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One size fits all. That’s great for hats in the Zion National Park gift shop but not for water conservation goals.

So at the start of this decade — and for the first time — Utah figured it would ditch that statewide approach and set goals that account for regional differences in water supplies and uses.

After all, life in Salt Lake County isn’t like living in the eastern rural counties along the Colorado border. Water, as it turns out, “is very hyperlocal,” said Candice Hasenyager, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources.

The Beehive State needs to do more with less as growth, climate change and Colorado River uncertainties stress its limited water supply.

To meet a statewide conservation goal of 16%, the decade-long effort aims to reduce the water used in homes, schools and businesses. Individual targets were set for each county to make it happen. Farm irrigation isn’t part of it — there are other ways to save water there. While it’s true that most of Utah’s water goes to agriculture, “ag is not always where the people are,” Hasenyager said. So, how Utahns conserve in cities and towns still matters.

Halfway through the initiative, however, the results are mixed.

“There are some areas that have already exceeded the goals, which is great,” Hasenyager said. “Then there are other areas that we know need to do a lot more work.”

Fifteen of Utah’s 29 counties have reached their annual 2030 goals at least once in the past two years. That list of success stories ranges from the most populated county, Salt Lake, to the least, Daggett. Washington, Iron and Tooele counties hit their targets in at least one recent year, too. But 14 other counties have not, including Weber, Juab and Box Elder.

Four rural counties in Utah’s Colorado River Basin — Carbon, Duchesne, Uintah and Wayne — are a microcosm of the state’s successes and struggles.

Take Carbon County and its goal is to use an average of 239 gallons per person per day by 2030. That would be an 11% decrease from the 267 gallons it used in 2015, the state’s baseline year for the reduction targets.

In 2024, the county used 197 gallons per person per day, the fifth lowest rate in the state. That’s even less per capita than urban Salt Lake and Utah counties. So, they beat their goal last year.

Uintah met its goal in 2023, years ahead of the deadline.

It’s a different story for Duchesne and Wayne. Both are using more water than they did a decade ago.

Talking about saving water matters

Seemingly similar counties — like, say, Duchesne and Uintah or Salt Lake and Weber — have seen very different outcomes. The reasons behind such disparities range from money to lot sizes to local economies.

It also comes down to the priorities of local leaders and how they talk about saving water. Ultimately, that trickles down to influence people’s behavior.

“People need to be convinced there’s a need and a purpose for undertaking water conservation activities,” said Joanna Endter-Wada, a Utah State University water policy and sociology of conservation researcher.

It can take time — years — for the message to sink in and shift a community’s culture. So, how long and how vigorously a county has emphasized conservation can make a difference.

Wayne County uses more water per person than any other part of Utah, in excess of 900 gallons per capita per day.

That doesn’t surprise Mickey Wright, a retired software engineer who’s the mayor of Torrey. It’s a town of 332 people near Capitol Reef National Park.

“I think our focus hasn’t been enough on water,” Wright said. To him, the biggest barrier to conservation is shifting from an individualistic to collective mindset.

“We don’t think of ourselves as being that significant, that my little bit doesn’t have that much effect.”

Wright grew up in rural southern Colorado and remembers a life of water rationing. When he first came to Utah to meet his wife’s family, he was struck by all the green lawns.

Now, he wants Torrey to start setting a better example.

Outside the old fire station repurposed as the city office, Wright walked across a patch of grass whose days are numbered. By next spring, he said it’ll become a high desert garden with native grasses and flowers. The idea is to inspire residents and businesses to do something similar.

Wright remains hopeful Wayne County can turn things around and hit its goal in the next five years, but he acknowledges change can be difficult. When he pitched a grass removal rebate program earlier in his term, he had a hard time getting support.

But the alternative to conservation is expensive. Torrey will need more water as it grows, the mayor said, which would require pipeline projects to bring it in that could easily top $5 million.

“The less water we use, the less millions we’ve got to go find,” Wright said. “That’s the argument I’ve got to make.”

People are trying to start a similar conversation to the north of Wayne in Duchesne County. It uses the sixth most water per capita in Utah and would need to cut back by more than 40% to reach its 2030 goal.

They’re part of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, which stretches from Orem to the Colorado border. That’s a lot of ground to cover, so Savannah Peterson, one of the district’s water conservation programs coordinators, knows she needs to speak everyone’s language.

