Columnist Ron Kantowski: Expectations not in line with team’s reputation

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 | 9:17 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

CORONADO, Calif. -- As we took off our asbestos suits to bask in the delightful 69-degree weather at poolside here, I asked first-year UNLV football coach Mike Sanford if we could chat about the Mountain West Conference poll that was released Monday morning kicking off the league's annual football media days.

Sure, he said. But first he wanted to know where the press and his coaching colleagues had picked the Rebels.

I hemmed and hawed, trying to break the news gently.

"Um, last," I said almost under my breath, so as not to embarrass Sanford in front of the Wyoming sports information staff that was sitting across the table.

"Thank you," Sanford said.

His tone was matter-of-fact, as if someone had just told him what time it was instead of relaying the low regard with which the experts -- and the coaches -- hold his football team.

But his expresssion of gratitude may as well have been spoken out of relief. Although Sanford would never admit it, being picked for ninth-place in a nine-team conference (glad to meet you, TCU) bought him something that not even the boosters at Ohio State could figure out how to slide under the table.

Time.

The Mountain West poll only confirmed what everybody else has been saying: The first team for which Sanford will be responsible as a head coach isn't expected to be very good, and that's probably putting it more mildly than the breeze that was blowing off San Diego Bay on Monday.

Phil Steele's, The Sporting News, Lindy's, Street and Smiths ... the list, like an NBA summer league game at Cox Pavilion, goes on and on. About the only magazine that hasn't picked the Rebels to finish last this year is Popular Mechanics, but then it doesn't have a preseason football poll.

"Polls are mostly based on last year and what's coming back," said Sanford, whose newfound reputation as one of college football's bright offensive minds will be put to the test when he inherits a team that, other than the color of the uniforms, looks nothing like the entertaining one at Utah that went undefeated last year with Sanford as offensive coordinator.

"It's obvious that we don't have very much positive to show from last year."

Indeed, the Rebels return only six starters on offense and three on defense, but maybe that's a good thing, in that UNLV finished 2-9 last year while losing its first four games as well as its last five. Wins against Nevada-Reno and BYU were hardly enough creme to fill that Oreo.

So when it comes to expectations, the ones for this year's Rebels are about as low as reed-thin quarterback Shane Steichen's daily calorie intake. Or at least they should be.

On Monday, I was hoping Sanford would finally come clean and become the first coach to say something along the lines of "you know, we're really not going to be very good this year." But like most of the eight guys who preceded him as UNLV coach, he blew it.

"We're on the way up and this is the beginning of that," Sanford said.

OK, that part is probably true by default.

"My expectations are very high," he continued. "The goal is to win the conference championship, get to a bowl game and be ranked in the Top 25, and to set the goals any shorter than that would be selling our players short."

I'm assuming that winning the conference championship, getting to a bowl game and being ranked in the Top 25 are goals for this year's team because when I pressed Sanford about how many wins above two or three or maybe even four would be realistic, he erred on the side of vagueness.

"I'm not going to put a quantitative figure on wins and losses," he said. "We're going to shoot for the stars and leave it at that."

The good thing about those stars is that most are still going to be there next year and the year after that when it will be fair to start judging Sanford as a head coach, although I am quite certain Rebels fans and those in the media will start doing it way before then.

Sanford said his experience at Utah, and to a lesser extent what is happening at Wyoming where Joe Glenn has turned the Cowboys from horse manure into Las Vegas Bowl champions with a victory against UCLA in two short years, is proof that rebuilding a program from scratch or darn near to it doesn't have to take as long as an overtime NBA summer league game at Cox Pavilion.

But that nobody around the courtyards and meeting rooms at the Coronado Island Marriott expects it can be done this year should make Sanford's task a little more palatable. As much as he would like this year's team to overachieve and give Rebels fans something to hang their redesigned helmets (new black facemasks and accents) on, that's just what John Robinson did.

And you see where unrealistic expectations got him.

In just his second year in the desert sun, the dreadful 0-11 team that Robinson inherited from Jeff Horton somehow went 8-5 and also won the Las Vegas Bowl by beating a college football blueblood (Arkansas). But that team was more lucky than it was good and it ultimately became a victim of its own success. As it turned out, that was Robinson's only winning season in six on the job.

So in trying to be realistic in assessing the potential of this year's team, I think I'll follow Sanford's lead and ignore wins and losses. In fact, if the Rebels are able to master the intracacies of the sleight-of-hand spread offense that Sanford oversaw at Utah without pulling their collective groin muscle in the process, I'll be the first to call it a successful season.