Utah State’s football program now has the luxury of stability when dealing with recruiting.
Just a year ago, the program was headed by interim head coach Nate Dreiling and didn’t have a sure future. It still had a decently sized signing class, highlighted by Utah high schoolers.
Now the Aggies have their head coach in Bronco Mendenhall, and are back to bowling after missing out in 2024. Utah State also played its last Mountain West game in a home loss to Boise State in late November and it looks forward to joining the Pac-12 in 2026.
Seventeen high school athletes signed with the program on Wednesday, and all 17 are rated as 3-star recruits on at least one of 247 Sports, Rivals or ESPN.
In a press conference Wednesday, Mendenhall outlined how he plans to handle the balance of recruiting high schoolers while pulling in players from the transfer portal. He hopes having local ties will help keep players from transferring out.
“We’ll continue to build the program through high school focused recruiting while navigating portal player additions to function at the highest level that’s needed to compete and gain momentum and generate enthusiasm about the program,” Mendenhall said. “But really the sustainment is going to come from the high school cycles, while the portal then hopefully will dwindle less for us over time.”
The main focus, according to Mendenhall, was players within the regional area of Logan. Utah high schoolers were prioritized, and then players within about a six-hour drive.
Seven of the 17 players signed Wednesday were local Utahns while Utah State also signed one athlete from each of Arizona, Colorado and Idaho.
“Through my years, I’ve done a study and we’ve found really that the players that had the best experience, just as I did exit interviews at the end and collecting data points, they were usually within a six-hour driving distance or a single plane flight,” Mendenhall said. “So yes, playing on the field mattered, their family seeing them play mattered, so then the proximity became relevant.
“Utah high school players, critical and essential and the priority for our program. Regional then becomes next most important.”
With the rise of the current college football era where transfer portal has become king, team building philosophies have been debated. Is it still worth it to develop high school talent just for them to be poached by a bigger program? Should you shift focus away from recruiting and readjust it to field-ready players in the transfer portal?
Answers to that question certainly depends on the program and its particular advantages and disadvantages. However, Mendenhall seems confident in Utah State’s ability to not only develop young players, but to get them to stay around.
He was clear that he’s under no delusion that he can always make them stay their entire career, but instead he believes he can make a good enough pitch to keep them around just that one extra year.
“(The question) is not only how do you keep them, but how long can you keep them,” Mendenhall said. “The better that we do, the more tampering will happen... Our relationships, our culture, our success will then possibly hold a player an additional year. It might not hold them for all five, but an additional year.”
An interesting bit from this batch of signees is that three of them were previous Colorado State commits, but flipped to the Aggies. Dontae Dyson (Northridge High School), John McClellan (Rancho Cotate High School, California) and Jude Nelson (Millikan High School, California) were the three players to switch.
“I think it’s a testament to our coaching staff, support staff, just the relationships that they’ve built with not just those three guys, but all of our recruits and commits,” said Director of Player Personnel Evan Butts. “Even before those guys made that initial decision, there were strong relationships, touch points there. Those guys never wavered despite that initial decision, our staff, our coaches, our coordinators, our head coach, they were unwavering in trying to get those guys to where they belong. And that’s here at Utah State.”