Ken Wilson (Photo: Nevada Athletics)
The Mountain West football media doesn’t think highly of the 2022 Nevada Wolf Pack. The 28 media voters in the league’s preseason poll believe the Wolf Pack will finish fourth in the West Division behind Fresno State, San Diego State and, yes, even San Jose State.
Fresno State received 20 of the 28 first-place votes with San Diego State getting the other eight. The Pack, with 66 voting points, was picked to finish closer to sixth-place Hawaii (51) than third-place San Jose State (105).
What does all this mean? Well, if the media is correct, the Pack season won’t be worth paying attention to after the Pack opens the season with three non-league victories over mighty New Mexico State, Texas State and Incarnate Word. The final nine games (starting with a non-league money grab at Iowa followed by eight Mountain West games) will be filled with losses and frustration. The bar has been set pretty low for the Pack by the league media.
A fourth-place finish would be the Pack’s lowest in the West Division since 2017 (fifth). Nevada has finished either second or third in the West in seven of the last eight years. Since the Mountain West went to two six-team divisions in 2013, the Pack has finished lower than third just twice. That was in 2017 (fifth) and 2013 (fifth).
The common denominator between 2022, 2017 and 2013? All had rookie Wolf Pack head coaches (Brian Polian, Jay Norvell and, now, Ken Wilson). So maybe the media is on to something.
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The Wolf Pack should have been picked to finish third in the West. Picking the Pack to finish behind Fresno State and San Diego State is not surprising. The Pack roster, after all, was gutted by the departure of Norvell, who took numerous Pack veterans and recruits with him to Colorado State.
But picking the Pack to finish behind San Jose State, a team it beat last year and finished ahead of in the standings (the Pack was third, San Jose State was fourth), is a bit surprising. San Jose State did steal a pair of Pack wide receivers (Elijah Cooks, Justin Lockhart) via the transfer portal this offseason and also grabbed quarterback Chevan Cordeiro from Hawaii. But the only time San Jose State has finished ahead of the Pack in the West Division since 2013 was in 2020, when it tip-toed its way through a COVID-ravaged Mountain West schedule and stole a tainted championship.
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The Mountain West media, of course, is not the best judge of how a season will play out. It was only a year ago, after all, that the media picked the Wolf Pack to win the West Division. The Pack took that momentum and vote of confidence and went out and finished third, figuring out new ways to lose games (Fresno State, Boise State, Air Force) by exactly two points.
The media picked Boise State to win the Mountain Division last year and the Broncos also ended up third. Utah State was picked last year to finish fifth in the Mountain and the Aggies ended up winning the division and the league’s title game.
For those Pack fans looking for a little silver and blue lining from this week’s Mountain West preseason poll, it should be noted that Norvell’s Colorado State Rams are predicted to finish an uninspiring fourth in the Mountain, the same place they were predicted to finish a year ago. So, yes, stealing Norvell away from Nevada didn’t budge the Rams’ preseason needle at all.
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The Mountain West, though, has gotten something right. It hasn’t happened often since the league loaded up its moving van in the middle of the night with teams from the Western Athletic Conference to form its own desperado conference in 1999. But this time it did. Go figure. It’s not perfect (nothing in the greedy college football world is ever perfect) but the Mountain West’s new schedule set-up is pretty close.
The league will go back to a one-division, 12-team alignment starting in 2023. The new schedule will require each Mountain West team play two league teams every year along with six games against the remaining nine teams. The best part of the new schedule is that every team will play every other team in the conference at least twice (home and away) over a three-year period. There will be no more three-year waits, for example, between Pack-Boise games like we had to suffer through from 2014-17 and 2018-21. The two teams the Pack will play every year are UNLV and Fresno State. Boise State or San Jose State would have been a better choice for the Pack instead of Fresno State (Boise for the rivalry and San Jose State for an easy win) but at least the Fremont Cannon will be up for grabs every year.
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If you were looking for a reason to root for the Las Vegas Raiders, look no further than the Raiders’ front office. The Raiders will now have a definite Wolf Pack flavor after hiring Nevada graduate Sandra Douglass Morgan as the team‘s president.
Sandra is a 1999 Wolf Pack graduate and is the wife of former Wolf Pack player Don Morgan. Don was an outstanding defensive back and special teams player for the Pack and head coach Jeff Tisdel from 1996-99, intercepting nine passes. He then played 27 games over four seasons in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals. His Pack highlights include an 81-yard fumble return for a touchdown against Boise State, a 77-yard punt return touchdown against New Mexico State and a 50-yard interception return for a score against Montana State, all in 1996 as a freshman.
Sandra is the first black woman to be named president of a NFL team, though she is not the first black person or woman in the position. But she is clearly the right person for the job. Sandra, a Las Vegas native (she went to Eldorado High and got her law degree at UNLV in 2003), has served on the Nevada Athletic Commission, was the chairwoman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and has sat on the board of directors for Allegiant and Caesars.
What does she know about football, other than what she saw while watching her husband play? Well, probably not much. But the position of president in the NFL has more to do with the business side of the organization rather than the product on the field. Nobody expects her to change the Raider colors from silver and black to silver and blue but what if she persuades the organization to spend a week or so of its training camp every year at Mackay Stadium?
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When McQueen High pitcher Robby Snelling was drafted No. 39 this week by the San Diego Padres, Wolf Pack football coach Ken Wilson went straight to Twitter. Posted on Wilson’s account was a picture of him and Snelling, both smiling and wearing Oregon Ducks colors. Wilson, who coached Snelling’s father Jim while at Nevada and is a close friend of the family, offered an Oregon football scholarship to Snelling in January 2019.
Snelling later committed to Arizona and former Wolf Pack baseball coach Jay Johnson and eventually committed and signed with LSU when Johnson was named head coach. But if you are looking for a legitimate reason why Wilson is going to turn the Pack into champions, look at that photo. It speaks to how Wilson genuinely relates to players.
Wilson was always one of the most loved Pack assistant coaches when he helped head coach Chris Ault from 1989-2012. Players adored him and played hard for him. They came to Nevada because of him. That type of relationship with players continued with Wilson when he was at Washington State and Oregon from 2013 to last year and has already started at Nevada. A half dozen or so Oregon players have followed Wilson to Nevada. And now Wilson’s recruiting class for 2023 is already getting noticed around the Mountain West.
Wilson has clearly nailed the off-the-field portion of coaching. Players love him and he loves players. That's what coaching is all about now, since players are free to go where they please as often as they please. That type of relationship with players will lead to success on the field.
