When Utah State football head coach Bronco Mendenhall interviewed for and took the job of head coach in Logan, he wasn’t given the prettiest picture of the state of the Aggies gridiron program.
Sure, on the outside most could see a team that had just gone through a 4-8 season, and also that Utah State hadn’t posted a winning campaign since 2021. But surely things weren’t that bad, right?
“I was told some pretty harsh things about the state of the program and the state of the institution,” Mendenhall said, “including there’s no chance that we’d be able to make a bowl. There would be a bowl ban because the academics weren’t strong enough. That was stated multiple times. There won’t be a chance to play post-season.”
These concerns over academics played a role in the firing of Mendenhall’s predecessor, Blake Anderson. Former USU President Elizabeth Cantwell and former Director of Athletics Diana Sabau, cited the NCAA’s Academic Performance Rate (APR) metric in documents outlining their reason for dismissing Anderson. According to those documents, sent by Assistant Utah Attorney General Jaqualin Friend Peterson to Anderson’s legal team, Utah State had seen a decline in its APR from 965 to 899.
Furthermore, according to Peterson’s email, “USU received official notice from the NCAA that USU football ‘may be subject to loss of access to postseason competition and/or Academic Performance Program penalties in 2025-26’ based on the APR data.”
Such was the apparent state of Utah State football as it entered the 2025 calendar year. Mendenhall was taking the helm of a ship that had taken on a concerning amount of water. But with bailing buckets in hand, the new coaching and administrative staff went to work. The result has apparently been record-breaking as Mendenhall claims his team has achieved the “highest GPA in school history.”
The seemingly unexpected academic success of the Aggies coincides with their on-field overachievement. Preseason projections gave Utah State some chance of earning bowl eligibility, but virtually all leaned toward predicting a 4-8 or 5-7 season for the team.
“I like being told what we won’t be able to do,” Mendenhall said. “Those things have just been ticked off and checked off along the way. That doesn’t mean we’re satisfied, doesn’t mean we’ve reached our full potential. I think there’s been significant progress in every part of the program with just more to come.”
Mendenhall and his Utah State squad will have the chance to do one more unexpected things for this season: finish with a winning record. A win in the Potato Bowl over Washington State is all that stands in their way.