Maybe some of the dumb things Bronco Mendenhall said at BYU were banging around inside his head, prompting and guiding his blunt remarks this past week at a Board of Visitors meeting at the University of Virginia.
Those comments caused a stir in Charlottesville and around college football, but were still classic Mendenhall, highfalutin in their values, weirdly opaque enough to be misinterpreted and clear enough to be seen as advantageous to his own preservation as head coach, a position that allows him to haul down $3.4 million in annual salary.
After seasons of 2-10 and 6-7, he said he had just “27 ACC-caliber players” left over on his roster at Virginia, hoping that number would bump up to the mid-40s when the 2018 recruits arrived on campus.