Snyder leaves booth for Robinson’s staff

Steve Guiremand

Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003 | 9:19 a.m.

UNLV head football coach John Robinson was the National Coach of the Year in 1979 at USC.

Now he'll be adding the 1996 National Coach of the Year to his staff.

Bruce Snyder, who spent the last season in the radio broadcast booth for the Rebels after being fired by Arizona State after the 2000 season, will join Robinson's staff as an offensive assistant for the 2003 season. The annoucement is expected next week.

Snyder was a consensus National Coach of the Year after leading Arizona State to a 11-1 record and within a few plays of a national championship in 1996. He has previously coached with Robinson at Oregon, USC and the Los Angeles Rams, and spent 14 years as a head coach in the Pac-10 Conference at Cal and ASU.

"We're very close to finalizing everything," Robinson said. "We'll probably have something on Monday."

Snyder, watching practice for the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco, said he would be "better prepared to talk about (the UNLV job) at another time."

Robinson said Snyder would be involved with coaching tight ends, running backs and quarterbacks. He'll take the spot that opened last month with the firing of secondary coach Steve Leach. Robinson plans to switch son David, a former defensive coordinator at Cal State Northridge and a linebackers coach at USC who coached tight ends last season, from offense to defense, to make room for Snyder.

"Bruce will have an impact on the whole offense," Robinson said.

Robinson, who turns 68 in July and is signed through the 2005 season, was asked if Snyder might be the man who could take over head coaching duties at UNLV one day.

"There's a good chance," Robinson said. "He's definitely one of the people who is going to be considered."

McBride has known Brooks for years, and coached the Utes against him when Brooks was head coach at Oregon in the early 1990s.

McBride has never coached in the Southeastern Conference, and he hasn't coached defense since he was the defensive coordinator at Piedmont Hills High School in California in 1968.

McBride was on the UNLV campus Wednesday visiting with Rebels coach John Robinson and was being considered for an administrative position.