If Sanford can’t get team back, UNLV must fire him

RENO -- Mike Sanford has to be coaching for his job on a weekly basis now. If he's not, it will be because his superiors at UNLV have forgotten the most significant rule: the program comes first.

This is past Sanford now. This is bigger than him. He could be the nicest man on earth, but what happened at Mackay Stadium on Saturday proves his status as the Rebels' football coach henceforth must be judged one game at a time.

Sanford should be given one week to prove he has not completely lost his team, and whether the Rebels compete against visiting Brigham Young on Saturday should go a long way to determine his immediate fate.

He doesn't have to beat BYU. That is far too large an objective to consider after the embarrassment that was 63-28 to a winless UNR team.

Simply, it's about how the Rebels compete.

On Saturday, in the fifth game of his fifth season, Sanford was a head coach who lost his team in the fourth quarter. The Rebels flat out gave up, and when that happens 52 games after a coach assumes control of things, it can't be talked away as merely 60 bad minutes.

It is no longer funny. It is not about one-liners anymore. Whether you agree with me or other media who have questioned Sanford's ability doesn't matter, because 63-28 was not just one game in a long season.

It was one of the worst things you can say about a loss this far into a coaching tenure. It was disturbing.

Shoot the messenger for as long as your heart desires. But there is no getting around what occurred here on so many levels.

This is now about a new university president (Neal Smatresk) and interim athletic director (Jerry Koloskie) who owe it to whatever fan and booster base remains today to begin asking hard questions and consider tough choices.

And if Smatresk and Koloskie don't, they will be negligent in their duties.

"There is a lot more football to play," Sanford said. "We have to put this one in the ground, bury it and move to next week against (Brigham Young)."

That's the thing. There isn't a hole deep enough to cover the stench.

Sanford is 13-39 at UNLV, but what might be even more troubling than his failure to win is his utter inability to identify anyone capable of coaching defense.

Dennis Therrell is the third defensive coordinator under Sanford. The names change. The results don't.

UNR totaled 773 yards on 74 plays. The Wolf Pack went 7-for-7 on third-down conversions. They never punted. Not once.

They also had four turnovers, so to say UNR could have scored 80 points and reached 900 yards if not for those fumbles is correct.

Sanford on Monday said the reason his team lost at Wyoming last week was solely because the Rebels lost the turnover margin, 4-0. On Saturday they won that margin, 4-1. And gave up 773 yards and 63 points.

An 0-3 Western Athletic Conference team should not dominate a team up front in its fifth season under the same coach as the Rebels were. They were manhandled. UNR had three players rush for 170 yards or more.

Read that again.

How ridiculous is that?

Even when the Rebels were still in the game, they abandoned the run. Channing Trotter entered averaging 5 yards per run. He carried three times for 2 yards, twice on short scoring runs.

How does your starting running back get three carries in a game that was 21-21 at halftime? How does a team finish with 27 rushes in a game that was within seven points late in the third quarter when your one objective should have been to keep UNR's offense off the field?

What if Sanford hadn't limited media access last week so his team could better focus on its rivalry game?

Would the Wolf Pack have scored 90?

Would they have gained 1,000 yards?

Do you realize how preposterous that should sound but doesn't?

The worst part: If the game had been televised, you would have seen UNR's final two touchdowns, seen Mike Ball go 89 yards for one score and Courtney Randall go 26 for another, seen them barely touched, seen what it looks like when a beaten team gives up in a coach's 52nd game.

Mike Sanford is a very nice guy. He's strong in faith. He wants more than anything else to succeed at UNLV.

But after what happened here, after how he lost his team late and how thoroughly it was dominated by a better but hardly great opponent, his future as head coach now must be judged on a weekly basis.

Maybe he gets the players back for the BYU game. Maybe they rally around him. Maybe they shock the Cougars. That's for them to decide.

And it is for Sanford's bosses to watch closely and begin considering the possibility of making some hard decisions before this thing gets out of whack, if it hasn't already.

If it wasn't apparent before, and it should have been, this isn't about Mike Sanford.

It's about a program.

A program that flat out quit in the fifth game of a coach's fifth season.

It's not funny anymore. It's much worse. It's disturbing.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He also can be heard weeknights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on "The Sports Scribes" on KDWN-AM (720) and www.kdwn.com.