You’ll never guess who helped former Virginia Football head coach Bronco Mendenhall get his new job at New Mexico – that would be Carla Williams, the AD at Virginia, whose ultimatum to Mendenhall to replace his defensive coordinator two Decembers ago resulted in him stepping down.
“When I started talking to her about him as a person, you could tell very quickly (he) was somebody I wanted to hear from — if he was interested,” said Eddie Nuñez, the AD at New Mexico, in an interview with the Albuquerque Journal for a story about the Mendenhall hire published on Tuesday.
According to the Journal story, Nuñez had worked with Williams when the two were at Vanderbilt – Nuñez was there from 2001-2003 at the director of game and event management; Williams was at Vandy from 2000-2004 as an assistant AD.
Classy move for Williams to give Mendenhall, who was 36-38 in six seasons at Virginia, his best season coming in 2019, when he led UVA to the program’s first-ever ACC Championship Game and an Orange Bowl berth, a thumbs-up in the chat with Nuñez at New Mexico.
It doesn’t quite make up for what happened that led to his departure from Virginia, in the context of the 3-7 and 3-9 seasons in the first two years under Williams’ hand-picked successor to Mendenhall, Tony Elliott.
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Chris Graham
