His make-or-break season

By Brian Hilderbrand

Friday, March 14, 2008 | 2 a.m.

OK, no more excuses.

After inheriting a team with little talent and charged with rebuilding a moribund football program virtually from the ground up for the past three years, Mike Sanford enters his fourth season as UNLV’s head coach knowing his job is on the line.

When UNLV opened its spring practice Monday afternoon, 79 of the 80 players on the roster had been hand-picked by Sanford and his staff. Only Casey Flair, the Rebels’ reliable receiver, is a holdover from John Robinson’s staff — Flair redshirted during Robinson’s final season in 2004.

This truly is Sanford’s team and the credit for its success this season — or the blame for its failure — will fall squarely on Sanford, and likely will determine whether he is brought back in 2009 for the final year of his contract.

There is no question that the talent on this year’s team is vastly improved from when Sanford took over the program, but even he acknowledges that that alone won’t win football games.

“I do feel like this is much more the team that we recruited and that we brought in here and I’m excited about that,” Sanford said. “I feel very good about this football team and I think we’re a better football team, but that’s something that needs to be proven out on the field rather than talked about.

“For the last couple of years we’ve been a young football team and now, not that we’re an old team, but we’re a more mature team.”

Fourteen starters willreturn from last year’s team — but it is a team that went 2-10 and 1-7 in the Mountain West Conference. Quarterbacks Travis Dixon and Omar Clayton shared playing time last year as freshmen but will have to mature fast if they are to execute Sanford’s shotgun spread offense. Flair and junior Ryan Wolfe anchor a receiving corps that is both talented and deep. Running back Frank Summers, a junior college transfer, showed signs of brilliance last season and should benefit from a year of Division I experience — as well as from an improved offensive line anchored by Matt Murphy, Joe Hawley and Johan Asiata.

“Other than depth at tight end, I feel really good about our offense,” Sanford said. “I feel like we’re a much-improved offense but, once again, it’s got to be proven out on the field.”

The Rebels lost the heart and soul of their defense — Mountain West Conference defensive player of the year Beau Bell — and Sanford said it would be next to impossible to replace the NFL-bound linebacker. UNLV does, however, have some depth at the position and will need Starr Fuimaono, Jason Beauchamp and Ronnie Paulo to elevate their play to help fill the void created by Bell’s departure.

Sanford likes the depth and talent on the defensive line and at cornerback, but is looking for players to step up at safety.

Sanford has opted to build his program by recruiting from the high school ranks as opposed to going for the “quick fix” of signing junior college players. Sanford said he took the latter route out of necessity during his first three recruiting classes because he was trying to replace a large number of departing players. Signing 22 high school players and only one junior college player last month, Sanford said, was a conscious decision that reflected his confidence in his program’s depth.

“The whole junior college recruiting thing is different now than it used to be because of the academics and a lot of other different things,” Sanford said. “The predictability of success of junior college players has gone down significantly in about the last five years. Even though people look at it as you’re getting an older guy and a quick fix, in reality it usually takes them a year to figure it out and then all of a sudden they’re a senior and then they’re gone.”

As a result, UNLV has struggled through three consecutive abysmal seasons in which the Rebels compiled a 6-29 record and won just three of 24 conference games.

Sanford admitted to feeling a “sense of urgency” this year but stopped short of saying what he would consider a successful season. Having had three years to right a sinking ship and now having “his” players in place, this the season the Rebels must produce — or else. But exactly how many wins will it take for Sanford to save his job?

“Nobody’s ever said,” Sanford said. “I have very high expectations for this team. I want to win more than anybody else around here. I want to win regardless of any of the outside pressure. I put pressure on myself, I put very high expectations on our coaching staff and I put very high expectations on our players.

“I’m going to coach the best way I know how to coach but, at the same time, I’m not going to panic.”

And he’s fresh out of excuses.