Richard Burney joined the Lobo Football program in May of 2024, and he serves as an assistant athletic performance coach. He comes to New Mexico after a spending the past two and a half years with SMU.
This will be Burney’s first year working with Bronco Mendenhall, who was his coach for five of his six seasons at Virginia.
With New Mexico, Burney will work under Nate Pototschnik in the athletic performance space in the areas of strength, conditioning and injury prevention and rehabilitation for football.
Burney spent two and a half years as a strength and conditioning coach with the SMU Mustangs working with the football program, helping SMU to the 2022 New Mexico Bowl and the 2023 Wasabi Fenway Bowl.
Cross played six years at Virginia, from 2015-2021, playing as a defensive end. Overall, he played in 46 games with 47 career tackles, 9.0 TFLs for 33 yards, and a forced fumble.
After graduation, he served a one-year internship at UVA in the strength and conditioning area, his first foray into the coaching profession.
The native of Chesapeake, Virginia earned his bachelor’s degree in American studies and civilization from Virginia in 2019 and a master’s in higher education administration from Virginia in 2020.