Former BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall is returning to Utah with the Aggies

LOGAN – A decade after resigning from Provo to take the head coaching job at Virginia, Bronco Mendenhall is returning to the Beehive State.

The former BYU coach is expected to be named Utah State’s next head coach, succeeding Blake Anderson and interim coach Nate Dreiling, who led the Aggies to a 4-4 mark after a 42-37 win over Colorado State in the season finale. 8 season led.

News of Mendenhall’s hiring was first reported by Extra Points and confirmed by ESPN.

Mendenhall, 58, returns to Utah after a season in New Mexico, where he helped the Lobos to a 5-7 record, the Lobos’ most wins since 2016.

The Alpine native and American Fork High graduate, who played at Snow College and Oregon State, has been linked to the coaching job at Utah State University several times – most notably by Football Scoop, which suggested Mendenhall was leaving after one year The focus of the Aggies’ search was a 4-8 campaign under Dreiling.

BYU defensive coordinator Jay Hill and Montana State coach Brent Vigen also had discussions with Utah State leadership about the opening, according to the report.

However, Mendenhall denied any contact for the position as recently as Tuesday, telling the Albuquerque Journal during a season-ending press conference that he had not been contacted by Utah State University.

“I was not approached or interviewed,” he told the Journal.

Life moves quickly. Few know that mantra better than the 18-year head coach with an overall record of 140-88 as well as stints as an assistant at Northern Arizona, Oregon State, Louisiana Tech and New Mexico, where he was first named defensive coordinator in 1998.

Mendenhall came to New Mexico after a two-year hiatus as a college football coach and signed a five-year, $6 million contract in May. After leading BYU from the Mountain West to FBS independence with a coaching record of 99-43, Mendenhall went to Virginia and took the program to a bowl game in just the second year of his tenure.

In four years, the Cavaliers compiled a 9-5 record, an ACC Coastal Division title and a berth in the Orange Bowl in 2019. But after back-to-back .500 seasons that included a 5-5 record in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Mendenhall resigned after the 2021 season as the transfer portal and name, image and likeness headlines dominated the sport, whom he once loved and coached in Utah for 15 years.

But the urge to become a coach never completely left him.

“I missed the relationships,” Mendenhall told KSL.com at the Mountain West Football Media Days in July. “I missed the opportunity to advise, mentor, guide and influence their decisions.”

Mendenhall comes to Utah State with the Aggies and is about to jump into the newly formed Pac-12, a conference being rebuilt by Washington State and Oregon State effective July 1, 2026, with Boise State, Colorado State , Fresno State, San Diego State and basketball powerhouse Gonzaga.

According to CBS Sports, the league needs one more football school to meet the minimum conference requirements in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Whether the new-look Pac-12 will ever come close to its former status as a “power” conference remains to be seen. But that might not matter to Mendenhall.

He was already at the top of the game – or what most consider the top – and that sent him to his ranch in Montana before he sold his favorite horse to get back in the saddle in college football.

“Sometimes the ladder up is the ladder down,” he told KSL.com. “From the outside world it could be perceived as an upward trend. But morally speaking, with your family and your values, things may be going downhill. Up is not always up.”