Following a sleep-depriving loss, Mike Sanford seeks cannon-ization in Reno

By John Katsilometes

Friday, Oct. 2, 2009 | 12:21 a.m.

In his four seasons as UNLV’s head football coach, Mike Sanford remains distressingly lacking in cannon.

“We have not won this game in the four years I’ve been here,” he says. “This game is big. It’s a huge game for us.”

Sanford is referring to the annual rivalry encounter with the University of Nevada, Reno, the winner of which receives possession of the Fremont Cannon. It’s easily the biggest nonconference game on the Rebels’ schedule and crops up the week after a numbing 30-27 loss at Wyoming. That game tilted the Cowboys’ direction in the final minute when UNLV lost track of the play clock (committing a crucial delay-of-game penalty to turn a 45-yard field goal attempt into a 50-yarder) and its grip on the football (a botched hold gave Wyoming possession and ended the Rebels’ late drive to tie the game).

Since then, a couple of UNLV players questioned the team’s preparedness in the days leading up to the Cowboys’ bulldogging of the Rebels, describing a laissez-faire pregame attitude of overconfidence and misplaced giddiness. Sanford has been portrayed as a picture of panic -- there was actually a picture of him seeming to panic, which ran in the R-J the other day, all excited on the sideline. It appears he was captured photographically while yelling at someone to find the play clock.

We have fun, but the man who I interviewed on Monday afternoon for my KUNV 91.5-FM radio show “Our Metropolis” was hardly panic-stricken, particularly angry or apparently paranoid, even though earlier in the day, he’d clamped his players from talking to the press. That brand of muzzling is what can happen when players question a team’s preparedness after a conference road loss (receiver Ryan Wolfe and lineback Starr Fuimaono have shared the Ari Fleischer Award as official team spokesmen this week). Sanford recounted the final moments of the debacle in CheneyLand and shared his thoughts on the upcoming game in Reno on Saturday. The fifth-year coach even disclosed where he attends church.

Following are a few of the show's highlights:

*Of the published comments from Rebel tailback Channing Trotter and linebacker Jason Beauchamp that the team was not taking the Cowboys, who entered the game 1-2, seriously enough in the lead-up to the game. “I think that, you know, we had two players that were quoted after a very emotional and difficult loss,” Sanford said. “I think they were led down a road from a questioning standpoint and that they didn’t need to be.” (Sun sports writer Ryan Greene says Beachamp's comments were unprompted, and Trotter was simply asked if what Beauchamp had said was true.)

The real problems, says the coach, were on the Laramie tundra, where the Rebels had three early shots inside the Cowboys’ 20 and came away with just six points. “I think it came down to we didn’t play as well as we should have. We didn’t execute. We had four turnovers to none for them. We gave them too much hope early in the game,” Sanford said. “We had three trips to the red zone, where we should have had 21 points and came out with six. To me, that is more the issue than what emotional players say after the end of a game.”

*It takes Sanford “a good day and a half” to get over a difficult loss. “But you get over wins the same way you get over losses. You look at why you won or why you didn’t win. You’ve got to kind of realize that it’s a long season, more opportunities, and you can’t let one defeat defeat you again.”

*To decompress, “you just need to get away from it as much as you can. Saturday, after I got home, I just kind of vegetated; watch TV, even though I watched college football. I go to church, kind of get my mind off it and get an overall perspective on things.” Sanford regularly attends South Hills Church Community in Henderson.

*Against Wyoming, Sanford and his staff took the late timeout with a little more than a minute to go, facing fourth-and-three at the Cowboys’ 28. They considered going for the first down but opted against running another play from scrimmage in part because starting QB Omar Clayton was “banged up” on the previous play and backup Mike Clausen (who had played four downs earlier in the game) would have had to take that snap. But the staff lost track of the play clock, and the Rebels took a five-yard delay penalty. Still, even at 50 yards out, Sanford said he was confident place-kicker Kyle Watson would have the distance. “If your kicker is hitting 57 and 58 (yards) in warm-ups, you kick it,” Sanford said. But the snap was mishandled by Rebel holder Brendon Lamers for what the coach described as “a very, very frustrating ending, one that I lost sleep over.”

*Sanford preaches “real balance,” that difficult-to-achieve athletic mix of calm and energy. “Thing I talk about is confidence and humility, a real balancing act you have to keep,” he said. “To be able to perform at your best, you have to be relaxed. All of the people that analyze performance say that. I’ve done a lot of reading on it, and you have to be relaxed. You have to be in that zone. There is a concentration level that has to be high, loose but not to loose.” I asked if the coach has to be the leading example of that quality. “No question,” he said. “Yep, no question.”

*Sanford, who was hired by former UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick, said he’s avoiding active involvement in the current search to find Hamrick’s replacement. Three leading candidates are interim AD Jerry Koloskie, Las Vegas Bowl Executive Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy and South Point Equestrian Center Director, former UNLV sports marketing exec and onetime Rebel QB Steve Stallworth. “Right now I just want to win games and go to a bowl game. That’s what our goal is,” Sanford said. “It’s like I told someone in my family, I’m like the boy in the bubble. I don’t know completely what’s going on around me. I gotta live in this world of football. All those names, including Jerry, are all great people and would be great people for this job.”

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