“Using words like ‘xeriscaping’ or ‘waterwise’ in more urban areas is a really popular thing. But in our rural areas, we talk about ‘drought resiliency,’” Peterson said. “We’re trying to meet people where they are in terms of their understanding of the water situation.”

The district already offers rebates to help Duchesne residents replace leaky toilets, upgrade sprinkler controls or remove thirsty lawns. But folks often think of those programs as a city thing, and they may not even realize it’s available to them.

“Water districts have sometimes been seen as the bad guy,” she said. “But we want to make sure that people know we’re a resource.”

Ryan Goodrich has faced conservation misconceptions, too. He manages the Ashley Valley Water & Sewer Improvement District in neighboring Uintah County near Vernal.

Over the past decade, his team has worked to dispel common myths, like the thought that conserving locally means sending more water downstream to California. The reality, he said, is that saving water stores it in Uintah’s reservoirs.

As drought set in this spring, his district raised its rates and told customers why.

“People don’t like being told what to do, and so my message to that is: We don’t tell them what to do. We explain the situation and let them pick,” Goodrich said.

That meant choosing between paying a higher bill or trying to cut back, he said, “but if they don’t understand the underlying reason for it, they’re not going to do it.”

Uintah’s local efforts appear to be paying off. It hit the state’s 2030 goal in 2023 with 209 gallons per capita per day, before slipping back above the target line in 2024.

Between the higher water rates and a new outreach plan of radio ads, text messages and flyers, Goodrich said his district has cut water use by roughly another 20% this year.

It’s great to see how far Uintah has come with conservation, Goodrich said, but it’s no time to rest on their laurels.

“We are doing a pretty good job. We can do better,” he said. “This year was the year that we said we have to do better, because we just don’t have the water.”

The size of a community’s wallet matters, too

Clear, consistent communication isn’t the only thing that can help residents save more water. Small towns may have just one person managing their water system, Endter-Wada said, while bigger cities have a whole staff of water conservation experts.

The more resources a community has, the more likely they’ll be able to implement conservation efforts such as lawn replacement incentives and hiring employees to manage those programs.

“At the end of the day,” Hasenyager, the state water director, said, “conservation costs money.”

There are real barriers in places with fewer people and smaller budgets. That’s the case in Myton, a town of 662 in Duchesne County.

Water is so vital to life in this part of northeast Utah that Myton showcases a ragged wooden pipeline from the early 20th century in its museum. But even the pipes that carry Myton’s water into town today have problems. Many are nearing 50 years old and leak badly, Mayor Kathleen Cooper said. Those pipes routinely lost more than a fifth of the town’s water over the past decade.

But Myton doesn’t have the money to replace them.

“I don’t know who you blame,” Cooper said. “All I know is that I need water pipes, and we only have 600 people.”

Around a quarter of the town’s residents live below the poverty line. That’s more than triple the state average. It also overlaps with Ute tribal land and around one-sixth of its residents are Native.

“We don’t have a bunch of oil barons living in Myton that could raise our property rates so that we would get more money,” Cooper said. “So, we have to rely heavily on grants.”

And those federal funds dwindle by the second, she said.

On top of that, small towns face a competitive disadvantage. If they apply for grants, Endter-Wada said, they’re often up against urban and suburban communities that hire outside consultants to juice up their proposals.

When rural areas do get their hands on the money, it’s easy to see the impact. Look at the town of Helper, in Carbon County, just south of Duchesne.

Along a highway in Price Canyon, Mayor Lenise Peterman rested her hand on a rusted pile of scrap from a pipeline that brought water to town for 70 years. Before they replaced it, the town of 2,680 people lost about half its water before it ever made it to someone’s kitchen sink.

Helper made it happen thanks to $3.4 million in federal post-pandemic funds. That’s nearly double the town’s entire annual budget, Peterman said.

“We were fortunate to get that funding and to make it happen,” she said.

“We knew we weren’t doing that well,” the mayor added. “It wasn’t that we weren’t trying, it was that the infrastructure was failing us.”

With the new pipe installed, Helper can focus on next steps for saving more water. For example, the mayor wants to start a program in the local schools to teach kids about conservation.

The nearby town of Price also has a leaky pipeline that’s nearly a century old. City council member Terry Willis said they recently snagged around $5 million in grants and $10 million in loans to replace it.

“When you have to say millions, it makes your heart beat a little bit and makes your stomach churn a little bit,” Willis said. “But it’s the reality of what it is.”

Price and Helper are both in Carbon County, which has already met its 2030 goal.

Between hotter, drier weather and concerns about the future of the Colorado River, there’s urgency for communities to keep going.

