San Diego State defensive lineman Cameron Thomas, left, defensive lineman Keshawn Banks, second from left, and defensive lineman Jonah Tavai (66) sack Boise State quarterback Hank Bachmeier during a game in Carson, Calif., on Nov. 26, 2021.
Ashley Landis/AP
Just when you thought the Mountain West couldn’t get any more meaningless, boring, insignificant, unimportant and trivial, along comes a possible threat that would make it even more meaningless, insignificant and unimportant.
About three seconds after USC and UCLA announced late last week they would leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, there were rumors the Pac-12 was considering San Diego State and Boise State as new members. The thought of the Mountain West without Boise State and San Diego State is frightening for Nevada Wolf Pack fans. It would rob the conference of arguably its two most storied current football programs, two of its premier men’s basketball programs, one (Boise State does not play baseball) of its precious seven baseball teams and its only presence in Southern California.
How attractive do you think a Mountain West without Boise State and San Diego State would be to ESPN, Fox and the other major networks that run college sports? The Mountain West barely exists in the minds of the national media now. Without Boise State and San Diego State it would go the way of the telephone landline, encyclopedias, handwritten letters and typewriters.
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Of course, the Pac-12 likely does not want to even think about replacing USC and UCLA with the likes of Boise State and San Diego State. That would be sort of like replacing Tom Cruise or Leonardo DiCaprio in your big-budget movie with someone who makes a living on YouTube filming videos on how to knit and crochet.
Trading USC and UCLA for Boise State and San Diego State would be the Pac-12 simply surrendering and waving the white flag and ceding the national spotlight to the thieves that run the Big Ten and SEC. If the Pac-12 does add Boise State and San Diego State it would be simply to fill out its roster of teams after adding a couple Power Five teams from other conferences. So, there is a good chance that Boise State and San Diego State will remain in the Mountain West. That means the Mountain West will remain as meaningless and insignificant as it is right now.
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Why would USC and UCLA even want to be in the Big Ten? Well, money, of course. Everything else, like playing warm weather sports in the frozen tundra of the Midwest, ruining your long-standing rivalries and spending more time on airplanes and in hotels than classrooms, is awful for USC and UCLA.
It will also be awful for USC and UCLA boosters and fans, who now will have to travel to the Midwest or east coast to watch their teams play on the road. And if those fans stay home, they will have to get used to watching their Bruins and Trojans play before noon on the road.
You can be sure the current Big Ten teams are also not looking forward to going to the west coast on a regular basis to play USC and UCLA. (The Pack football team, by the way, plays at USC next year and UCLA in 2026). Television controls everything involved with college sports. University presidents and athletic directors, and now the athletes themselves, are merely chasing the almighty dollar that television provides. There is nothing wholesome, pure and innocent about big-time college sports anymore. Of course, there never really was anything wholesome and pure about college sports. But they used to fake it and we bought into the lie because, well, we wanted to. Now they don’t even try to fake it.
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What are the chances the Pac-12 overreacts and simply absorbs the entire Mountain West? On the surface that would be great for the Wolf Pack. But it would be indicative of a far more serious problem in college sports. Any Pac-12 the Wolf Pack would join would not be the Pac-12 your father and grandfather knew. It would sort of be like London after World War II. The Pack in the Pac-12 would also likely mean that Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State and others also left the Pac-12. It would mean that the Pac-12 was simply the old Mountain West.
The Pack knows a thing or two about joining war-torn conferences. The Mountain West the Pack joined, after all, was really the old Western Athletic Conference, the Western Athletic Conference the Pack joined was really the old Big West and the Big West the Pack joined was really the old Big Sky. The Division I-A conferences the Pack has joined since 1992 have been run-down used car lots simply looking for inventory.
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Why would T.J. Bruce leave the Nevada Wolf Pack baseball program as head coach to join TCU as an assistant coach? Oh, they gave him a fancy title (associate head coach) but he’s not the head coach. Former Fullerton reliever Kirk Saarloos, who used to give the Pack fits two decades ago as a closer, is the head coach.
Bruce left Nevada because Nevada is in the Mountain West. Mountain West baseball is a watered down punch line to a joke for the rest of Division I. It’s a joke nationwide because the Mountain West (like the national media) treats the sport of baseball as an afterthought. Just seven of the Mountain West’s 11 full-time members play baseball, a disturbing slap in the face to the sport. Bruce, as we suggested roughly three weeks before he left the Pack, likely grew tired of banging his head against the wall trying to recruit players to a climate more conducive to the biathlon and curling than baseball. He likely grew weary of playing in a league that struggles to get more than one team to the regionals.
History will suggest that Bruce was nothing more than a mediocre head coach at Nevada, going 171-168 over seven seasons. The only time he finished more than five games over .500 was his first year in 2016 with the remnants of Jay Johnson’s 41-15 team in 2015. But Bruce wasn’t mediocre. He was a solid coach that ran a respectable, competitive program year after year despite all the challenges he faced. And, make no mistake, the Mountain West is one of those challenges.
Even Johnson, now at LSU after leaving Nevada for Arizona, couldn’t overcome the curse of Mountain West baseball, failing to get that wonderful 2015 team and its .732 winning percentage to the NCAA Regionals. Blame the Mountain West for the Pack losing Bruce. Nobody gives up a head coaching job unless the challenges are too steep to overcome.
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The Wolf Pack and new athletic director Stephanie Rempe seem to have made an excellent choice by naming Jake McKinley as Bruce’s successor. The 37-year-old McKinley is a veteran baseball man, having worked in the Milwaukee Brewers organization the last four years after more than a decade of coaching in the lower rungs of college baseball.
He had a record of 131-91 in four years as head coach at Menlo College and 41-17 in one year as head coach at William Jessup (Rocklin, Calif.). He also worked in various capacities from 2010-13 at Sacramento State. So he knows Northern California well, also having grown up in Placerville. McKinley has made a career out of finding and developing overlooked talent, a skill that should serve him well at Nevada. The McKinley hire at Nevada is very similar to that of Gary Powers, Johnson and Bruce, experienced baseball men who paid their dues and just needed an opportunity.
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McKinley, who is 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, also knows Northern Nevada. So, you can be sure he won’t panic the first time it snows during an April or May game at Peccole Park.
McKinley lived for a short time in Sparks and he’s actually played games at Peccole Park as a member of the Chico Outlaws of the independent Golden Baseball League in 2006 and 2007 against the Reno Silver Sox. McKinley, like former Wolf Pack coach Gary Powers, was a right-handed pitcher as a player. He pitched two-thirds of an inning and struck out one hitter in a 7-3 Reno win at Peccole on Aug. 22, 2006. Two months earlier he went three innings and allowed two hits, two runs and three walks while striking out three in a 10-3 Reno win on June 10, 2006, also at Peccole. The following year McKinley started and went 5.1 innings, allowing two hits and three walks while striking out three in a 3-1 Chico win over the Silver Sox on June 11, 2007, in Chico.
“I always knew I was going to be a coach,” McKinley told the San Mateo Daily Journal last year.
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