Nevada Wolf Pack football: Masto has tough decision ahead of him

A decade ago we would have understood why Jim Mastro would consider leaving the University of Nevada football program for the UCLA Bruins.

The Rose Bowl and the Pac-10 Conference. The sunshine and the beaches. Movie stars on the sidelines. Bob Waterfield, Tom Fears and Troy Aikman. Pepper Rodgers, Dick Vermeil, Tommy Prothro and Terry Donahue. Those classic baby blue jerseys.

If this was a decade ago -- heck, if it was 12 months ago -- we would be questioning Mastro's sanity for not immediately accepting UCLA's offer to become their running game coordinator.

But not now.

Not after a 13-1 season filled with magical, unforgettable moments. Not after a season that saw the Wolf Pack finish in the top 15 in the nation in all the major rankings. Not after northern Nevada has finally fallen in love with this football program.

Not now.

Especially not now.

"If I do end up leaving it will be the hardest decision of my life," Mastro was quoted as saying this week.

The decision wouldn't have been so hard a decade ago. It wouldn't have been all that difficult a year ago. He would have been a UCLA Bruin faster than you can say Jackie Robinson.

But not now.

Now Mastro is waiting a week or more before giving the Bruins an answer. Now Mastro is actually, seriously considering to stay at Nevada. Now Mastro is wondering if UCLA or Nevada is the right place for him at this stage in his coaching career.

That's how far the Nevada Wolf Pack program has come in recent years.

Mastro can thank himself for making the decision so difficult.

When Mastro came to the Wolf Pack before the 2000 season from the University of Idaho with new head coach Chris Tormey, he joined a program at a crossroads. The Pack had spent the previous three seasons spinning its wheels in Division I-A under former coach Jeff Tisdel and was about to enter a new era -- a frightening, unknown era -- in the unfamiliar Western Athletic Conference.

The Pack was obviously in need of some new blood, some new life. Enter, among others, Tormey and Mastro, a couple of outsiders. Their hiring signaled a departure for then athletic director Chris Ault, who had plucked his previous two Pack head coaches -- Tisdel and Jeff Horton -- from their Cashell Fieldhouse offices down the hall.

At first, well, it looked like Ault had made another mistake. Tormey was relieved of his duties after the 2003 season and a 16-31 record. Mackay Stadium was turning into a used car lot before our eyes. Pack fans were longing for the good old days of the I-AA playoffs. Wolf Pack football was on life support.

Needless to say, the UCLA's of the world weren't coming to northern Nevada looking for coaches.

Ault, though, took over the program in 2004. One of the first things he did was name Mastro, his running backs coach, his new recruiting coordinator. The rest, as they say, is a fancy plaque waiting to be engraved and placed in a trophy case in Legacy Hall.

Mastro deserves as much credit as anyone, Ault included, for turning the Wolf Pack into a national power. His recruiting classes have been among the best in school history. The 2006 class, which produced, among others, Colin Kaepernick, Dontay Moch, Virgil Green and Vai Taua, has already reached legendary status.

And Mastro was at the forefront of it all.

Oh, to be sure, there are others who also deserve a ton of credit for the Pack resurgence, namely assistants Ken Wilson, Barry Sacks, Scott Baumgartner and Cameron Norcross, who have all been at Nevada since 2004 or earlier.

They all deserve to sit in the back of a convertible and cruise down Virginia Street as confetti descends upon the top of their Wolf Pack coaching caps. They were all here in the tough times, gutted it out, dealt with a frantic, demanding, unforgiving and passionate Ault, stayed true and loyal to Ault's mission statement and made Wolf Pack football relevant once again.

We tell you all this in an effort to explain just how difficult a decision Mastro is facing as he considers UCLA's offer. It's not easy to leave a program like Nevada, even if it is for movie stars, sunshine and beaches.

Not now it isn't.

Ault has assembled one of the best, unsung coaching staffs in America. No Division I-A coaching staff in 2010 -- maybe none in recent memory -- got more out of less than the Wolf Pack's staff. Mastro and all the rest of the veteran Pack coaches who have been here since 2004 and before, along with newcomers Andy Buh, Mike Bradeson, James Ward and James Spady, are the true heroes of the 13-1 season.