“We watch the climate change, and it has continued to change since I’ve lived here,” Willis said as she stood next to the Price River, which can dry up during drought. So, conservation has to be at “the forefront of everything we do. Because without water, the community will fail.”

Mayor Cooper said Myton has applied for federal and state checks, too. In the past couple of years, the town has gotten outside funds to replace water meters and launch an app for residents to check their water use.

She wants to do more, though. And hasn’t given up yet.

“I’m always hopeful,” Cooper said with a laugh. “You have to be in Myton. That’s all we have left is hope.”

When water props up rural economies and larger homes

In 2023, homes were the top water users in Uintah and Carbon counties’ municipal districts. Most commercial, institutional and industrial customers didn’t come close.

Residential was also the leading user in every Wayne County district except one. That was in Torrey, Capitol Reef National Park’s gateway town, where the commercial sector used the most.

That likely points to one influencing factor: tourism. People staying at hotels, resorts and RV parks may use Torrey’s water, but they aren’t counted in its population.

Visitors spent $54.8 million in Wayne County in 2023, according to data from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. That means tourism brought in $21,720 per resident — significantly higher than tourism’s relative impact in Duchesne ($2,581 per resident), Carbon ($4,309) or Uintah ($6,253).

Wayne has a small population, 2,543, and visitors could have an outsized impact on its per capita numbers. Still, a small number of residents hasn’t stopped neighboring Garfield County — home to 5,115 people and Bryce Canyon National Park — from decreasing its water use since 2015, while Wayne’s has gone up.

Duchesne may not have as much tourism, but it ranks high for fossil fuel extraction. In a 2021 letter to President Joe Biden, local leaders described the county as Utah’s top crude oil producer and No. 3 for natural gas.

In Duchesne’s Johnson Water Improvement District, industrial customers used 689,441,942 gallons 2023. That’s more than five times what the district’s residents used that year and nearly twice as much as all the homes in Roosevelt, the county’s largest city. On its website, the district says it provides a “substantial amount of water” to the oil and gas industry.

Other industrial uses, such as data centers and processing plants, can have similar impacts on water in rural areas, Endter-Wada said.

“So, it’s really not just a reflection on the individual behaviors of the residents in the area, but it reflects the economy as a whole,” she said.

When water props up the local economy, it is hard to cut back. That illustrates why it’s important to be cautious about the types of new industries Utah leaders welcome, Hasenyager said.

Large rural lot sizes also skew the data, Endter-Wada said, because more than half of Utah’s residential water gets sprayed onto lawns and gardens. If you have a family of five living on a small tract in the city, they’re likely to use less water than a family of five on a sprawling property in the country.

“Distribute that water use over a smaller population,” Endter-Wada said and “you’ll see greater gallons per capita per day numbers.”

Wayne has the largest average lot size in Utah, more than triple Salt Lake County’s, according to state data. Duchesne’s lot sizes are in the middle of the pack — similar to the average in Utah County and smaller than Uintah’s.

Another factor is that the state has to estimate much of Wayne’s water use, Hasenyager said, because there aren’t enough meters tracking the actual gallons. Installing measuring devices for all of Utah’s secondary water systems, which generally go to landscaping, is another state goal for 2030.

Until then, there may be some farm irrigation inadvertently counted with the county’s city water.

“I’m pretty convinced that [Wayne’s data] has agricultural water in it, and we need to try to dig into that,” Hasenyager said

The state is also digging into potential changes to the 2030 goals.

Right now, the target reductions are based on each county’s average water use from 2015. The state may soon use the average from 2015 to 2019 as the baseline instead. That change would bring Wayne and Duchesne closer to hitting the mark, but their 2024 water use would still be significantly higher than those updated goals.

Utah may also start using a percentage to reflect how close each county is to its goal, Hasenyager said, rather than the specific amount of water it uses.

Other changes have already happened. In 2025, the Legislature directed Utah’s five most populous counties to report their consumptive water use, rather than total water use. That allows a county to subtract return flows — the gallons that go back into the water system — from its sum and results in a lower per capita figure. This story relies on the total water use for those five counties rather than consumptive use to maintain a direct comparison with the counties’ data from 2015-2019 and with the data from the other 24 counties.

Despite around half the state’s counties falling short of their 2030 goals so far, Hasenyager said Utah is in a much better place than it was five years ago.

“There are more programs now than ever before that are encouraging water conservation from all different levels — from the state, from the districts, from the local water suppliers,” she said. “So, I’m really hopeful and confident that more of our counties will meet those 2030 goals.”

