The book is closed on Weber State’s 2024 football season.

What started as a promising campaign full of close losses and a roster of just seven seniors, and one thrilling road win at ranked Montana, devolved into a string of error-filled, rare losses.

The program’s floor has been 6-5 over the last decade, but inadequate performances in home losses to Northern Colorado (that program’s only win over the last 24 games) and Idaho State (its first win in Ogden in 40 years) resulted in a 4-8 finish — WSU’s worst record since 2014 (2-10).

Now, an offseason of change has arrived as head coach Mickey Mental is poised to enter his third season at the helm. Upheaval already felt inevitable in a college football landscape that changes every year and impacts Weber State at every turn, and the wheels started turning just more than two days after the season ended.

ISAAC FISHER, Special to the Standard-Examiner

Tuesday brought several changes. More surprising was Idaho State hiring WSU assistant coach Grant Duff as its next defensive coordinator. Duff was at Weber for 11 seasons, going from director of operations to assistant, with time coaching linebackers, defensive ends and defensive tackles while working as co-defensive coordinator for the last four seasons.

Less surprising was running back Damon Bankston’s announcement that he’d enter the transfer portal and find a new home for his final college year. Bankston ran for a career-high 234 yards at Sacramento State this season and his 2,324 career yards is sixth all-time at Weber State in just 2 1/2 seasons of starter reps.

Junior defensive end Brayden Wilson, sophomore running back Adrian Cormier and graduate center Terrance Caldwell have also hit the portal.

More will follow in what is the new normal for FCS football.

“This program is strong. We will continue to get better,” Mental said after his team capped the season with a home win over Cal Poly. “We’ll continue to make adjustments to make this program better and get us back into the playoffs.”

MENTAL AND THE COACHING STAFF

BRANDON GARSIDE/Standard-Examiner

What changed from Weber State’s 2022 season that saw the Wildcats gain a 10-3 record with a win over an FBS opponent?

The obvious answer is Jay Hill’s departure and Mental’s elevation to head coach. The rest of the staff remained the same.

But more than that has changed.

BYU’s ascendence to power-conference football and becoming a juggernaut in the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) scene changed the landscape of the sport in Utah. For example, the Cougars can pay every walk-on player a salary akin to a green sports reporter at a small newspaper.

Hill’s departure to that program magnified matters, drawing several top defensive players to Provo in each of the last two offseasons.

ISAAC FISHER, Special to the Standard-Examiner

On the other side, Utah Tech’s entrance into Division I football gives the state an additional FCS school, one that is sometimes willing to offer full scholarships to players Weber State would normally bring aboard on partial scholarship and develop into starters in what had been a proven method of program-building.

Still, Weber State’s team played well enough in spurts during the 2024 season to compete in the Big Sky. Other times, however, the Wildcats looked so ill-prepared that they flirted with the possibility of tying for last place in the league.

That included both the offense and defense, with the same coaches, at different moments.

So what’s next?

“Nobody enjoys losing, particularly the coaches and student-athletes in that building,” Weber State athletic director Tim Crompton said. “The season fell short of our expectations, which is clear and fair to acknowledge. We’ll review everything and begin making necessary improvements to move forward.”

Will that include a change in Mental’s job status? Right now, that seems unlikely.

Mental completed the second season of a four-year contract. Head coaching contracts across most sports are typically three to four years, but in football, four to five is the standard. A survey of contracts shows most recently hired coaches around the Big Sky Conference were inked to five-year deals.

Mental’s contract runs through the 2026 season and officially ends Jan. 31, 2027. He’s paid $215,000 yearly (for reference, Hill’s yearly guaranteed pay at the time of his departure was $366,475). Early termination without cause brings due every dollar of that salary for the remainder of the contract term.

There are no performance-based clauses related to win-loss record in his contract; performance-based clauses include usual boilerplate items about NCAA infractions and criminal activity, as well as minimums for Academic Progress Rate.

Of note, the academic side of WSU’s football program has never been better. APR is a formula the NCAA uses to help quantify the academic health of a program involving points earned for players who remain with the program and who stay academically eligible. A minimum four-year average of 930 is required to be postseason eligible. Current-year APR and four-year average are used to determine if a school might face penalties for poor performance.

Weber State posted a program-best 966 APR for the 2023-24 school year. Mental’s contract allows for early termination if the team falls below 940 (it hasn’t done so since 2014-15, Hill’s first season as head coach). WSU has also set team GPA records of 3.22 and 3.28 in the last two semesters, Mental says.

