Mendenhall keeps up with many challenges

Bronco Mendenhall knew what he signed up for a year ago.

It may have scared others away from the head coaching job at BYU.

Restrictive recruiting is only a part of it. Edicts from the tower made character in football players a prime part of the job description: Resurrect a winning football program and properly align it with the mission of the university and its governing sponsor. Cut down on embarrassing headlines that, in recent years, have included allegations of crime. Put teeth into the school's utopian Honor Code.

Piece of cake, right?

Not really. That is not the trend in football programs and college campuses today. A reformation if not transformation was ordered for the man who replaced Gary Crowton. Mendenhall signed up to sit in the saddle. He might as well have accepted the role of Father Chuck O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby in the 1944 movie "Going My Way."

A year after signing on, Mendenhall is up to his Eco-challenged hips in the assignment. He knows expectations are high. And on some levels, it is in orbit. And that's before you talk X's and O's and football. He also knows that there will be failures. They are coming, and when they do, people will say he tried to push a "do-right, goodie" agenda and failed.

Not so, perhaps.

That's why Mendenhall has studied organizational-behavior material.

Perhaps that's why you can see him on a team charter flight reading the Harvard Business Review Journal. He's trying to fill his quiver with as much ammo as possible to succeed. Then comes football, an obvious contrast in social science.

That is the BYU football job circa 2005.

One aspect Mendenhall pulled the trigger on to accomplish his task is to turn the governing of BYU football from the inside out. If he's got 100 football players helping him do his job, sharing the burden, taking the lead, it'll go smoother on his end as Father O'Malley.

Take the mentoring program, for instance.

Mendenhall had an idea to tie into the Big Brother program and model a weekly reporting system after the fashion of an LDS mission president. An LDS mission usually has just more than 100 missionaries, and they fill out weekly reports on their activities.