Building a winner means more than wins

Free passes are tricky. They imply there should be no accountability, no judgment on performance, no standard set, no goals to strive for.

That can't be the case for UNLV football this season. Any season.

Shouldn't be, anyway.

It's fact. You can't judge Bobby Hauck's first year as coach on number of victories, at least not as an initial form of criteria.

You can't define his level of success based on a specific winning percentage, not for a program facing one of the toughest schedules in school history and one that for years has ranged from below average to bad to laughable to "Do you realize UNR could have scored 90 last season?"

But it doesn't mean improvement shouldn't be expected from those paying to watch. If not in the final result, then from intangibles that produce it.

Translation: Being less talented most Saturdays doesn't mean you must play in a way that makes winning any easier for the other guys.

Translation II: The likes of Wisconsin and West Virginia and Texas Christian don't need any extra help.

"I know what I know," Hauck said. "We're believers in what we do. I think we can win here, but the variable is time. I don't have a crystal ball to say how long it's going to take. I wish I could stand here and tell you we're going to win 13 games this year, but you'd have me checked into a rubber room.

"But it's not going to stop us from trying to win all 13. It's a competitive endeavor, and we're going to take the field each week and give the effort to win every game. That's how good teams approach football. That's how we're going to approach it -- senior, freshman, first-year guy, fifth-year guy. We expect them all to approach it that way."

Crazy difficult. That's how Hauck describes his team's schedule. He's being kind. It's more like a war zone shrewdly created to allow an undermanned brigade little to no shield. But then I remembered Mike Hamrick had much to do with shaping it, and the whole creativity part suddenly doesn't make sense.

Needless to say, the schedule is brutal in spots for a team that hasn't been able to tackle itself the past several years.

Football is a different monster to conquer when building a program in your style. You need time to recruit players that fit your system, time to establish the level of dedication you demand, time to build UNLV into a winner and graduate to a better job or be the next in a long line of coaches who for whatever reason couldn't get it done here.

Hauck deserves the benefit of time to paint his own big picture. He has been overly conservative when predicting any fate for the 2010 season, perhaps having heard how much grief his predecessor received when acting as though he had inherited the 1985 Chicago Bears upon his arrival here.

So whether the new coach believes he has a team destined for few wins or one that could discover enough to flirt with bowl eligibility, it's important that certain standards are set.

Which brings us to those intangibles other than winning.

Tackle someone. Anyone. Keep the defense off the field for more than 30 seconds. Remember that aggressive penalties when trying to make a play are often forgivable, but false starts and delay of games and other mental hiccups that have plagued the Rebels in critical spots aren't.

Being a weekly underdog is one thing.

Playing without brains is another.

Have we not seen enough of the latter to last a lifetime?

"I don't know how many games we can win," Hauck said. "My goal is for us to get better each week, to be a physical team, to be highly competitive and disciplined. I want our guys to compete fiercely. If we do that, we're going to have a chance every week."

Some weeks more than others, but you get his point. He doesn't strike me as a guy wanting a free pass this season or any other, and yet I don't think he's intentionally downplaying his team's chances. He's not pulling a Lou Holtz. You could put the over-under for wins at five this season and not worry about being checked into the rubber room.

But time is on Hauck's side. He deserves enough of it to prove whether UNLV made the correct choice when hiring him.

It doesn't mean his first team shouldn't be held accountable or have its performance judged or strive for goals.

It means that instead of focusing on how many games UNLV wins this season, instead concentrate on how it plays. There is a difference. It's an important one.

For a first-year coach and the kind of program he wants to establish the next several years, it's huge.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.