T-shirt signifies return of BYU football

On Saturday night in Provo, "BYU Football" returned — in the form of a T-shirt. Instead of the prescribed, professional polo worn by every other member of the BYU coaching staff, Bronco Mendenhall instead chose to sport an old school "Band of Brothers" tee over long sleeves for his 2010 debut as the Cougars' defensive play-caller.

If you looked closely enough, you could see the requisite "swoosh," nevertheless, Mendenhall good-naturedly said that he expected to hear from Nike about his departure from sideline protocol.

It wasn't the only unusual thing taking place on the BYU sidelines Saturday night. Again, if you looked closely enough, you could see the entire defensive unit in a three-point stance, toeing the paint, then sprinting onto the field to start every one of its series — in unison, as in the team's "pursuit" drills, which the players run to exhaustion during preseason camp.

"That man is crazy," said freshman linebacker Kyle Van Noy of his head coach. "When you have us in a three-point stance to start, it's crazy; but to us, it means the world. He's our leader, he's the man. He tells us what to do and we do it, because we trust him."

Mendenhall asked for a confirmation of that trust when he gathered his team a week ago Monday to re-stake his claim to the role of defensive coordinator and chart the team's path for the remainder of the season — a season that had gotten off to a 1-4 start.

"Four straight losses will uncover a lot of things about you as an individual and a lot of things about you as a team," Mendenhall told KSL Radio's audience after Saturday night's 24-21 win over San Diego State. "Once that's all out there for others to see, then you kind of collectively decide, 'What are we going to do about it?' This particular team demonstrated (against SDSU) what they decided on Monday."

Mendenhall himself had decided that he needed to be more of a coach again. Already in charge of the team's nose tackles and kickoff coverage unit, he grabbed the reins of his team's entire defense, and in so doing, affected both sides of the ball.

"You can really see how much he cares about us," said running back J.J. Di Luigi. "He's more involved with us now than he ever has been. It showed all week through practice, and I think that's why we came out and played so hard, because of what he was showing us, the emotion that he sent to us."