There’s no penalty for those who don’t meet their goals by the end of the decade. But communities who aren’t careful with their water, Hasenyager said, could face natural consequences in such a dry state.

This story was reported in partnership with KSL-TV and the Colorado River Collaborative, with support from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River at greatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver.

Kalima Watson is an ancestry detective, and he wants to help you get in touch with your family history because he knows it can change your life.

It shifted his.

“When I delved into my own ancestry, it was life-changing,” he said. “I learned about their stories, the hard things that they did, some of the difficulties that they’ve gone through, challenges that they overcame, and just knowing that helped me to feel like I could draw on their power and then face hard, difficult things as well.”

It encouraged Watson to push himself, to take some chances. He got a tattoo and went on a fitness journey, all because he felt “empowered” by his ancestors.

He learned of one relative who was originally from Africa but ended up in Hawaii, and how his life played out there. He also learned about Scandinavian ancestors who traced back to Vikings.

“It made me feel like it’s something that everyone should have access to,” he said, “because if it could be that empowering for me, imagine what it could do for the world.”

About a year ago, Watson started making videos about some of his ancestors. In May, he began building a fanbase, and within a week, he said, his Instagram follower count shot up from from 700 to 100,000.

“To me,” he said, “it [was] a sign that people are interested in their ancestry and that it can be empowering.”

Now, Watson creates a steady stream of videos on social media so others can learn about their family history. He’s amassed nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram under his account, @justkalima.

The Eagle Mountain resident is also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a faith that places a high value on the study of family history. The church describes its FamilySearch library as “one of the largest genealogical libraries in the world.”

Watson uses tools like FamilySearch and Ancestry to help gather documentation and research people’s ancestry. Then, he said, he uses ChatGPT to help with the story-building aspect and get a sense of what was going on in the world during the time that ancestor was alive.

In his videos, Watson dons a medieval knight look, ready to share tales. “People like characters,” he said of his attire, which consists of chain mail and small, round glasses.

“What caught me off guard is, the first probably 10 or 15 videos that I made, nobody mentioned it,” Watson said. “They just kind of accepted that that was the person they were watching. At this point it’s part of the brand, but initially it was just to be goofy and memorable.”

These days, most of the videos Watson makes are for his followers.

Some of the things he has discovered include one follower’s ancestor “who took a bullet in the Civil War and then switched sides,” another whose relative nearly revived an ancient kingship in Ireland, and another who helped build the foundation of modern politics in Greece.

Some followers come to Watson with as little information as their family members’ names, while others might know a thing or two about their family’s past already.

Shane Purdue, a follower from Dallas, Texas, who discovered Watson’s account “by chance” scrolling through Instagram Reels, already had an ancestral family free set up, but Watson helped him unlock new stories he’d never heard before.

“I briefly explained to him a little bit about my great-grandfather and his time serving in the war, and he expanded on that and found all this extra information,” Purdue said. “[He] found a bunch of records, escape and evasion reports, which we were not aware of at that time.”

Purdue showed his grandmother the video, who was “very excited” to learn more about her dad.

Watson said he hopes his videos can not only help people learn about their family histories, but also encourage younger people, who may be less inclined to dig into the past, to get in touch with their roots.

“That’s kind of the whole reason behind it,” he said, “to change that narrative.”

Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

While presiding over the mostly-empty U.S. House of Representatives last week, U.S. Rep. Blake Moore of Utah’s 1st Congressional District saw an opportunity, he said, to embarrass his young sons.

While reporting the “ayes” and “nos” for a vote on a joint resolution, Moore joked the results were “6-7” — referencing a popular, mostly meaningless obsession currently rampant among America’s youth.

At the time, the Utah Republican was serving as the speaker pro tempore, a temporary role in which House members serve to oversee the chamber’s business, including calling for votes and managing debate.

“The question is on passage of the joint resolution. Those in favor say aye. Those opposed say no,” Moore said.

With only a few lawmakers on the floor for the debate, Moore received a weak number of replies from lawmakers who said aloud their vote.

“It’s about 6-7,” Moore said with a small smirk and while doing the juggling hand gesture that’s part of the popular meme.

Moore kept a mostly straight face and went on to determine that “the ayes have it” before Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., made a request to formally hear the votes and laughed at Moore’s joke, causing Moore to smile at the podium.

In CSPAN footage of the floor at the time, two young staffers can be seen laughing and shaking their heads.

