Nevada head coach Jeff Choate has lost nine of his 12 games in his first season leading the Wolf Pack.
Photo by Steve Ranson.
Sports Fodder:
Jeff Choate, no matter what happens this Saturday night in Las Vegas with the Fremont Cannon on the line, deserves a passing grade for his rookie season as the Nevada Wolf Pack's head coach.
How, you might be wondering right now, can a coach get a passing grade for a 3-9 record and a current five-game losing streak with one game remaining in the season?
Nobody is saying Choate has turned one of the worst programs in the nation the last two years into the hottest ticket in town. You can't, after all, even give Wolf Pack tickets away right now. If you went to a Wal Mart parking lot and stuck Pack tickets under everyone's windshield wipers, they'd toss them away like they were an offer to blacktop their driveway.
Make no mistake, Choate's not the best thing to enter the Wolf Pack world since the first, second and third coming of Chris Ault. But he's also not Chris Tormey, Brian Polian and Ken Wilson. He's not all that innovative or creative and he never met a cliche he didn't like. He's just a coaching lifer blessed with a non-stop work ethic, toughness, confidence and a belief he's going to succeed.
And that, right now, is certainly good enough. Choate's grade right now is a respectable C+ and we'll elevate that to a B-minus if he stuns those cocky Rebels on Saturday and opens a few cans of blue paint when he gets back to Northern Nevada.
Yes, the Pack has lost nine of 12 games this year and that will likely be 10-of-13 by late Saturday night, if you believe the oddsmakers (who have been kind to the Pack and listed UNLV as just a 17-point favorite).
Those oddsmakers, no doubt, have noticed that six of the Pack losses have been by seven points or less. Oddmakers tend to notice those things. Those six losses have also been by a combined total of a mere 25 points. Ken Wilson's Wolf Pack, as a reminder, lost by 36 in the final game of his head coaching career (42-6 to Wyoming). Wilson went 4-20 at Nevada with just four of his 20 losses by seven points or less.
Turn just half of Choate's six close losses into wins and we're looking at a 6-6 record right now with a bowl game invite on the line on Saturday. Choate has restored competitiveness and confidence to this Pack program after two years of Wilson excuses following double-digit losses.
Nobody is laughing at the Pack anymore. Choate deserves to come back for a second year.
The wins will come soon.
•••
All Wolf Pack seasons, we're well aware, are judged on a pass-fail system depending on the UNLV game. No B-minus, C-plus, A, B, C or D. Just pass or fail.
Don't believe it?
Jay Norvell's first Pack team in 2017 went 3-9 but he beat UNLV in the last game of the season. Pass.
Chris Ault's 1994 Wolf Pack went 9-2 but he lost to UNLV in the last game of the season with a Las Vegas Bowl and Big West outright championship on the line. Fail. Yes, Ault still claims a share of the title since UNLV, the Pack and Southwestern Louisiana all finished 5-1 atop the Big West and gave everyone rings after the year.
But that's Chris Ault, who was his own boss at the time. Pack fans, on the other hand, had a sick feeling in their stomach after losing to UNLV in 1994 that lasted until they played UNLV in 1995.
You don't like it? Well, go coach Sacramento State. But if you do, you better beat UC Davis or you'll be picking up trash on the side of I-80 the next fall. That's college football. It's all about the rivalry game, the thing that separates college football from the less fortunate sports.
A Wolf Pack win on Saturday would immediately jump into the top 10 of all Wolf Pack wins in school history. It's one thing to whip UNLV when the Rebels are inept, barely give an effort and are coached by guys who couldn't get a job parking cars at Caesar's Palace. It's quite another thing to beat a cocky, confident and motivated Rebels team coached by a guy who thinks Las Vegas is the epicenter of college football.
This is the greatest UNLV football season in the history of its program. They've already won nine games. They are headed to a bowl game and they expect to be playing for their first Mountain West championship at Boise State on Dec. 6. The Rebels also clearly believe they will destroy the Pack this week and Boise State the following weekend and will deserve a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff.
It's hard to argue with them right now.
The Rebels have won 18-of-25 games since coach Barry Odom took over the program before the 2023 season. Odom has yet to win fewer than nine games in a season since he moved to Las Vegas. The Rebels under Odom have taken over the state and aren't looking back. They play in one of the most lavish and garish stadiums in the country that just so happens to sit in arguably the most lavish and garish cities in the world.
The Wolf Pack, though, could destroy it all on Saturday and also take home a red, soon-to-be-blue, cannon as a prize. It would be a victory not soon forgotten north of Tonopah and one that would ruin the Rebels holidays. In other words, it would be Pack perfect.
•••
Saturday night could be more than just a little weird for Wolf Pack fans. We could be looking at a scenario where the Wolf Pack could be doing former head coach Jay Norvell (the last Pack coach to beat UNLV, in 2021) a huge favor. Norvell's Colorado State Rams need to beat Utah State on Friday and also need the Pack to beat UNLV in order for the Rams to earn a spot in the conference title game.
