Bronco Mendenhall will now have a new boss

Exactly a week before former BYU and Virginia head football coach Bronco Mendenhall is to make his return to a college football sideline with the New Mexico Lobos after two seasons away, he has lost his boss to a job in the Big 12 Conference.
On Saturday, ESPN’s Pete Thamel first reported, and it was formally announced a few hours later, that New Mexico athletic director Eddie Nunez, who hired Mendenhall last winter, is leaving the school to take the same position at the University of Houston.
Nunez replaces Chris Pezman, who was fired in June.
Last December, the Albuquerque Journal’s Sean Reider wrote a story about how Mendenhall’s hire at New Mexico came to be after Mendenhall abruptly stepped down at Virginia following the 2021 season.
Referring to a conversation he had with Virginia athletic director Carla Williams about Mendenhall, Nunez said, “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. When I got word that he would be interested, those conversations started really kind of forming towards the direction I wanted it.”
The New Mexico head football coaching job is a tough one, as the Lobos’ four wins last season was the most the program had tallied in a campaign since 2016.
New Mexico will be part of just the second game of the 2024 college football season next Saturday afternoon when it faces Montana State of the FCS ranks at home.
New Mexico hasn’t given an indication about the process it will undergo to find Nunez’s successor.