Y. preseason practice Cougars kicking off with fresh attitude

PROVO — Bronco Mendenhall is cutting back on speeches. He's made more than a hundred of them since he got the head coaching job at BYU on Dec. 13, 2004.

Now it's time to get ready for the 2005 season and the opener against Boston College on Sept. 3 in LaVell Edwards Stadium. BYU players report on Monday for physicals. Newcomer practice will be Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. and the first session for veterans is Tuesday at 3 p.m.

Mendenhall will open five practices to the public, the first on Aug. 15 at 10 a.m. at the outdoor practice fields located north of the Student Athlete Building. Fans will be required to enter from the southwest corner of the practice facility.

This past week, Mendenhall took his staff and their wives to Park City for a retreat prior to Monday's kickoff of fall camp.

"It was lockdown, closed doors, trying to get a strategic advantage, a getaway," Mendenhall told the Provo-Orem Chamber of Commerce on Friday.

Monday, Mendenhall will put his own brand on BYU football.

"I want our players to have a competitive advantage," he said. "An important aspect of that is to play for something you believe in and then align expectations, behavior and actions with that philosophy."

Mendenhall's admits his approach is different.

If you hatched out a BYU football theme, other than the public relations campaign of getting back to Cougar roots with a return to an old-style uniform and logo, it would probably be a Mendenhall-led effort to increase player personal accountability.

This winter, Mendenhall said he interviewed 115 players in the program within a week. When asked what they'd learned about themselves, all but three athletes said the exact same thing, using different words. The players said they had much more to give in 2005 than 2004.

"You'd have thought players left the interview, got with others and exchanged answers for the question," Mendenhall said, "but that didn't happen."

Shortly after Mendenhall hired quarterback coach Brandon Doman from the San Francisco 49ers, Doman told Mendenhall the 49ers did a drill he believed would be beneficial to BYU players.

The drill involved running from the goal line to 20 yards and an orange cone and doing it over again, back and fourth, before a timer went off with a beeping sound. It is called a beep drill. Players get two misses and then they're out of the drill. The drill is done among different position groups. There is an average standard that each 49er position group must perform to.