How stepping away from football is bringing Bronco Mendenhall closer to the game

IT’S A MONDAY afternoon in late May, and for the first time in more than 30 years, Bronco Mendenhall isn’t working the phones with recruits or planning staff meetings. Instead, he’s in his truck, boots and spurs on, waiting out a rainstorm.

Mendenhall moved west this spring, a return to his roots after he abruptly resigned as head football coach at Virginia, trailering his cadre of horses and five truckloads of gear and supplies with him to Montana. It has been a whirlwind. He’s overseeing concurrent construction projects — a new home on a quiet lake that he and his wife, Holly, have dreamed of for years, and, about 20 minutes away, a sprawling, 80-acre ranch for those horses. He rides and ropes nearly every day. He’s also training for two half-Iron Man competitions (swimming, biking and running), while fielding calls on business ventures and teaching opportunities and a host of other ideas for “what comes next.”

But right now, he’s burning daylight, and still has two horses in need of riding.

“And I haven’t even been out fly-fishing today,” he said.

If that all sounds like the dream itinerary for someone who has left his past life (and an annual salary of $4.25 million) in his rearview mirror in search of meaning off the grid — well, that’s sort of the point.

The Mendenhalls have been slowly plotting this adventure for decades, and in the hours after his Virginia team lost its regular-season finale to rival Virginia Tech last November, Mendenhall decided it was time to live the dream.

“It’s just been breathtaking so far,” said Mendenhall, 56. “Most of [the coaches] who’ve called me are saying, ‘Man, we think you’ve got this right.'”

In Mendenhall’s farewell, many around college football saw another example of a coach burned out by the new world order. Name, image and likeness rules, the transfer portal and realignment turned the old model on its head, and the new landscape has pushed coaches to the brink of — or, perhaps, well past — exhaustion. So, of…