Being Bronco: Mendenhall developed work ethic at young age

With his college eligibility exhausted, he tried out for NFL scouts, but no teams showed interest. When then-OSU coach Dave Kragthorpe asked him to be a graduate assistant, Mendenhall looked at it as another year to train for a shot at the NFL. During that time, he saw what coaching was all about. And he wasn't sure it was for him. Oregon State hadn't experienced a winning season in 26 years and he saw the coaches make tremendous sacrifices in exchange for few rewards, in terms of winning.

As his NFL dreams vaporized, Mendenhall tried to figure out what he would do with the rest of his life. In the meantime, coaching consumed him. He literally lived in his office at the Oregon State football complex the final six months to save money. Mendenhall parked his car in the campus parking lot, then forgot all about it. "I hadn't driven it for six months," he remembers. "I reported my car stolen. The police found it. It was in the parking lot, covered with leaves, where I had left it."

After graduating with a Master's degree from Oregon State, he had no job and coaching was the one thing he was qualified to do. Tidwell, who had been promoted as Snow's head coach, hired him as the Badgers' defensive coordinator. Mendenhall made $3,500 for the season and commuted daily from Spanish Fork. The rest of the year, he went back to training horses with his dad. "It was probably the best time of my life," he says.

From there, he began his coaching journey, with stops at Northern Arizona, Oregon State, Louisiana Tech and New Mexico. As he learned and matured during those years, it became clear that Mendenhall possessed a gift for getting the most out of players, both on and off the field.

"One of the great experiences of my life was seeing young men come out of the ghettos of Chicago and Los Angeles and watching them play at New Mexico," Paul says. "We had parents come up to us and say, 'I don't know how your son has done it, but he's changed the life of our boy.' That's Bronco's goal, to change lives and help them excel. For him, it's not all about winning football games."

Being able to make an impact on young people encouraged Bronco to stick with coaching. "At some point, I had to decide why I was doing this," he says. "The conclusion is, I like to see kids try hard, I like to see them develop. I don't really coach for Saturdays. I coach for the day-to-day of watching them show up and do the best they can. That's what I gain the most satisfaction from. Once I came to that conclusion, I've been at peace with what I'm doing."

Mendenhall believes in the warrior culture. As the defensive coordinator, he assigns his players to study various types, from Stripling Warriors in the LDS culture; to Samurai and Bushido Warriors in the Japanese culture; to the Maoris in the New Zealand culture.