Hiring committee still perusing resumes for UNLV football job

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998 | 10:23 a.m.

Despite strong rumors that UNLV's head football coaching job is John Robinson's for the taking, the 16 members of a school search committee put together to review candidates for the job met again on Monday to go over resumes of coaches interested in the position.

"We did talk about some individuals, but it would be unfair for me to name names," said UNLV athletic director Charles Cavagnaro, who also is a member of the committee. "I've had some conversations with some people who have expressed interest in the job, but I can't divulge who those individuals are at this time."

Cavagnaro said the committee agreed to meet again next week. He said because of the Thanksgiving holiday, the school still hadn't received the resumes of a number of coaches who had expressed interest in replacing the recently fired Jeff Horton.

"Today was the first day that I got to actually look at some of the resumes, which was interesting," Bob Rather, president of the UNLV Football Foundation, said. "I haven't had a chance to read them all in depth yet. And we were told that more would probably be coming in the mail (today)."

Both Cavagnaro and Rather said they were impressed by the quality of the coaches who are applying for the job.

"It's encouraging, let's say that," said Rather, who refused to name any of the applicants. "It's definitely a better job than it was five years ago and a different kind of coach is applying for it. It's interesting to see some of the schools that are involved in it."

"I don't know that I'm surprised by the reaction we've gotten," Cavagnaro said. "But I'm pleased with the response and the awareness in college football of all the new things that are going on here with our football program, from the fact we're moving into a new league like the Mountain West Conference to the fact we're going to have a nice new stadium next season."

Cavagnaro, who took a few days off from the search over the Thanksgiving holiday to focus on the wedding of his daughter, Scarlet, last Friday in Las Vegas, said the job has not been officially offered to anybody yet.

"We would like to get a coach in here the week before Christmas, if not sooner," he said.

Sources close to the selection process confirmed that Robinson, who coached USC to a national championship in 1978 and left the school following the 1997 season with the highest winning percentage in school history, met with Cavagnaro in Las Vegas last Tuesday to discuss the job, and that Robinson is very interested in the challenge of taking a program like UNLV to the next level.

One coach who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the UNLV job, BYU assistant head coach Norm Chow, told the Salt Lake City Tribune Monday that he "wished" he was a candidate for the UNLV job but that he believed Robinson would become the Rebels' new head coach.