Jul. 13—New Mexico‘s Bronco Mendenhall called his team “sticky.”
UNLV‘s Barry Odom swore he’d never ride a bull again.
Air Force’s Troy Calhoun said he admires the work of a lumber shop in Roseburg, Oregon.
They don’t call it talkin’ season for nothing. For players and coaches, Mountain West Media Days was all about that: talking about their team, the upcoming season, the state of college football and anything else that came up over the course of two long days in Las Vegas.
And as always, plenty of unexpected topics were covered. Here are the most interesting things I heard at Mountain West Media Days:
1. CSU’s Norvell calls out programs for tampering
Answering a question about whether the Mountain West has seen an “uptick” in NFL prospects, Colorado State coach Jay Norvell mentioned one of his own: Tory Horton, a preseason All-Mountain West receiver regarded as one of the best Group of Five prospects.
Not that other programs haven’t tried to change that.
“I’ve had every team in America try to take Tory Horton from us,” Norvell said casually. “I mean, from Texas A&M to Ole Miss, they’ve all been on him.”
Asked about how he combats tampering — when coaches attempt to induce players to enter the portal and transfer to their school — Norvell said he simply talks with his players and “if they don’t talk to me, you’re probably not gonna know.”
Then Norvell decided to do a little more name-dropping.
“Same thing with (Colorado State quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi),” he said. “Brayden had the same kind of offers … He said a guy from Kansas State called him, offered him $600,000 because they lost their quarterback (current Ohio State quarterback Will Howard) — if he got in the portal.
“And I’m not accusing Kansas State of anything,” Novell added. “I’m just telling you what the kid told me. If they don’t want their name thrown in it, I think they should probably get a handle on their people. But there’s a lot of that going on in college football, and that’s just the way things are right now.”
2. Utah State’s Larsen unhappy with fallout of Blake Anderson‘s firing
Few teams held a captive audience quite like Utah State this week. In the wake of head coach Blake Anderson and Associate Vice President Jerry Bovee’s dismissals due to alleged non-compliance with university policy in reporting sexual misconduct, quarterback Spencer Petras, safety Ike Larsen and interim head coach Nate Dreiling were all tasked with answering questions about the situation.
Few were more compelling — and candid — than Larsen.
“Sh*t, I’m going to be honest and not going to sugarcoat anything,” the preseason All-Mountain West safety said. “I’m turning down money to stay here, and this happens.”
Larsen said Dreiling, hired as the Aggies’ defensive coordinator before his promotion to interim coach, has done a “great job” in his first week on the job, but objected to how Utah State relayed Anderson’s firing to players with a quick Zoom meeting early in the morning — one Larsen didn’t attend because he was asleep.
“At least a text the day before would have been nice,” he said, “because obviously they had to have known they were going to do that. That’s just me — that’s my opinion. I’m gonna express my opinion and they can do what they want with it.
“But, I mean, you gotta know if you’re gonna fire your head coach. You can’t just call us in the morning at 8 a.m. and expect us to pick up because honestly, half of us weren’t on that call. Like people were still asleep — we’re on vacation, you know what I mean?
“I dunno. I don’t think it was handled the right way. That’s (my opinion), I’m gonna stop talking about it.”
3. Best of the rest
Mendenhall was one of a handful of coaches this week to speak highly of Fresno State‘s Jeff Tedford, now the league’s oldest coach heading into his sixth season with the Bulldogs. Citing the former Cal coach as a longtime friend, Mendenhall credited Tedford for coaching with “pure” motives and added that he’s been good for football over 35 years in the business.
He also shared a story from the 2005 Las Vegas Bowl, pitting Mendenhall’s first BYU team against Tedford and the Golden Bears:
“We’re in Vegas, and I’m complaining to him pregame because I have all these married guys on my team at BYU, between 30 and 40 (players), and some are choosing to have their honeymoon (with) the bowl game — so BYU pays for it,” Mendenhall said. “And I’m like, ‘okay, we got to put an end to that.’ They’re smart, y’know?
“And so he’s then telling me his stories where Victoria’s Secret is having a fashion show (at the hotel) where Cal was staying. And his players, they’re all distracted because of the models and the lingerie. So I’ve got binkies and bubbies and strollers, trying to coordinate that team — and he’s got Victoria’s Secret models. That’s what I remember about the game.”
Cal won 35-28.
To commemorate the start of spring practice in March, Odom rode a live bull — named Widowmaker — at a program fundraiser in Las Vegas for a little under two seconds before he was bucked.
The 47-year-old second-year UNLV coach said he won’t be repeating his performance anytime soon.
“It was a very bad decision,” Odom deadpanned on Thursday. “I’ll never do it again. You know, I agreed to it in a very weak moment — I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my life. And my wife was reminding me of how foolish this one was leading up to it — that one-point-whatever seconds I was on it — and then the two weeks after that it took me to get over the soreness. But I did it for our team, I did it…
Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
