UNLV managed to pull off one final, pleasant surprise this year by actually beating Cal in the L.A. Bowl. After the news that head coach Barry Odom left UNLV to take the head coaching job at Purdue, UNLV went from being a 4-ish point favorite to being an underdog in that game. Things started out shaky, with the offense having difficulty moving the ball in the first quarter. But the defense played well, and the offense eventually got its footing just enough to seal an 11-point victory.

Credit to interim coach Del Alexander, who kept the team focused, and called a pretty good game, including a masterful fake punt on a 4th and long inside UNLV's own 40 yard line! UNLV's scouts did their job and identified that Cal would be vulnerable to a play like that, and Alexander had the guts to call it in a completely surprising situation to steal all the momentum back in UNLV's favor.

In any case, I was pretty sour on the idea of the bowl game. I wasn't going to be able to attend the L.A. Bowl in person anyway, because it was in the middle of the week on a Wednesday, and I couldn't get the time off work, since I had already committed all of my remaining time off to the week between Christmas and New Year. But after Odom abandoned the team, and offensive coordinator Brennan Marion was snubbed for the head coaching promotion, I was kind of mad at both UNLV and the NCAA for allowing this collapse to happen. Though I did end up signing up for a 7-day free trial of Fubo in order to watch the bowl on TV, out of a sense of obligation.

Complete changing of the guard

Dan Mullen seems like a fine hire. He's had success in the SEC, which is the most difficult conference in college football. If a coach can win there, they can win anywhere.

I was really hoping for some consistency in terms of the team's identity. In that regard, I was rooting for Brennan Marion or defensive coordinator Mike Scherer to get the head coaching job. Marion's offense was as much a part of UNLV's recent success as Odom's head coaching was. And Scherer's defense was the best defense I've ever seen from this team. Odom, Marion, and Scherer successfully turned a perennial basement-dweller into a potential powerhouse that proved it could compete in a big boy conference like the Big 12. I wanted that identity to become fundamental to the team's DNA in the way that the Flexbone Triple Option is fundamental to the identity of the service academies. I wanted the Go-Go Offense to be "the UNLV offense" to the layman and casual college football fan. That success should have been rewarded by UNLV. Honestly, I thought that Marion would be a shoe-in.

But it seems like Marion may have some personality issues that make him difficult to work with. He may have been the one who promised NIL money to Matt Sluka, which the university couldn't actually afford to pay. I've read that he was almost fired for that. Maybe Odom wanted to fire him, but Harper over-ruled that decision, and maybe that's part of the reason why Odom seemed like he couldn't get out of Vegas fast enough. More generally, I've heard that Marion has a very abrasive personality, and that's not a good quality in a head coach.

Odom did not invite Marion to follow him to Purdue the way he invited Scherer. Instead, Marion is going to be the head coach of the Sacramento State Hornets in the Big Sky conference of the FCS. It doesn't seem like there were too many FBS schools banging down Marion's door to invite him to coach their teams. And maybe that is for very good reason. If that's the case, then the Sacramento State football team is a powder keg waiting to explode.

UNLV passed on OC Brennan Marion [LEFT] in favor of former SEC coach Dan Mullen.

So in summary, UNLV has lost is entire winning coaching staff, and it will be losing a majority of its starters to graduation (including a few potential NFL draftees). Ricky White, Jacob De Jesus, Jackson Woodard, Tiger Shanks, Jalen Catalon, Cameron Oliver, Hajj-Malik Williams, Jett Elad, and others will all be graduating, with White, Woodard, and Oliver having already declared for the NFL Draft. Some of UNLV's top recruits have also already switched their commitments to follow Odom to Purdue, and who knows how many under-classmen will follow suit and transfer to Purdue? Will Jaiden "Jet" Thomas still be a Rebel next year? Or Antonio Doyle? Or Fisher Camac?

Mullen will certainly have to do a lot of building through the transfer portal.

The NCAA needs to regulate in-season talent poaching!

This story is also bigger than just UNLV. The NCAA should really be paying close attention to what's going on here. You have a team that was 1-game away from making the inaugural College Football Playoff, and they had their head coach poached out from under them the week of a conference championship game. That should not be happening!

