Santoro: Pack must beat EWU to end ‘Winless Wilson’ era

Sports Fodder:

Jeff Choate's honeymoon as Nevada Wolf Pack head football coach is now over. The time has come for him to jump off his cliche caravan and simply go out on Saturday and win a football game. No excuses will be accepted.

We don't want to hear this week about how well coached the Eastern Washington Eagles will be on Saturday at Mackay Stadium. We don't want to hear the Eagles are talented and play hard and with intelligence. We certainly don't want to hear that there really is no difference between the Eagles' FCS Big Sky Conference and the Wolf Pack's FBS Mountain West.

All of that will be fine to say after the Pack whips the Eagles on Saturday at Mackay Stadium. We won't be listening anyway. We'll be basking in the glow of a Pack victory and that will be the only acceptable result come Saturday night.

Wolf Pack fans, in case Choate the Throat doesn't know it, are tired of losing to FCS teams. Losses to Idaho and Incarnate Word the last two years in the “Ken Winless Wilson” era are still hanging over the program. If Choate really and truly wants to show Wolf Pack fans that the Winless Wilson years are over, he needs to go out and pound Eastern Washington on Saturday.

It's time for Choate to earn his FBS paycheck and go win a football game, something Winless Wilson never did in two years.

This is where we are after three losses in the first four games. Yes, the first three games were fine. Heck, they were more than fine. The Pack looked like a revitalized team against SMU, Troy and Georgia Southern and headed in the right direction. But then last Saturday happened and, well, reality came flooding back.

Make no mistake, nobody expected the Wolf Pack to walk into Minneapolis last Saturday and beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers. But we didn't expect a 27-0 punch in the gut, the same exact score the Pack suffered two years ago when Winless Wilson last brought the program to Big Ten Country at Iowa.

The last thing Choate wants to do this year is remind Pack fans of Winless Wilson. The only thing missing this past Saturday was Winless Wilson on the sideline wishing he could hide like he did as a former linebacker's coach, quarterback Shane Illingworth running for his life and all of the threatening and ominous lightning bolts in the skies like they were two years ago at Iowa's Kinnick Stadium.

Everything else (namely the score, the pitiful Pack offense and the overwhelmed Pack defense) was exactly the same.

The Wolf Pack forgot how to tackle at Minnesota. The offensive line forgot how to block. The receivers forgot how to get open. The Wolf Pack offense lost its identity. The Wolf Pack basically looked like a chew toy for a Rottweiler puppy.

It was equal parts disturbing, disappointing, demoralizing and devastating. Most of all it was a sad and stunning reminder that back-to-back 2-10 seasons can't simply be washed away with worn-out coaching cliches, a roster of transfer portal vagabonds and three close games against mediocre teams to open the season.

Choate and the Wolf Pack simply have to beat the Eagles on Saturday. The Pack better be 2-3 by Sunday morning and heading into its first of two bye weeks this year with a clear mind, confidence restored and all of those mindless Choate the Throat cliches back into play.

The alternative will be unacceptable.

•••

Losing to an FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) team, especially one from the Big Sky Conference, is never good for the Wolf Pack. It wasn't good when the Pack was in the Big Sky itself from 1979-91.

Wilson's Warriors were 2-0 in 2022 when they took on Incarnate Word of the FCS. The Pack jumped out to a 17-3 lead with visions of a 3-0 record and a possible bowl game dancing in their silver-and-blue heads. Incarnate Word then scored the next 29 points on the way to a 55-41 win at Mackay Stadium. The Pack would never win another game the rest of the year on the way to a 2-10 season.

The very next year, Idaho came to Mackay in Week 2. The Pack suffered a 66-14 loss at USC the week before and the losing streak was now at 11 but most predicted a 166-0 loss to open the year, so all was still good. Idaho obliterated the Pack, 33-6. The Pack wouldn't win another game for four more weeks as the losing streak reached 16. The result was another 2-10 record as Wilson was booted out of town.

Jay Norvell's first Wolf Pack team in 2017 started the season 0-2 but the Pack was more than competitive in both games, losing at Northwestern and at home to Toledo. Idaho State of the Big Sky Conference then came to Mackay as Pack fans anticipated Norvell's first victory as a head coach. Norvell, as he often does, panicked and put an untested freshman (Kaymen Cureton) at quarterback and the Pack suffered an eye-opening 30-28 loss on the way to an ugly 3-9 season.

So, yes, the last three times the Pack has played an FCS team, it suffered a demoralizing loss and finished those seasons with two, two and three victories.

You simply cannot tell your fan base that losing to an FCS team is just part of the growing process. You can't tell your already fragile fan base that the FCS team you just lost to is well-coached, has talented players and plays hard.

Nobody will believe you. Everybody will stop listening to you.

We're not predicting another two or three-win season if the Pack should lose to Eastern Washington. We don't have to. Recent history will predict it for us.

•••

A week ago, we told you that there was a lot to like about the Wolf Pack. Well, there's still a lot to like. Losing to a Big Ten team on the road doesn't really change things.

But it is a dose of reality that is always difficult to take if you base your college football happiness on the overall meaning of the Wolf Pack football program. And this loss, coming on the heels of the announcement that Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Colorado State will be leaving the Mountain West for the start of the 2026 season, was even more demoralizing.

