Bronco’s Wish List: Infrastructure, Beat VT, Win Bowl Games

CHARLOTTE, NC – Bronco Mendenhall has a wish list on how to turn around Virginia football.

Part of that list includes ending the long draught against state rival Virginia Tech. Part of the list is not only reaching bowl games, but winning bowl games.

In order to get there, his program could use a little help and that help is coming from Carla Williams, the new director of athletics. Williams, with an administrative football background that includes Georgia and Florida State, has granted some of Mendenhall’s list to help Virginia’s program reach industry standards.

Those were very important first steps before the Cavaliers can take the next ones.

“We had a conversation when she was first hired that went for a couple of hours and we just talked about infrastructure,” Mendenhall said Wednesday at the ACC Kickoff media day. “That was through the lenses of a second year coach at Virginia. I’m still learning all the needs.”

The coach told the AD then that UVa was behind in personnel to assist in recruiting and in the number of strength coaches on staff. Williams has fixed that problem.

Coaches were required to spend significant time not only recruiting, but finding and evaluating talent, in addition to on-field coaching duties. Williams granted three additional positions to help find and evaluate talent, which brought Virginia up to par with its ACC competitors.

“Once you find players, how do you develop them?” said Mendenhall, who is passionate about player development.

The NCAA allows up to five full-time strength coaches, and so now Virginia has five of those as well.

“So in a program that’s now developing, the more developers you have, arguably the faster you develop,” the coach said as he approaches his third August training camp in Charlottesville. “Now we have more finders, more developers.”

Some schools currently pay for all three sessions of summer school for all their players, which means those players spend more time on campus and are trained more in the football program. Some of those players gain four or five weeks more training by attending the first session of summer school than UVa’s players, that normally attend only the second and third sessions.

Mendenhall wanted to be clear. He hasn’t used those previous deficiencies as a crutch. Quite the contrary.

“My job clearly is that even if none of those things don’t happen, that’s just an excuse,” he said. “I still believe we’ll get results no matter what. That’s my job.”

Same goes for the new complex, which may eventually house Virginia’s football program and replace the McCue Center. The program has outgrown McCue in every facet as competitors boast larger, more modern facilities in the ever-continuing football arms race.

That’s next on Mendenhall’s wishlist.

“A new building,” the coach said without blinking when asked what he wants. “A new operations center is essential. I think I mentioned it at my press conference the first day.”

He did.

Since then, Virginia has talked about a building at an estimated cost of $60 million, but with a change at the top of administration, such a structure could be amended in size and cost.

Mendenhall wants to change the image of Wahoo football, and the building is a big part of that image.

“I don’t want football to be viewed as an afterthought at UVa,” the coach said. “I want it to be viewed as important. If [the building] doesn’t happen, I still will be accountable for the results, but what [a building] signifies is this is important, this is valuable.

“It makes a statement to anyone who visits that, ‘Holy Cow, [football] is a big deal here,’ and I want it to be,” Mendenhall said. “That would be along the way. Until that happens, I’m going to act like that it’s not happening.”

Mendenhall believes all those improvements, those approved and those proposed, will play a large role in Virginia’s on-field success. Breaking the 14-year losing streak to the Hokies is essential.

“I’m not saying other coaches haven’t tried but the reality is that our program needs to play well in that game, and that will generate significant momentum,” he said about the rivalry with Tech.

Bowl games and specifically bowl wins would also generate similar momentum.

“Those things that I just mentioned, if we’re talking about check marks, they have to happen,” Mendenhall said.

He believes Virginia’s program must play better under his leadership and have more success against the Hokies in order to help not only the football program, but the institution, and “quite frankly the alumni to have their hearts recaptured about our program,” Mendenhall said. “That’s just something after two years I think is necessary. There is a disproportionate value that comes from a game like like that and also disproportionate momentum that can be generated by a win like that.”

The Cavaliers, who dropped a 10-0 loss at Scott Stadium to Tech last November, haven’t beaten the Hokies in Charlottesville since Al Groh’s squad, led by quarterback Matt Schaub, won in 2003. UVa hasn’t won in Blacksburg since 1998 when Aaron Brooks and Thomas Jones led a dramatic second-half comeback, at the time the biggest in Wahoos history in order to win.