Former BYU Cougars and Virginia Cavaliers head football coach Bronco Mendenhall shocked the college football world last winter when he suddenly resigned his post as head coach of the Cavaliers.
Mendenhall has maintained that he merely needed some time to reset and refocus and that he planned on getting back into it, and on the debut episode of his “HeadCoachU” podcast with Bryan Fischer, he said he indeed wants to resume his coaching career.
“Really, the genesis of the idea, or the motive for this pause, is what it is, and it’s just a pause, and I look forward to recapturing the hearts and minds of young people, right, and helping them develop, and most likely, right, through the game of college football,” Mendenhall said. “I’m not sure there’s something more impactful.”
Mendenhall went on to say that, “It just seemed to me, and I was struck and prompted so powerfully, that this is the perfect time with (his and his wife Holly’s) kids gone to set up the infrastructure for chapter two of our lives in this beautiful place we’re building in Montana, for Holly and I to reconnect, and then we relaunch with more clarity, with more purpose, with more passion if even possible and perspective than we could’ve without pausing.”
Later, Mendenhall said that the relationships he has built through his 17 years as a head coach so far is what he values the most from the job, and he wants to be able to continue to build meaningful relationships with people “within the next opportunity that comes.”
There is already one Power Five head coaching vacancy this fall, as Nebraska fired Scott Frost on Sunday, and Mendenhall is considered to be a potential candidate to replace him.