The dream of crashing the inaugural College Football Playoff is over for UNLV. They lost the Mountain West Championship to Boise State for the second year in a row. Boise will be the automatic Group of 5 representative in the playoff. What's more, 3rd-ranked (in the CFP rankings) SMU lost its championship game to Clemson, which demoted them to the "at large" 11th seed, and leapfrogged Boise State to the 3rd seed in the playoffs. Boise will have a first-round bye in the playoff, and will host the winner of Penn State and SMU.

The loss pushed UNLV back to #24 in the playoff rankings, and they are expected to be invited to the L.A. Bowl.

Boise State beat UNLV in the Mountain West Championship and will be the 3rd seed in the inaugural playoff.

This loss was rough. I really thought that UNLV had a good chance to beat Boise State. UNLV lost by only 5 points when they first played in Vegas in the middle of the season. UNLV was one of the few teams to actually make Heisman candidate Ashton Jeanty look almost pedestrian -- though he still ran for well over a hundred yards and multiple TDs.

My dad and I drove out to Boise to watch the game on the blue turf, only to see UNLV play, by far, its worst game of the season. I'm not sure if it was the cold (the temperature was 27 degrees at kickoff), or if they finally succumbed to the pressure, or maybe there were other distractions (which I'll talk about later). UNLV's offense looked inept, and the defense failed to make any big plays to swing momentum.

Missed opportunities

Usually-reliable kicker Caden Chittenden missed a field goal in the first half that doinked off the crossbar. UNLV failed to convert a 1st and goal at the 5 yard line into points following a 90-yard run by Kylin James. A penalty backed them up, and they failed to convert the ensuing 4th down. The back-breaker, however, was the defense blowing gap containment and letting Ashton Jeanty run for an 80-yard touchdown just before halftime.

Those 3 mistakes accounted for a swing of 17 points, in a game that ended up being decided by 14. And those weren't the extent of UNLV's opportunities to swing the game. Defenders dropped at least 2 opportunities for easy interceptions, and quarterback Hajj-Malik Williams missed several receivers downfield.

My dad and I drove out to Boise's blue turf to watch the championship game.

Largely though, Boise's coaches did a great job in gameplanning. They seemed absolutely committed to preventing Hajj-Malik from running the ball with the option. They played edge containment and kept spies on both Hajj-Malik and any potential pitch backs, completely killing UNLV's option running game and forcing UNLV to have to call traditional handoffs and pocket passes. UNLV is certainly built to run the ball, but the offensive line looked lethargic and just couldn't open up holes for any of the running backs, with only a few exceptions. Greg Burrell scored the team's only touchdown in the second half.

There was a lot of drama for the UNLV Rebels football team last week. After a surprising and gutsy upset win over Kansas a couple weeks ago, in which transfer QB Matt Sluka accounted for almost all of the team's production on the game-winning drive, UNLV found itself in the Top-25 coaches' poll for the first time in team history. After decades of 2 or 4-win seasons, it seemed like the sky was finally the limit for the lowly UNLV Rebels. But then, after a bye week before going into conference play, that same QB, Matt Sluka, suddenly announced that he would be redshirting the rest of the season, with the intent of transferring in the offseason. The next day, reports surfaced that transfer running back Michael Allen was also redshirting with the intent to transfer. With just a few days before opening conference play against a fellow championship contender Fresno State, it suddenly looked like UNLV might be imploding.

It's still not entirely clear what happened between Matt Sluka and UNLV. There's a lot of "he said" / "they said", and neither party seems to have anything in writing that proves or corroborates their account of the situation. As best as I can tell from the myriad official statements, articles, and social media posts that I've read, it seems that the best explanation for what happened is that Matt Sluka (and his family and agent) got the impression from primary recruiter (and offensive coordinator) Brennan Marion that UNLV (or its boosters) would be paying Sluka over $100,000 in NIL ("Name, Image, and Likeness") payments. Whether Marion actuall promised that is not publicly known, and only the parties involved actually know what was said.

Matt Sluka is sitting out the rest of the season,
and transferring out of UNLV.

In any case, after a few weeks of winning games, Sluka apparently went to head coach Barry Odom to ask when that money would be paid. Odom apparently said that there would be no money, and Sluka said he wanted off the team.

