5 questions with Bronco Mendenhall

Five Questions with Bronco Mendenhall

BYU head football coach Bronco Mendenhall, entering his sixth season at the helm, answered a multitude of questions during last week's Mountain West Conference media days in Las Vegas, including those dealing with the Cougars' rivalry with Utah and conference realignment. Here are five of the most compelling questions and answers.

Question: What is the state of the BYU-Utah rivalry, given Utah's upcoming move to the Pac-10?

Answer: "The future of the rivalry will be different. There's no way the rivalry can remain quite the same, when you consider both teams not being in the same league and the game not being played as the last game of the season. I'm not saying the rivalry goes away, but to say that it won't change in some degree, that's likely (to happen)."

Question: How will recruiting at BYU be impacted by Utah's jump to the Pac-10?

A. "I don't think it will be affected one bit. There are those who might say it will be affected a ton. I don't think we lose a single player that wants BYU to any school in the country. There have been those that we have recruited nationwide. But a kid that wants the BYU experience can only get it at BYU."

Question: Where does BYU fit in the conference realignment picture?

Answer: "(Athletic director) Tom (Holmoe) has asked for my opinion on the landscape of college football. There are all kinds of options that he has presented. I don't have a clear answer. I think our best course of action right now is to continue to play really good football in this league for two more years and see if that is good enough to earn the league and automatic (BCS) bid. ... BYU isn't any other place. There are some conferences that quite frankly don't want a faith-based institution, regardless of performance, regardless of how many people are in the stands, regardless of how many games are won, regardless of the tradition. ... We always have made it very clear we are unique. We'll continue to play our way into any opportunities we can get, but really nothing has changed for BYU. We're very clear on who we are, what we represent and how we're going to play. We don't measure ourselves against anyone else, as much as others would like to measure Utah against BYU. I won't acknowledge and I won't do that."

Question: Due to possible scheduling complications with Utah, would you ever consider playing Utah two years in a row at Rice-Eccles Stadium?

Answer: "No way. Not if it is my call."

Question: Can you talk about the process of replacing offensive stars like Max Hall, Dennis Pitta and Harvey Unga?

Answer: "I am a big believer in the collective. I am completely confident the pieces will fall into place when they are supposed to. It's early, but that can't be rushed. My job is to design the program to give us our best chance to play good football as fast as possible. But we have good players. We have good people, and we just try to find out who they are as quickly as we can."