Bronco kept coming back to the analogy.
Virginia had just revealed that its head football coach was stepping down. Just minutes later, Bronco Mendenhall was on Zoom discussing that decision, and kept drawing the analogy of climbing a mountain.
Sometimes you need to stop in the halfway camp for a few minutes, to recharge the butane tank or unthaw the freeze-dried food, or just take a break.
Down the stretch of this season, Mendenhall looked like a man in need of that kind of break. UVa’s fade down the final month of the regular season was clearly wearing on its head coach—most noticeably after the losses, when his voice was a little more raspy, his answers short and pointed, his heart seemingly not quite as into it as in previous seasons.
UVa was 6-2 when Mendenhall made his emotional return to Provo to face BYU. That night turned sour thanks to a historically bad performance by his defense. The offense was without record-breaking quarterback Brennan Armstrong when they lost at home to Notre Dame. The loss at Pitt cost the Cavaliers any shot at another Coastal Division title. That was followed by Saturday’s gut-wrenching defeat at home against Virginia Tech.
It was the day after that loss to the Hokies when Mendenhall first started contemplating whether it was time. He spent the next few days basically trying to talk himself out of it before ultimately, on Wednesday afternoon, making the decision to step down as UVa’s football coach.
He told his coaching staff at 4:45pm on Thursday, then his players 15 minutes later, just as the school was breaking the news publicly.
“I would love to say there’s been this buildup and a long amount of epiphanies and thought,” Mendenhall told reporters on a hastily-organized Zoom shortly after his decision was announced, “but clearly this week there was a sense of clarity to me that I needed to step back from college football and reassess, renew, reframe and reinvent, with my wife as a partner, our future and the next chapter of our lives.”
His departure announcement on Thursday was as out-of-nowhere as his hire six years earlier. Mendenhall came to UVa after 11 bowl games in 11 seasons as head coach at BYU. “I love challenge,” he told reporters when he was introduced in Charlottesville in December 2015.
Mendenhall took over a program that had won just 27 games and made one bowl appearance the six previous seasons under Mike London. Bronco rebuilt the culture in his own unique way, stripping away jersey numbers and school logos from practice uniforms while stressing accountability and attention to detail and demanding the utmost effort.
A 2-10 season that first year—which began with a loss at home to Richmond, an FCS-level program, and ended with a 42-point loss to the Hokies in Blacksburg—made Mendenhall realize that winning at UVA would be harder than he anticipated. His second season began 5-2 and ended at 6-7 following another 42-point loss, this time to Navy in the Military Bowl.
Bryce Perkins arrived prior to the 2018 season. Teamed with a strong defense, the quarterback led the Wahoos to eight wins that fall capped by a shutout of South Carolina in the Belk Bowl, the program’s first postseason win since 2015.
Virginia followed that breakthrough with an even bigger one in 2019, winning nine games and the program’s first Coastal Division title. They clinched that title with a thrilling win at home against Tech, snapping the program’s 15-game losing streak in the rivalry. UVa played in both the ACC Championship and the Orange Bowl for the first time, and Mendenhall touted the “unbroken growth” of his first four seasons in Charlottesville.
Mendenhall raised the floor for the Virginia program—but that “unbroken growth” stalled the past two seasons. The Wahoos finished last year 5-5 amid the challenges of playing during the COVID-19 pandemic. UVa took a four-game winning streak into the regular season finale; Tech had lost four straight going into that game. Final score: 33-15 Virginia Tech.
This season saw Armstrong, the successor to Perkins at quarterback, rewrite the school’s single-season record book at the position with the help of prolific receivers Dontayvion Wicks, Keytaon Thompson, Jelani Woods and Billy Kemp. But that historic performance wasn’t enough to overcome a defense that ranked statistically among the worst in the country.
The season’s disappointing finish was capped by Saturday’s loss at home to the Hokies that included more big plays from Tech than they’d hit on all season, and an offensive play-call that will haunt UVa fans for years to come. But on Thursday, Bronco said that outcome had little bearing on why he was stepping away.
“So the clarity of this was really finalized yesterday in my mind. In the coach’s world, that’s almost an eternity from whenever the last game was,” he explained. “So this is a personal and bigger picture, that’s how I think, decision.”
He talked about the difficulties of coaching during the pandemic and the evolving landscape of college football thanks to recent changes like NIL and the transfer portal. They all took their toll. The 55-year-old Mendenhall admitted that he never envisioned himself coaching into his mid-to-late-60s. He'd confided privately that he had been looking forward to life after football.
There was shock and sadness when he shared the news with his players. It was equally difficult to tell his coaching staff, which is still largely comprised of assistants—from coordinators Robert Anae and Nick Howell, to position coaches Jason Beck, Mark Atuaia, Garett Tujague, Kelly Poppinga and Shane Hunter—and staff members who made the cross-country move from BYU with Mendenhall.
“These are my closest friends. And this is now their wives and kids who all came. And I’m responsible for all of them,” Bronco shared. “And I love all of them. We were very close before we took this journey. This is now inseparable and galvanized and welded to where you can’t break it—and I just did.”
But Mendenhall’s top priority is his wife of just shy of 25 years, Holly, and their three sons, who have all graduated from high school. Dating back to his days as a graduate assistant, Bronco has been coaching college football for 31 years; it’s the only life the entire family has ever known.
Bronco will coach the Cavaliers’ bowl game in a few weeks, then turn his attention to what comes next for him and his family.
He didn’t rule out a return to coaching college football—Mendenhall pointed to the way he impacted the lives of the players who played for him as his most proud accomplishment at UVa—but would also be open to other avenues that will allow him to help and inspire others.
“I remember saying along the way that I would like the end of my life to add so much value that people forgot I was a football coach,” he said. “There’s something. And I’m gonna find it.”
But first, Virginia’s outgoing head coach needs to step inside the halfway camp to thaw out and check his backpack.
Before continuing his ascent, Bronco needs a break.
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