PROVO — He won Super Bowl rings and college football conference titles as both a player and a coach, but right now Brigham Young University football fans are still glowing about a more recent achievement attributable in part to athletic director Tom Holmoe, overseer of a program that includes the 2006 Mountain West Conference football champions.

On Saturday, BYU beat its in-state rival, the University of Utah, for the first time in five years, so it seemed like a well-scripted encore when Holmoe spoke to 3,095 people Tuesday in the Marriott Center on the campus of the school owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Holmoe talked about the football team in his speech about loving others, and he referred to critics who questioned the use of religion in Bronco Mendenhall's coaching.

Sports radio talk shows blistered Mendenhall for quoting scripture from the Book of Mormon in one of his first press conferences and laughed when he engaged his team in visualization exercises, which included players laying on the grass at LaVell Edwards Stadium and listening to highlights of BYU's greatest games.

"This year's members of the BYU football team have bonded to the cause of restoring tradition, being honorable and living by the spirit," Holmoe said. "Skeptics were cynical concerning the rare approach of his team and their leader. How could there be enough time to prepare for game day when weekly firesides are held on the eve of each game? Rough and tumble football players will get soft focusing on things of the spirit instead of visualizing on-field vio- lence."

Holmoe praised Mendenhall's "Big Brother" program, which pairs a veteran player with a younger teammate. Each week, the Big Brother interviews the younger one and writes a letter to Mendenhall, who Tuesday was named one of nine finalists for the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year Award.

"They address such topics as academics, football, family, girlfriends, spirituality and any other issue the two care to discuss," Holmoe said. "The letters are confidential, some even sacred, to Bronco. Privately, Coach Mendenhall is able to assist his boys based on their communication. What has developed with this year's team goes way beyond what is witnessed on the field of play."

Mendenhall has concentrated on recruiting the best LDS players and has said he can envision a day when 95 percent of his recruits serve a two-year Mormon mission before playing for the Cougars. Holmoe called missions a "worthy choice" and said "truly, this is brotherly love in action, to seek out your brothers and sisters from all walks of life, from the four corners of the Earth, who have been separated from the truth."

BYU sports teams have won 17 MWC championships since Holmoe became athletic director on March 1, 2005, but he nearly severed his tie to the school before it took root. He was not a member of the LDS Church when he arrived at BYU as a football recruit from California in 1978, and he nearly quit.