Bronco Mendenhall has been a college football coach in some capacity for most of the last 36 years, but he said he had never seen something like what took place Saturday night as his Utah State Aggies were facing the UNLV Rebels on the road.
During the fourth quarter with the Aggies leading 23-20, safety Titan Saxton was injured on a Utah State kickoff, and emergency personnel had to enter the field to lift him on to a stretcher cart him off.
As captured in a video that was posted on social media, while those personnel were attending to Saxton, the entire Aggie team walked across the field toward him and were singing as they were doing so.
Soon, Saxton was on the stretcher and raised his arm and a fist as a sign that he was alert. As he was loaded on to the cart and his teammates went back to their sideline, he repeated the action a few more times.
On Monday during his weekly press conference, Mendenhall was asked about Saxton’s condition and the experience captured in the video.
Mendenhall said that Saxton, a native of Smithfield near the Utah State campus in Logan, is home from the hospital and “I think that there’s a great prognosis for him.”
Regarding his team uniting in song, Mendenhall said, “I’ve never been part of anything as profound in terms of support of a team where our team joined in song to support. I think there’s a cultural element in that song, in the hymns. I think that there’s also a team element and I also think there’s a faith element that came together in all that.
“I think UNLV certainly was touched as well. I think they handled that incident with class during the time also, and I think for those that haven’t seen it, just to ponder and contemplate what that really looked like in the middle of a college football game reflects more than a game for sure.”
Mendenhall said the song his players sung was a Tongan version of the hymn “Jesus Is the Way,” and actually there were several songs being sung together. Mendenhall said offensive lineman Tavo Motu’apuaka spearheaded the singing (he was in focus for much of the video posted on social media).
“It was just a really nice tribute and manifestation of, again, team spirit, I think cultural influence, but I also think an undercurrent of faith and maybe their own way of reaching out heavenward to help a teammate,” Mendenhall said.
Utah State wound up losing 29-26 in double overtime and will have to beat either Fresno State or Boise State in its final two regular season games to become bowl eligible.
“It’s difficult anytime you see someone you love get hurt,” Mendenhall said Saturday after the game. “No different for a coach. It plays out maybe more than a public forum as it did today, but it’s very challenging and it’s challenging for his teammates also.
“We’re forced in this profession when significant things happen, you have to then move on and you have to move on really fast.”