As things stand right now, the Mountain West will be an eight-team league starting in 2026 without a genuine signature program. Does a conference with Nevada, UNLV, Hawaii, San Jose State, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah State and Air Force excite you?

Of course it doesn't. It doesn't excite anyone, not even the eight schools mentioned above that are now wondering how they will ever be relevant in the FBS ever again. Losing Fresno, Boise, San Diego (and Colorado State) rips the heart out of the Mountain West. They were the three most high-profile football programs in the conference. Without them the Mountain West has no profile.

The Mountain West turned into the Mountain Less last week. We'd call it the Mountain Jest but that would be cruel. This isn't the Mountain West's fault. It's the fault of the current ugly state of college football. Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State and San Diego State are just looking out for themselves. Nevada and UNLV and any of the other six leftover Mountain West schools would have gladly jumped at a chance to join Oregon State and Washington State in the new Pac-12.

If they didn't, if they turned down the offer, their university president and athletic directors need to be fired.

There's still a chance the new Pac-12 will take two more Mountain Less schools eventually. But those two would be nothing more than consolation prizes, picked only because the Pac-12 couldn't persuade more high-profile programs to join their little club. But that's OK, if you are Nevada and UNLV. There's no shame in being a consolation prize if it means leaving the Mountain Less.

•••

What does the future of the Mountain West look like starting in 2026? It looks like a lot of half-empty stadiums and basketball arenas around a forgotten conference as the thought of playing a bunch of meaningless FBS programs every season sinks in. Don't forget the Pack now has to fill an off-campus basketball arena starting in a few years without San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State and Fresno State coming to town every year.

The Wolf Pack in a Mountain West that doesn't include those four is a bit ho-hum, tedious, dull and lifeless. The conference will likely add an FCS program or two and another meaningless team from another meaningless FBS conference to get back up to 10 or 12 members by 2026. But it won't be the same.

The uncertain future of the Pack in the Mountain West sort of officially kills the Wolf Pack's Dream of the Nineties. You remember the Wolf Pack's Dream of the Nineties, don't you? Of course you do. It was a dream filled with endless television money, bowl games and Top 25 votes. We were promised an endless stream of entertaining, big-time programs coming to Mackay Stadium. The Pack, starting in 1992, was now playing in the world of big-time college football where all dreams were possible.

Well, except for a few seasons of glory (see, for example, 2010), that dream never truly was realized. And now that dream seems stuck in a darkened dead-end street with left-behind programs like Utah State, Hawaii, San Jose State, UNLV, New Mexico, Air Force and Wyoming.

•••

The future Mountain West sort of has a Big West of the Nineties feel to it.

The Wolf Pack's Big West years (1992-99) were, for the most part, a confusing hodge-podge, messy, convoluted, contrived mix of opponents that didn't really seem to make sense. But it was all well and good because the Pack was now playing big-boy football.

Or, at least, that's what we were sold.

The Big West the Pack joined in 1992 made some sense because it included San Jose State, Utah State and UNLV (sound familiar?) as well as New Mexico State, Pacific and Fullerton State. But that lasted just one season. The endless parade of goofy Big West conference foes started in 1993 when Fullerton gave up football and the remaining six teams were joined by Louisiana, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois and Arkansas State to form a ridiculous, silly 10-team league with few natural rivals.

It still seems ridiculous and silly three decades later.

But the beauty of the Big West (and, it seems, the future of the Mountain West) is that it was always seemingly in a state of flux, patching holes and covering up cracks in the foundation with thrift store bargains and worn-out programs left on the curb by other conferences.

That 10-team Big West, by 1996, was a sad and lonely six-team private cub that consisted of the Pack, Utah State, New Mexico State and newcomers Boise State, Idaho and North Texas. And that was how the Pack left it when it jumped to the Western Athletic Conference after the 1999 season. The WAC during the Nevada years (2000-11) was also as chaotic and confusing as the Pack's Big West years.

Comedian Groucho Marx once said that he would refuse any club that would have him as a member. It's too bad the Pack didn't have the same philosophy over the past three decades. There's still some of us that wish the school was still fighting for national championships out of the Big Sky Conference.

But don't be too depressed, Wolf Pack fans, about the news of last week coming out of the Pac-12. The new Mountain West, whatever it becomes, is nothing new for the Pack. It's just business as usual for those that still cling to the Dream of the Nineties because, well, they don't really have a choice.

The Pack will survive somehow.

•••

Boise State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Colorado State are obviously hoping USC, UCLA, Stanford, California, Oregon and Washington come to their senses in a year or two and realize they made a huge mistake by jumping to the Big Ten (Oregon, USC, UCLA, Washington) or ACC (Cal, Stanford) and return to the Pac-12.

Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah also left the Pac-12 for the Big 12 but nobody seems to care because they didn't truly belong in the Pac-12 in the first place. Getting USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Cal and Stanford back is the only thing that will return the Pac-12 to its former glory days.

The four departing Mountain West schools are living in a fantasy world and were sold fool's gold by Pac-12 leftovers Oregon State and Washington State if they think they will be the basis of returning the Pac-12 to its former power-conference standing and glory. You can take the delusional schools out of the Mountain West, after all, but you can't take the Mountain West smell off the delusional schools.

The best thing to come out of Fresno State, Boise State, San Diego State and Colorado State is that Pack fans now have four more schools they can outwardly despise for good reason. Yes, Boise State was always on that list, but this takes the rivalry to another level.