That's what Mastro would be leaving. And the 45-year-old Mastro, a veteran assistant coach of more than two decades, knows that as well as anyone. That's why he hasn't given UCLA an answer yet.

Coaching staffs with as much unity and common purpose as Nevada's -- not to mention as much job security -- don't come around very often. Nevada is an assistant coach's paradise. The head coach isn't going anywhere. The team is going to go to a bowl game every year. Most coaches, who normally have one eye focused on their daily assignments and the other eye on their next job, never experience anything like it.

It's not a situation that is easy to leave. That's why Mastro is taking his time.

UCLA, right now, is the anti-Nevada.

What's hot? Wolf Pack football. What's not? UCLA football.

Wolf Pack assistant coaches are hot. UCLA assistant coaches are looking for new jobs.

The Wolf Pack is always going to compete for league titles and bowl games, whether it's the old Western Athletic Conference or, in two years, the New Western Athletic Conference (now called the Mountain West Conference).

UCLA hasn't won a Pac-10 title since 2005 and probably won't for a long time.

The head coach, Rick Neuheisel, is entering a make or break year. Neuheisel is 15-22 after three years as head coach and, well, one more losing season and there just might be a new guy wearing the baby blue coach's polo shirt at the Rose Bowl in 2012.

The Bruins went 4-8 last year (after consecutive 4-8 and 7-6 seasons) under Neuheisel and next year they will have a new offensive coordinator (former San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Johnson is the new guy) and defensive coordinator (they can't find anyone to take the job yet).

Is this really a situation an assistant coach wants to jump into? That's a situation assistants usually run away from.

Mastro isn't going to UCLA from Cal Poly, where he coached from 1989-94, or Idaho. He's coming from the No. 11 team in the nation. The Pack last year beat California, 52-31. UCLA got blitzed by Cal 35-7. If anything, UCLA coaches should be begging Ault for jobs this off-season.

OK, yes, we understand Mastro would be getting a huge raise at UCLA. It is still the Pac-10, after all. The Bruins' average home crowd is three times bigger (it would be four times bigger if they actually won some games) than the average Pack home crowd. We understand that. But sometimes money in the short term is not the best decision in the long term.

That's what Mastro has to figure out.

The moral of this story, whether Mastro stays or goes, is that Ault better be more selective on who he lets into his private little coaching tree house. The UCLA coaches last spring and summer came knocking on Ault's door asking for a crash course in the Pistol offense and Ault was more than happy to oblige.

Ault, Mastro and Norcross (the Pack's running game coordinator) revitalized the UCLA running game. The Bruins, in 2009, were 97th in the nation in rushing at 115 yards a game with former offensive coordinator Norm Chow's pro-style attack. With Ault's Pistol, they improved to 32nd in the nation at 176 yards a game in 2010. Sophomore running back Johnathan Franklin, the Bruins' Vai Taua, ran for 1,127 yards, the 10th most in UCLA history.

So it's not a shock to see the Bruins getting a bit greedy this off-season. The got a taste of the Pistol last year. Now they want the full four-course dinner.

The Bruins, though, look a little desperate. Last year they wanted the Pack offense. This year they want a Pack coach. What will they try to steal in the coming years? Legacy Hall? Manzanita Lake? The Reno Arch?

But can you blame them?

UCLA would be extremely fortunate to get a coach like Mastro. And Mastro, who has coached six different 1,000-yard rushers at Nevada (Chance Kretschmer, Matt Milton, B.J. Mitchell, Luke Lippincott, Colin Kaepernick, Vai Taua) would probably help UCLA lead the Pac-10 in rushing next year.

But, don't forget, this UCLA team was 32nd in the nation in rushing this year and they still finished 4-8. It takes much more than a good running game to win in the Pac-10. This is a program with a lot of problems. Mastro could go to UCLA, do a great job and the Bruins could still go 4-8 and the whole staff could get wiped out at season's end.

Mastro, though, if he sticks around at Nevada, would likely be in the running to be the next Wolf Pack head coach when, and if, Ault ever retires. If Mastro turns down UCLA to stay at Nevada he'll become one of the most loyal assistant coaches in the history of Wolf Pack football.

He has a big decision to make.