After the season finale, Mental praised academic coordinators and advisors, as well as his assistant coaches, for that success.

The combination of Mental’s full-salary-due buyout and the fact that the program is healthy off the field means the university — not typically one rolling in cash from donors or student fees — seems unlikely to stomach a big payout that would essentially require them to pay two head coaches for the next two years.

It’s possible, however, that the 2025 season provides a more clear on-the-field performance audit.

On the field, Weber State’s offense struggled in the red zone, the defense had a hard time getting off the field on third downs or creating turnovers, and the place-kicking game brought some heartburn in key situations.

The results have, sources say, brought some on the coaching staff to a reflection point beyond Duff; almost all of them are, for lack of a better term, Hill’s guys. Assistant coaches, some of whom were also candidates, were united upon Mental’s promotion and Hill himself publicly approved the hire. But now, the attempted marriage between Mental and a staff hired by someone else has perhaps neared its conclusion.

Sources indicate it’s likely that at least some coaches will pursue new opportunities, while Mental has the prerogative to make changes as well. Assistant coaches are almost always working on year-to-year contracts.

TRANSFER PORTAL, ROSTER LIMITS

It’s never been easier for players to transfer from team to team. Transferring once required a player to sit out one season after transferring, then changed to a player getting one “free” transfer that did not require sitting out but any subsequent transfer would. Now, due to court decisions, players can move freely from year to year and play immediately, as long as their academic record is in good standing.

That, combined with the availability of NIL cash to attract players to find new homes, is a new normal that takes continual adjustment. (That NIL cash is simply something Weber State does not have; the Purple Dub Club puts forth great effort to make players who want to be at WSU a little more comfortable but is not dealing in the numbers of digits to be considered enticement, by any means).

Win or lose, it seems FCS teams are, at least for now, destined to have one-quarter to one-third of their rosters change each offseason. Montana State’s huge run game has led a stream of offensive linemen to find FBS homes, for example. With freedom to move, there are going to be more players in pursuit of something else, whether that’s money, playing time, a more prestigious program in a bigger conference, something closer to home or other things.

This is happening at the same time that the terms of the House v. NCAA settlement mean FBS teams will now have a roster limit of 105. Previous rules limited FBS teams to 85 scholarships while many have 30-40 more players in the program as walk-ons. In true keeping-up-with-the-Joneses fashion, most or all FBS teams are expected to hit the 105 limit with 105 scholarships, and any number of players over that number will no longer be rostered.

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule said this week he anticipates he’ll have 30-50 players in the transfer portal due to the new roster limit.

So it’s possible that walk-ons may not exist at the FBS level. That could, for example, dry up BYU’s NIL program for walk-on players that recently drew a decent handful of Weber State underclassmen transfers and high school recruits with WSU scholarship offers.

And that could, after a year of stark realization, slow the flow of transfers leaving FCS teams in hopes of finding an FBS home. It stands to reason that it will also create a big pool of FBS players who’d like to find a new team and keep playing college football.

Mental said recruiting goes back to the pillars of finding players who love football, who love Weber State and play “as physical and violent as you can be.”

“Now we get into the process of talking and going through our roster, which has already started,” Mental said Saturday after the Cal Poly win. “We can’t stray away from those pillars, no matter how good (a player) is. Is he about what we’re about? And just being honest and educating these kids at a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty on rosters.

“Communicating at a high level and being truthful and honest … and if you do that and the kid makes a decision, it’s his right to make that decision. We have to be prepared as a staff to excel at our program. We’ve got great kids. I don’t hold anything ever against them.”

So, opportunity exists for Weber State to recruit more FBS transfers and build a more balanced roster with more upperclassmen, relying less on first- and second-year players to play most on-field reps. That would also require some coaches to be more willing to recruit transfers than they may have been in the past.

“It’s all about the right fit. Do they make us better? Do they check the boxes within our program, both athletically and academically, socially to make us a better team?” Mental said. “Priority is, first and foremost, is to retain our kids. Always will be. The second priority is to dominate in Utah, getting Utah high school football players who want to stay in state, have their family and friends come here and watch them succeed … and have a great four- to five-year experience here at Weber State.”

With transfer decisions happening each day and some coaching changes still possible, the next clear date on the calendar is Wednesday, Dec. 4. The early signing period for high school freshmen is Dec. 4-6 and Weber State hopes to officially add California three-star quarterback Kingston Tisdell and former Syracuse High wide receiver Shaun Blanton to the team, among others.