NFL is six degrees from UNLV

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Friday, Oct. 3, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

Stonehenge. Crop circles. The popularity of the Lohan sisters. Former UNLV assistants who keep getting jobs as NFL head coaches.

There are a lot of mysteries in the world, but none so puzzling as the last one mentioned above (although the Lohan sisters would rank a close second).

I was stunned a couple of years ago when I turned on ESPN and saw on the ticker that Scott Linehan had been named head coach of the St. Louis Rams.

Linehan ... Linehan ... Wasn’t that the guy the late, great Paul Newman beat playing cards in “The Sting”?

No, that was Lonnegan. Or Linament. Or whatever ol’ Blue Eyes kept calling Robert Shaw’s character on the train.

Scott Linehan is a former UNLV football assistant. He coached the quarterbacks under Jim Strong in 1991. I remember nodding to him in the elevator of the team hotel once. That’s how low he was on the Rebels’ totem pole. If you were covering the team you really didn’t have to know him, or talk to him. A nod in the elevator sufficed. Besides, Strong didn’t want his assistants talking to reporters — or, if memory serves, Rebel players.

Linehan played quarterback at the University of Idaho when Dennis Erickson was the Vandals’ coach. His first coaching job was at Sunset High School in Portland, Ore., where he also sold class rings for the Jostens company. He returned to Idaho, where he was an assistant under John L. Smith — the football coach, not the columnist at the other paper. He sandwiched a season in hell — er, a UNLV assistantship under Strong — between coaching the wide receivers and quarterbacks at his alma mater. Then he went to Washington and Louisville — where Smith had become the head man.

Three years later he became the Minnesota Vikings’ offensive coordinator under Mike Tice. Then he got the same gig in Miami under Nick Saban. Then he got the Rams’ head job in 2006.

Then he got fired, on Monday.

The Rams are 0-4 — all blowouts. Linehan probably would have gotten The Ziggy anyway, but when Steven Jackson, the Rams’ star running back, complained about Linehan’s benching quarterback Marc Bulger in favor of Roman Gabriel — er, 38-year-old Trent Green, basically the same thing — it was the last straw.

Jackson also has a Las Vegas connection, having played high school ball at Eldorado. He also had more straws than Linehan, because that’s the way it is in the NFL. I have seen kids represent Jackson by wearing his jersey while playing “Madden” on TV. I have never seen a kid represent Scott Linehan while playing video games on TV. Come to think of it, I have never seen a kid represent Hank Stram, either, while matriculating down the field in “Madden.”

Now, Scott Linehan’s claim to fame is marrying the sister of the woman who married Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ” — and drove the pace car in the 2002 Indy 500.

•••

On Tuesday Lane Kiffin was fired by Al Davis, who not that long ago thought Kiffin’s fresh face and approach were just what the Oakland Raiders needed. Kiffin’s biggest mistake, besides not winning football games, was listening to Pete Carroll, his old boss at USC, instead of Davis when it came to drawing up football plays in the sand. So Kiffin and Lonnegan — I mean Linehan — now have matching pink slips.

Davis replaced Kiffin with interim head coach Tom Cable.

Cable ... Cable ... Man, I also nodded to that guy in the elevator. Cable also was a UNLV assistant in 1991 — coached the offensive linemen. Here’s what I remember about Tom Cable: He looked like the kind of guy you’d go bowling with. He also looked like John Goodman, the actor.

Cable also has an Idaho connection — he was the head coach there, from 2000 to 2003, guiding the Vandals to an 11-35 record. Before that, he was an assistant at Cal State Fullerton, which no longer plays football, Colorado, UCLA and the Atlanta Falcons, where he coached the O-line for one season.

Idaho and UNLV must be pro football’s version of “The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” When Cable was fired at Idaho, he was replaced by Nick Holt, another former Rebels assistant. Holt resigned at Idaho to take a job with the Rams under Linehan. When word got back to Carroll, he offered him more money than the Rams — only USC could do that — and made Holt, one of his former assistants, defensive coordinator.

Holt, like Linehan, also had a brush with fame beyond football. His grandfather was Buster Crabbe, who won a swimming gold medal in the 1932 Olympics before becoming Tarzan in the movies.

Watch out, Marvin Lewis. Holt has the UNLV and Idaho pedigree the NFL apparently is looking for. Plus, Tarzan was his grandpa.

All things considered, you and your Bengals might want to think about upsetting the Cowboys on Sunday.