Paul Myerberg

USA TODAY Sports

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The first tug and pull Bronco Mendenhall felt from the University of Virginia came near the end of the past regular season in a small, sparsely decorated room inside Brigham Young’s football facilities, where the former BYU coach sat with then-offensive coordinator Robert Anae.

Anae, who now holds the same position with the Cavaliers, had turned to Mendenhall with a rhetorical question and answer: You know where you’d fit really well, with who you are and what you do? Virginia, said Anae.

It was a moment Mendenhall stored away, to be reflected upon just weeks later, following Mike London’s decision to resign from Virginia after six seasons.

“Many thought I would never leave BYU,” Mendenhall told USA TODAY Sports. “It wasn’t an option. It was never conceivable that might happen. I’d just keep going.

“There was a significant change toward the end of last season. It was pretty clear – no, that’s an understatement. It was crystal clear that I had done what I was capable of and supposed to do at BYU with the time I was there.

Bronco Mendenhall aims to build on, strengthen foundation at Virginia

“That had maybe as much or more to do with me coming here as anything else. It was reaching that place internally, and when that was hit it was then, OK, so now where? Then it was, this makes sense.”

That Mendenhall now holds the same position at Virginia can be credited to a number of factors, including the challenge of starting again after more than a decade of success with the Cougars. Virginia craves a winning program, he said, “but not at the expense of doing it the right way. That was the exact principles I operated on at BYU.”

Yet as Virginia pulled, circumstances at BYU began to push Mendenhall away. No issue loomed larger than the program’s shift toward independence, which occurred prior to the 2011 season.

“I don’t think it’s sustainable,” he said of BYU’s independent status. “I was trying everything I knew how to do to advance and pioneer that part. If I were to be really blunt about it, I took it as far as I could go in relation to that setting of independence.

“After all that and setting all that foundation and direction, there became a point where it was guardian, custodian of that direction – where it was, I’m not sure now if I’m one supposed to be doing that here.”

The lack of conference affiliation impacted the program’s national standing: BYU was ranked in the final Amway Coaches Poll four times in its final five seasons in the Mountain West Conference, but just once in its five years as a Football Bowl Subdivision independent.

Mendenhall aimed to fill the void left by a lack of conference affiliation by scheduling games against high-profile competition, hoping to use tests against Nebraska, UCLA, Michigan and others to “uncover lessons that would make us better,” he said.

“I chose to have the scheduling part impact that, trying to push the envelope as far as I could. Because that was the most realistic segue that I could direct the program toward, to say this is where I want to go, this is where I want us to go.”

In the end, Mendenhall’s surprising departure can be tied to a simple idea: After 11 years and 99 wins at BYU, it was time for a new challenge.

“I was always said that I would be at BYU and be a coach as long as I felt like I was supposed to be,” he said. “I started to feel like I was not supposed to be the coach at BYU. And that’s a personal and specific thing, to either faith or intuition. But I’d never had that feeling before when other options came.”