UNLV and coach Odom insist that Sluka's demands violate the NCAA's rules regarding NIL payments (and state law), and that if Marion had made such a promise, then he did not have the authority to make such a promise.

As for Michael Allen, he insists that his transfer request has nothing to do with money, and that he simply isn't satisfied with his role on the team. Presumably, he expected to be the starting, workhorse running back, and is not happy in his role as a rotational back behind Jai'Den Thomas.

I was very nervous going into that Fresno State game. But at the same time, I was paradoxically relieved and excited. I hadn't been loving Matt Sluka's play, and I felt like UNLV's offense might be better off with a quarterback who can actually complete a pass downfield, which Sluka had struggled to do. Honestly, I was more concerned about Michael Allen leaving, because UNLV's Go-Go offense is contingent on having a deep bench of rotational running backs, and losing a productive running back seems like a more devastating loss than losing a mediocre running quarterback.

But I still couldn't help but wonder: had UNLV's coaches lied to Sluka and Allen in order to get them to transfer? Had they lied to or mislead other players and recruits? Was the entire team on the verge of mutiny? Would any future recruits be willing to sign with UNLV knowing that Odom and his staff might not be entirely honest when recruiting? Was UNLV's turn-around to success over before it had really begun?

Apparently not.

The latest college football rankings were released on Sunday, following week 3 of the regular season. For the first time in school history, UNLV's football team was ranked in the Top 15 of the coaches' poll. This is something that I never thought would actually happen -- let alone that I would see it. My idea of a dream UNLV football season would be something along the lines of a 7 or 8-win season, bowl-eligibility, and maybe qualifying for the Mountain West Conference Championship game.

Even in my wildest dream, I didn't think I would ever see the team be Top-25 ranked.

For my entire life, this team has been a basement-dweller. 2 or 4-win seasons were the norm, and the occasional 5-win season would create false hope that maybe the team was on the verge of turning things around. The 2 bowl games that I had seen prior to the 2023 season represented what I thought would be the absolute height of what this team could possibly accomplish.

UNLV is ranked 25th in the nation after week 3.

I've been anxiously awaiting the start of UNLV's 2024 football season. Last year's unprecedented success caught me off-guard, and I was afraid that it would be a fluke Cinderella story that would not repeat. Especially after standout QB Jaydan Maiava transferred to USC, I was afraid that UNLV would not be able to replicate last year's success.

Well, they certainly got 2024 off to a good start with a blow-out (almost shut-out) victory over Big 12 Houston Cougars. UNLV appeared dominant in all phases of the game. In fact, they were actually more dominant than the final score makes it appear, since they had multiple score-less trips the redzone after failing to convert a fourth down and having a field goal blocked. This could easily have been a 37-0 shut-out.

But at the same time, I'm not sure if the victory was as much a dominating performance by UNLV, or just an abysmal performance by Houston. Watching the game on Saturday afternoon, it looked to me like Houston's offense (and starting quarterback Donovan Smith, in particular) were just not prepared to play football Saturday night. Donovan Smith was off-target, took sacks, made a lot of bad decisions, and just generally looked like a deer caught in headlights. When backup QB Ui Ale came in late in the 4th quarter, he and Houston's offense carved through UNLV's defense like butter and scored a seemingly effortless touchdown. Maybe UNLV had all its backups in on defense at that point. It's hard to tell on broadcast cameras.

I really do not think that UNLV's defense is quite as good as it looked against Houston. I think it was mostly just a bad game by Houston's offense, and by Donovan Smith especially. If that backup QB had been playing earlier in the game, Houston surely would have scored more than 7 points. If he had started the game, who knows? Maybe Houston would have won.

That being said, the defense does look a lot better than it has been in the past. Defense has always been an Achilles' heel for UNLV's football team. They have a long-standing history of letting opposing offenses get away with mistakes, and of giving up big plays down the field in critical situations. Last year, the defense played better than usual, helping to take UNLV to the Mountain West Championship game and a bowl. In this case, however, Houston played poorly and made a lot of mistakes, and UNLV's defense punished Houston for almost every mistake they made. This defense did not let Houston get away bad play. That is an improvement, and it is worth celebrating!

Photo credit: UNLV Athletics.

UNLV's defense punished Houston's offense for every mistake it made, including this pick-6 on a screen pass.