July 13 – New Mexico’s Bronco Mendenhall called his team “sticky.”
UNLV’s Barry Odom swore he would never ride a bull again.
Troy Calhoun of the Air Force said he admires the work of a lumber company in Roseburg, Oregon.
They don’t call it talk 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, many unexpected topics were covered. Here are the most interesting things I heard at Mountain West Media Days:
1. CSU’s Norvell denounces programs for tampering
Responding to a question about whether the Mountain West has seen a “surge” in NFL prospects, Colorado State coach Jay Norvell mentioned one of his own: Tory Horton, a preseason All-Mountain West receiver considered a of the best candidates from the Group of Five.
Not that other programs haven’t tried to change that.
“Every team in America tried to take Tory Horton from us,” Norvell said casually. “I mean, from Texas A&M to Ole Miss, they all attacked him.”
Asked about how he combats tampering – when coaches try to trick players into entering the portal and transferring to their school – Norvell said he simply talks to his players and “if they don’t talk to me, you probably won’t know.” . “
So Norvell decided to name names a little more.
“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 and 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 to come up, I think they should probably rein in their people. But there’s a lot of that going on in college football, and that’s the way it is right now.”
2. Utah State’s Larsen unhappy with fallout from Blake Anderson firing
Few teams have had a captive audience like Utah State this week. Following the firings of head coach Blake Anderson and associate vice president Jerry Bovee due to their alleged failure to comply with university policy in reporting sexual misconduct, quarterback Spencer Petras, safety Ike Larsen and interim head coach Nate Dreiling were tasked with answering questions about the situation.
Few were more convincing – and sincere – than Larsen.
“Shit, I’m going to be honest and I’m 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 head coach, did a “great job” in his first week on the job, but he objected to the way Utah State conveyed Anderson’s firing to the players with a quick meeting via Zoom earlier. in the morning-a Larsen did not attend because he was sleeping.
“At least a message the day before would have been nice,” he said, “because obviously they knew they were going to do it. It’s just me – that’s my opinion. do whatever they want with it.
“But, I mean, you have to know if you’re going to fire your head coach. You can’t just call us in the morning at 8am and expect us to answer because, honestly, half of us weren’t on that call. . Like people are still sleeping – we’re on vacation, you know what I mean?
“I don’t know. I don’t think it was handled the right way. That’s (my opinion), I’m going to stop talking about it.”
3. Best of the rest
Mendenhall was one of the few coaches this week to praise Fresno State’s Jeff Tedford, now the league’s oldest coach entering 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 has been good to the game for more than 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 Las Vegas and I’m complaining to him before the game 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 that,” Mendenhall said. “And I thought, ‘OK, we need to end this.’ They’re smart, you know?
“And then he’s telling me his stories where Victoria’s Secret is having a fashion show (at the hotel) where Cal was staying. And his players are all distracted because of the models and the lingerie. So I have binkies and bubbies and carts, trying to coordinate that team – and he has Victoria’s Secret models. That’s what I remember about the game.”
Cal won 35-28.
To celebrate the start of spring training in March, Odom rode a live bull – named Widowmaker – at a fundraiser in Las Vegas for just under two seconds before being defeated.
The 47-year-old second-year UNLV coach said he won’t repeat his performance anytime soon.
“It was a really bad decision,” Odom said Thursday. “I’ll never do that again. You know, I agreed to this at a very weak time – I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my life. And my wife was reminding me how foolish it was leading up to – that point, whatever the second, that I was in it – and then the next two weeks it took me to get over the pain. But I did it for our team, I did it to raise my money for our program.
“I’ll never do it again.”
Asked about Odom after his run, UNLV wide receiver Ricky White and linebacker Jackson Woodard said he handled it well — despite limping slightly — in the Rebels’ first team meeting and practice.
“They told the truth,” Odom added. “Now when I walked away from them, (I) went and had a moment to myself — I was in pain.”