In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, Moore said the joke was “definitely not planned.”

“It just came to me while sitting in the chair as speaker pro tempore, which can admittedly get a little boring when there’s limited floor activity,” the lawmaker said. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was mostly so I could embarrass my kids. I’m away from my boys a lot in this job, and things like this can get their attention and bring us together.”

On the social media platform, Moore, a father of four boys, shared a clip of the moment and said, “My kids tell me I’m ruining it.”

And in his statement to The Tribune, Moore wrote, “They were definitely embarrassed … so mission accomplished.”

The “6-7” meme and its accompanying hand gesture blew up on TikTok and Instagram this year, largely credited to the song “Doot Doot” by the rapper Skrilla, which includes the line, “I know he dyin’ / 6-7 / I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip).”

But don’t go trying to decode the meaning much further than that: It’s essential meaninglessness — and the obsession adults have with understanding what it means is part of the point.

“There’s not really a meaning behind 6-7. … I would just use it randomly,” one 10-year-old told The New York Times earlier this month.

The meme has gotten so big that Dictionary.com recently named it 2025’s “Word of the Year.”

“Perhaps the most defining feature of 6-7 is that it’s impossible to define,” the website wrote when awarding the phrase its high honor. “It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brainrot. It’s the logical endpoint of being perpetually online, scrolling endlessly, consuming content fed to users by algorithms trained by other algorithms.”

Moore, at any rate, seems inclined to embrace it.

During a telephone town hall last Thursday, while talking about the recent government shutdown and the fact that, due to the Senate filibuster rules, ending the shutdown required at least 60 votes in favor.

“There’s currently 53 Republican senators and 47 senators that caucus with the Democrats, so there needs to be at least, like, seven [senators],” Moore said before pausing slightly. “I’m not going to say six-seven. I’m going to say seven or eight.”

Elijah “Scooby” Davis watched the eyes of the quarterback, as Jalon Daniels dropped back in the pocket.

The Kansas quarterback then launched the ball toward his receiver, running a flat route.

But Davis had other plans.

The Ute cornerback jumped the route, intercepted the pass and the rest was history: 97 yards later, Davis found pay dirt and gave his Utes a 24-14 lead with 8:05 remaining.

After a sluggish performance on both sides of the football, No. 13 Utah’s three interceptions against Daniels proved the difference in its 31-21 victory over Kansas on Black Friday in Lawrence.

The Utes officially ended the regular season with a 10-2 record and a 7-2 mark in the Big 12.

Junior quarterback Devon Dampier was also a catalyst in the victory, finishing with 253 passing yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed the ball 11 times for 50 rushing yards.

The Utes opened up the game with a 3-0 lead over the Jayhawks with 8:39 remaining in the first quarter after Smith Snowden intercepted KU quarterback Jalon Daniels for a 17-yard gain.

Kansas running back Daniel Hishaw responded with a 7-yard rushing touchdown with 12:03 remaining in the second quarter. The score gave the Jayhawks a 7-3 lead.

Dampier and the Utah offense were finally able to find life a drive later, following a quiet first quarter. The junior quarterback found freshman tight end JJ Buchanan for a 58-yard touchdown reception.

Utah held a 10-7 lead at the half, but things went south for its defense in the third quarter. Daniels connected with KU wide receiver Emmanuel Henderson Jr. for 34 yards. Several plays later, Daniels sneaked forward for a 1-yard rushing score to retake a 14-10 lead with 8:16 remaining in the third quarter.

After recovering a Byrd Ficklin fumble and forcing a punt, Kansas appeared to be in the driver’s seat with 13:45 remaining. But once again, Daniels threw an interception, this time to defensive back Jackson Bennee in the end zone.

Dampier and the Ute offense led a four-play, 80-yard drive after Bennee’s pick, which was capped off by a 28-yard touchdown pass to Larry Simmons.

On the next series, Davis picked off Daniels for the 97-yard pick-six. The Jayhawks were able to stay in the contest, however, after Daniels found wide receiver Leyton Cure for a 21-yard touchdown.

Dampier and Simmons put the game on ice with a 48-yard touchdown, which gave the Utes a 31-21 lead with 2:14 left in the game. The touchdown was Dampier’s third passing score of the afternoon and 22nd of the regular season.

The Utes, however, were eliminated from Big 12 contention later Friday night when Arizona State lost to the Arizona Wildcats.

Logan • Bronco Mendenhall was on his remote Montana ranch when he first heard of “the pig farmer.”

