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.
This fake punt from UNLV was an example of masterful scouting and coaching!
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!
Did negotiations with Purdue take too much of Odom's focus away from the Boise State game? Did knowledge that coach Odom might be leaving cause distractions for the players in the locker room? UNLV played, by far, its worst game of the season in that Championship game at Boise -- it might even have been the worst game they played under Odom's entire 2 year stint. It's hard to believe that poor play and the coach leaving for another school are just coincidence.
The NCAA needs to have much stricter regulations against schools poaching other schools' talent before the end of the season. That goes for both coaches and players. Coaches and players should finish the season (and post season) with their current team, in good faith, before talking to another school about transferring or moving. I know there's not a whole lot that the NCAA can do to prevent players from opting out of bowl games if that player wants to enter the draft or transfer. But the NCAA can take steps to ensure that coaches and players aren't being actively poached until that coach or player's current team is actually done with its season.
If it were up to me, if any school is found to have contacted a coach or player of another school, while that other school still had games left to play, and that coach or player does sign with the new school, then that school should be severely punished with fines and suspension from the College Football Playoffs for 2 years. Further, if it were up to me, any coach who takes a job at another school under such conditions should be suspended from any team activities for 2 full seasons. As for players, if they sign with another school under such conditions, they should be subject to automatic suspension for the final 7 games of the first season with the new school, and also from any post-season play in that first season. And they should not be eligible for Redshirt status either. That 7-game suspension should also cost them a year of eligibility.
Photo credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images.
In order for fans to take bowl games seriously, the NCAA, players, and coaches need to take them seriously first.
Yes, these penalties sound strict, but in my opinion, such strict penalties are necessary. The NCAA needs to make it so risky to violate in-season poaching rules that no school, coach, or player should want to risk being caught violating those rules.
And if the NCAA wants bowl games to remain relevant in the age of the 12-team playoff, then I think that such regulation is even more critical. With bowl-eligible teams losing players and coaches to other schools before the bowl game even happens, fans just don't have the enthusiasm to watch the games. (Scheduling those games in the middle of the week, when people still have work or school, certainly doesn't help either.) If the NCAA, the players, and the coaches don't take the bowl games seriously, then why should fans take bowl games seriously?
At the very least, if coaches and players are not actively talking with other schools about moving or transferring (or having already signed a deal), then there won't be much reason for them to not participate in their bowls. Graduating seniors who don't want to risk injury prior to potentially entering the NFL draft may still opt out. I don't think there's much, if anything, that the NCAA can do about that. But strictly prohibiting in-season poaching would at least cause more coaches and players to finish out the season, and participate in their bowls, leading to better games, and more interest from the audiences.
Honestly, this shit should have been taken care of prior to the new NIL rules going into effect last year. It's absolutely ridiculous to me that such rules have not been put in place. To me, it only shows how absolutely incompetent the NCAA is as a regulating body. It is an embarrassment to the sport of college football.