Virginia hires BYU’s Bronco Mendenhall

Virginia hired Bronco Mendenhall as its football coach in a surprise move, luring him away from Brigham Young after an 11-year run with the Cougars.

There had been reports about various coaches such as former Georgia coach Mark Richt, California Coach Sonny Dykes and Western Kentucky Coach Jeff Brohm being linked to the vacancy at Virginia, but Mendenhall’s name had never come up.

As they did with basketball Coach Tony Bennett, the Cavaliers pulled a surprise.

Virginia finished 4-8 this season and fired Mike London after six seasons, during which he had only one winning record.

Mendenhall was 99-42 with the Cougars, including splitting a home-and-home series with Virginia, and took the Cougars to a bowl game every season while never having a losing record. The Cougars are one of only 11 teams to advance to a bowl game in each of the last 11 seasons.

East Carolina fires coach

East Carolina fired Coach Ruffin McNeill after six seasons, with Athletic Director Jeff Compher saying Friday the program “was not meeting competitive expectations.”

“In my opinion, the trajectory of the program was not going in the right direction,” Compher said.

The Pirates finished 5-7 this season — their first losing season since 2011 — and landed in fifth place in the American Athletic Conference’s East Division with a 3-5 record. They ended the season with a 19-16 home loss to Cincinnati last weekend.

McNeill — who played for East Carolina under Pat Dye in the late 1970s — was 42-34 at his alma mater with one bowl victory with the Pirates. He took them to three bowls from 2012-14 but never reached a championship game in either Conference USA or the AAC.

Etc.

Pittsburgh running back James Conner, the 2014 Athletic Coast Conference player of the year, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, he announced Friday at a news conference. “When I heard I got cancer, I was a little scared,” Conner said. “But fear is a choice. I chose not to fear cancer. We’re going to fight, and we’re going to beat this thing.” ... Georgia backup quarterback Faton Bauta is transferring for his final year of eligibility. Bauta, a junior in eligibility, is a graduate student and will be able to play immediately at another school. He graduated with a degree in sports management in May. ... Washington Coach Chris Petersen announced that wide receivers coach Brent Pease will not be retained for next season and will not coach for the Huskies in their upcoming bowl game.