Bronco Mendenhall hit a home run with this one.

They lined the practice sidelines like a fleshy kind of wall. They came from as far as Pittsburgh and Hawaii and there were almost twice as many as a year ago.

NFL players, former Cougars like John Tait, Rob Morris, Super Bowl ring holder Chris Hoke, joined the likes of Eric Drage and former Raider tight end Todd Christensen, former New Orleans Saint Glen Redd and old regime retired coaches Tom Ramage and Dick Felt in a second annual spring football reunion on Friday at BYU.

It remains to be seen if Mendenhall can return BYU to conference championships, win bowl games, or resurrect faded glory. But on Friday, he struck a chord with his base, many of whom he'd never met before he took the BYU head coaching job December 2004. On this day, he had them in the palm of his hand. Strangers praised him.

Some of these old guys hadn't seen each other since their freshmen seasons. Few, if any, had ever encountered Mendenhall before in their lives, but they met in a packed Cougar room under LaVell Edwards Stadium. There they listened to the football gospel according to Bronco and fired questions at the second-year coach.

He talked of academics, spirituality and character. He told stories of players and what he expected of them including 10 hours of community service a semester, currently ticking in at 400 hours for the team in winter semester.

They then watched football practice. Then the mob feasted on a barbecue catered by Ruby River in the Smith Fieldhouse annex. A year ago the feed handled 400. Friday more than 700 were served, half of them former football players who'd somehow almost been forgotten, guys like George Harris, Matt Johnson, James Dye, Ken Driggs and Royce Bybee, a backup quarterback to Jim McMahon.

They were invited back. It meant something. Perhaps being "invested."

"Look at this, there's hundred of guys here. It's a walk down memory lane for a lot of us old guys," said Redd, a linebacker in BYU's 1980 Holiday Bowl win over SMU. "I had the good fortune to go on and play in the NFL and I've got a closer feel here than I ever had at any other place. It doesn't get better than this."

They wandered around, pumping hands, laughing, introducing wives, kids, grandkids. "Incredible. This is something I wish they'd been doing the past 20 years," Redd said.

And in surveying the bunch, they were very protective of Mendenhall and his plan to restrict BYU football recruiting based on academics and character before athleticism.