Imagine that. The Wolf Pack doing Norvell, the man who sent the Pack into the tailspin in which it still spins, a solid. The guy deviously abandons the program and takes with him half a coaching staff and a dozen or so players and recruits and the Pack could help send him to the league title game.
But don't worry, Pack fans. Sending Norvell to the title game wouldn't spoil a Wolf Pack victory celebration on Saturday because, well, a blue Fremont Cannon is the No. 1 goal of every Pack season. And don't forget, you'll likely get to witness Norvell and the Rams get destroyed in the Mountain West title game.
But the best scenario, then, for Wolf Pack fans this weekend is for Utah State to beat Norvell and the Rams on Friday and for the Pack to beat UNLV on Saturday. It's not perfect. UNLV would still go to the league title game. But it would make for a wonderful post-Thanksgiving Saturday night for Pack fans, who deserve something to celebrate this year.
We wouldn't have to watch Norvell in the league title game and we could also then watch UNLV in the title game knowing they took a loss to the Wolf Pack with them to Boise State.
Dare to dream, Pack fans.
•••
It is still a bit difficult to figure out how the Wolf Pack got to this point. We are all a bit numb because of all the losing the last three years. It now just seems like part of our fall ritual, you know, like we are the new UNLV fans of the 1990s.
It's difficult to believe this is actually happening. The Wolf Pack, believe it or not, has lost 30 of its last 37 games since Norvell left town. Did you ever think you'd see the day when Pack football would lose 30-of-37 football games? Of course not. Chris Tormey, don't forget, was laughed at and fired after going 16-31 from 2000-03. The next Pack coach to go 16-31 will get a three-year contract extension.
Did you ever think you'd see the day when Nevada would lose 20-of-22 conference football games? Are you kidding? Two league wins in three years? This is the same program, after all, that won three or more league games every year from 1978 through 1997 and again from 2001 through 2021. The Pack, by the way, is still looking for its first league win under keep-'em-close Choate.
There is simply no excuse for such utter destruction to a once-proud football program. Norvell didn't do it. Yes, he put it in motion. But the Pack has nobody to blame but itself for what has happened in the last 37 games. Norvell is not the cause of a 7-30 record overall and 2-20 in league games. Chris Ault left the program three times, and the Pack never went more than one season without a winning record after he left all three times. The Pack hasn't even had a true winning month since Norvell left unless, of course, you count the 1-0 record in August 2022 to start the Wilson era and the 2-1 record in October 2023 when the Pack smartly scheduled a bye week to start the month.
The Pack has had only seven winning weeks since Norvell's been gone. Ault had 25 winning seasons out of 28.
The Pack, a program that once was competing with Boise State for league titles, has now turned into New Mexico and San Jose State. Then again, New Mexico is 5-6 and San Jose State is 6-5 this year so, truth be told, the Pack hopes to grow up someday to become New Mexico and San Jose State.
This is how you can legitimately give a passing grade to a coach with a 3-9 record.
•••
Choate, if he is going to mature into a truly great coach, needs to learn how to win games as much as his players need to learn that skill. Players, after all, come and go all the time. Bad coaches tend to linger for a while, stinking up the football landscape.
Choate might think he knows how to win after spending so many years coaching at successful programs, such as Boise State from 2006-11 and Texas from 2021-23. But it's one thing to be an assistant coach at winning programs and quite another to be the head coach. See Ken Wilson.
Choate has been a head coach for five seasons (four at Montana State) and already has three losing seasons. A loss on Saturday will give him an overall record as a head coach of 31-32. His conference record in the Big Sky and Mountain West will be 18-21. None of that screams College Football Playoff.
That doesn't mean he's a mediocre coach waiting to be fired like so many others down through the years at Nevada not named Chris Ault. Choate, we remind you, is still a rookie Division I-A FBS head coach. He talks like he's Barry Switzer or Bear Bryant but that's just his personality. If he was an experienced FBS head coach this year he likely would have pushed, pulled and magically transformed that 3-9 record into something along the lines of 7-5.
He's done it before. When he was a rookie FCS head coach at Montana State in 2016, his first four losses were by six points or less. The following year he lost three games by four points or less. Over his final two years at Montana State, he lost just two games by seven points or less.
He matured. He grew. The Pack needs that same type of growth from him starting, well, now.
The other improvement Choate needs to make is to continually upgrade his expectations. Choate, it seems, has understandably tempered his expectations this year. The guy, after all, went from the national title game with Texas last year immediately into the Pack mess.
Choate has been content this year to simply do everything in his power to keep games close and keep his fingers crossed that the ball will bounce just right at critical times. He's said as much almost every week, constantly reminding us that his goal is to make sure it is a one-score game in the fourth quarter.
Congratulations. Mission accomplished. Eight of the dozen Pack games this year were one-score games at the final buzzer and the Pack lost six of them. That's what tends to happen when you don't reach for the stars and simply reach for the mashed potatoes across the table at dinner time.
Choate will learn that turning close losses into close wins, just like turning a winning record as an assistant coach into one as a head coach, can't just be based on keeping games close and hoping for the best.
We'll accept mashed potatoes as the prize this year. Next year, the stars need to start coming into focus.