And there might not have been a quarterback more tailored for the coach-turned-cowboy.

So when Mendenhall flipped on Utah’s game and saw then-signal caller Bryson Barnes leading the way — with the announcers explaining how he tended to thousands of pigs on his family’s farm — he gravitated toward his story.

“He came in as a backup, and I was just like, ‘Man, what a tough, tough kid,” Mendenhall said. “I wasn’t watching tons of games, and I don’t consider myself a fan. But I did remember watching that game. I remember his story.”

Years later, the cowboy and the pig farmer’s relationship turned out as fitting as it sounds.

Mendenhall left his horses in Montana to coach the Aggies. Barnes, originally from Milford, transferred from Utah and became Mendenhall’s first captain.

And the pair has effectively rebuilt Utah State’s football program into a postseason contender in just 10 months.

Now Utah State is heading to a bowl game thanks to Barnes’ late-career flurry. He has 2,500 passing yards, 27 total touchdowns and a league-leading 13 yards per completion. He accounts for nearly 70 percent of Utah State’s entire offensive output.

It has Mendenhall calling for Barnes to be named the Mountain West player of the year.

“It’s Bryson Barnes every day, all day, every vote,” Mendenhall said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. What he is doing for this team, simply by commitment, is setting the foundation for this program for a long, long time.”

But it wasn’t always that easy.

When Mendenhall took over Utah State’s rebuild, he had doubts about putting Barnes in charge.

Nearly everywhere Mendenhall had been, he entrusted his offense to freakish athletes. He coached Taysom Hill at BYU, who famously ran a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash and squatted 685 pounds. He had Bryce Perkins at Virginia, a player so athletic that he set UVa’s all-time record with 3,600 total yards in a single season.

“They’re phenomenal athletes, in terms of the sheer vertical jumps and speed and all that. And while Bryson is an amazing athlete, his testing numbers aren’t the same,” Mendenhall said.

Barnes didn’t have the track record either. While he famously came in during the Rose Bowl to spell an injured Cam Rising, at Utah Barnes only had moments instead of sustained success.

He beat USC in the Coliseum but never threw for more than 1,600 yards in a single season. He threw a touchdown against Ohio State, but was forced to transfer after riding the bench most of his career in Salt Lake.

His first year in Logan didn’t go as planned, either. He ended with under 1,000 yards passing and a fan base restless to see if Barnes was really the future.

“That [first] year was just interesting. We lost our head coach in the summer and it always felt different in that way,” Barnes said. But Mendenhall’s “offense utilizes my strengths more than [2024] offense,” he insisted.

Mendenhall started to see it that way too as they became closer.

Both had a similar story of being overlooked. Mendenhall famously always wanted to play for BYU but never got the call. Instead, he chose to play at Oregon State so he could play against the Cougars. The day the Beavers beat BYU inside LaVell Edwards Stadium, Mendenhall was doing snow angles on the stretch Y at midfield.

Barnes, too, was told he wasn’t good enough by Utah’s coaching staff. Even as he was Rising’s long-time backup, the Utes brought in star freshman Isaac Wilson and others to play over him. So he ventured to USU to prove himself.

It worked.

USU gave Barnes the reins as he beat up on Air Force and UTEP. He accounted for 421 total yards and five touchdowns against McNeese State.

“What I didn’t know, even through spring, is the competitive spirit, the toughness,” Mendenhall said. “I mean, that’s been remarkable. I saw the other side and I said, ‘Man, this is going to be a good quarterback.’ I didn’t know that part, not to the level he has been.”

Together they have enjoyed a career resurgence.

The Aggies went from four wins to six in his first year.

Barnes is having a career year. He just had his first child, Reed, in October and is looking to end his five-year college stint with something to leave behind in Logan.

“I’ve just got to run out of words. I’m kind of out of descriptors,” Mendenhall said.

To Mendenhall, Barnes has already done more than he expected.

But for one parting gift, with bowl eligibility on the line, Barnes put on a vintage performance against Fresno State. He threw for 151 yards and ran for 113 more. Facing the best run defense in the league, USU escaped to get to six wins.

Barnes followed that up by taking Boise State to the wire on Saturday night. He broke USU’s single-season record for most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback. He finished with over 250 total yards in a 25-24 loss.

It was Barnes’ final game at Maverik Stadium, but the Aggies believe their quarterback has set the table for the future.

“I’m really excited for the direction and trajectory of the program,” Mendenhall said.

Not bad for a pig farmer and a cowboy.