an amazing amount of hard work, especially considering the Cougars posted losing seasons from 2002-2004. But after a 2008 campaign that saw BYU lose both of its big conference games against TCU and Utah, Mendenhall said his players need to work harder than ever before to reach, and exceed, their level of success the past few seasons.

‘I think that message got through. Physically, there wasn’t a difference (between the 2007 and 2008 teams). The difference came in the culture of preparation behind the scenes. When you talk about the extra things outside the normal meetings and normal practices and the film study, that culture of excellent was one that radiated and was permeating the previous two seasons. Defensively, with seven new starters, many in a new role, and the initial success of the defense, the thought of maintaining that and continuing to do the extra film study and extra mental approach. The other areas were very similar. That culture of really becoming a student and a master of what you’re doing, which the previous guys built in to and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way, this group learned in three losses. I’d be interested, and anxious to see, how they apply those lessons in the upcoming season in terms of preparation.’

I also asked Bronco about his team opening the season against Oklahoma, which is playing for the national championship tonight.
‘I think it’s a great opportunity for our program and I think it’s been earned. We were sought out to play in that game. We were sought out because of the success we’ve had and the reputation that we’ve built. I’m anxious to measure our team and compete in that football game and honored that we’ve earned that right. I think we’ll move our program forward through that competition. We’re anxious to measure ourselves against the best and compete with the best. It’s a great opportunity.’