Johnny Avello probably thinks that Will Ferrell should get an Academy Award nomination for his work in Land of the Lost based on his odds for UNLV Coach.

Ty Willingham is a hated man in Seattle for what he did at UW. Every practice was closed. Alumni were not invited back to be a part of the program. Could not Coach and beat in state WAZZU. Defense horrible - gives up over 500 yards on defense with over 400 in rushing yards in his last game against CAL.

Complete joke that rivals on par with Johnny thinking that Carmen Electra is getting an Academy Award Nomination for her work in her latest sex tape.

Get real Las Vegas Sun - I am sure that Clint Dolezel has asked to be considered for the UNLV Head Football Coach job as well. Does not mean you list him.

Same with Nick Holt - the guy gets paid close to $1 million at Washington just to Coach Defense. Not a real candidate and is not asking to be one.

Where are the following:
Larry Coker - Won at Miami and wanted the job 2 years ago when UNLV was first thinking of kicking Sanford out the door
Tommy Tuberville - Won at Auburn
Phil Fulmer - won at Tennessee
Gary Barnett - won at Colorado - sure has some baggage

All 4 of these guys would not be going anywhere after getting this job. Same could be said for Glenn Mason, John L Smith as well.

Turner Gill of Buffalo
Spike Dikes and Mark Stoops from Arizona
Butch Jones of CMU
Todd Graham of Tulsa
Al Golden of Temple
Major Applewhite - Rice OC

Enough of the Charlie Weis, Chris Ault crap. Listing their names makes this list look like a TMZ Reporter running after Ernest Borgnine. (oh yeah - they did chase the old man down for a photo). Lets throw some big names that you know have not a clue about where UNLV even plays their games on a list to be cute. How about doing the digging about what "powerful" UNLV donors would want. Or place a call to a Buffalo sports radio station to find out about Gill.
Jim Fassel - huh? Does anyone even understand what this UFL is about to claim that he is a "winning" Coach in Las Vegas?

Do you need someone from UNLV to "leak" the fact that Turner Gill should be contacted? Western Kentucky - the worst program in D1 contacted Turner Gill! So why would UNLV not reach out to him?

Love the fact that you have a list of candidates with odds attached. But, how about doing a little more work on what is happening in other College Coaching Openings to better understand the potential of the UNLV position with a candidate. Mentioning a Bobby Hauck is a good thing, but then you make your list a joke with a mention of Fassel?

With your list - Night at the Museum 2 for Best Picture! Johnny would make that film a 12-1 like Willingham. That is how far off base this list is.

Idaho has a Coach who is taking them to a bowl game who is a former D Coordinator. Cutting your teeth - they beat CSU and SDSU already?

Koetter would be great. The guy gets it and was great at Boise. He would be a huge improvement.

Butch Jones at Central Michigan would be great - 16-11 in 3 seasons with 3 straight bowl appearances.

Sanford needs to go and we have to get a proven Head Coach to take over the reigns.

When service academies can out recruit you and have better success what is missing?

Coaching

That is what we will see this weekend against Air Force. Guys that UNLV did not want as a 17 point favorite - says it all about UNLV.

In the meantime - Bill MOOS has got to be hired as AD!

Nothing more than a bunch of smoke here to make it look like something special. People who book through Expedia dont get these deals I guess?

I dont know how you get this message out to the masses to make this super spectacular. Hotels should be providing this service anyway, it is purely selling all of your assets at the point of reservations.

They may need to get back into the charter business with so many flights being lost by McCarron at the moment. Where are the hotels in jumping up and down about the loss of flights into the market. Create all of these guest service programs. It wont matter much when people cant get here like they used to.

With the Venetian losing business to Mandalay, he had no choice but to try to take advantage of Macau being his potential savior.

Vegas bleeds and Macau is the bandage.

As far as the comments about 6-6 teams going to bowl games, face the facts that PAC 10 and other conferences who go 6-6 are not turning down a bowl invitation.

Right now, the focus on San Diego State vs. Wyoming has as much to do with a bowl bid than anything UNLV does. Wyoming finishing at 6-6 is a more attractive team than UNLV and has already beaten them head to head. SDSU, the team that makes a Coaching change and is smart enough to hire Rocky Long as D Coordinator, comes from only winning 2 games last year and now is competing for a bowl bid.

That is progress. UNLV getting in really is not progress, it was expected and should not have been a sweating it out situation.

Note SDSU understands that they need to improve their defense and they hire someone who always had his New Mexico teams in games due to his defense. Why Sanford did not understand that a hire like this would make sense is beyond comprehension.

Air Force is 17 point favorites. Do they get better recruits than UNLV does? Or is it that they are always better Coached than most teams?

The bubble will burst this weekend for Sanford and we can move on with making this Coaching change.

Nevada is going to a bowl which only makes it more important to make this move right now.

The numbers that Ryan has put up should be commended. We all hope for him to have a great bowl season hopefully getting an invite to the Senior Bowl. That is a more important bowl game for him than going to any with UNLV as far as his career goes.

When you have the PAC 10 playing only 3 non conference games and a team goes 6-6 going to a bowl game should not be frowned upon. When you look at Rutgers - getting 5 non conference games against Army, Howard, Florida International, Texas Southern, Maryland - lay the points against them in any bowl matchup as they dont deserve to be in a game. That is a joke.

Las Vegas Bowl - Cal vs BYU anyone? Jahvid Best playing his final game in Vegas. That is a game worth saving money to go see instead of UNLV SDSU with the Rebs out of it.

To hear that Bill Moos would be interested in coming to UNLV is amazing. I remember when we gave John Robinson the keys to everything at UNLV. Moos would be the first big time AD UNLV has had since Rothermell.

Dont blow this UNLV, go get someone who understands how to build a program, raise money and can make the decisions that are so necessary to move UNLV closer to the Utah's and BYU's in their own conference.

The comment not stated is Harrahs ability to use Hilton National Sales leads, which provides them a resource that MGM does not have. When the Cosmo (oops) Hilton opens up - bye bye leads and we will see things even out. Mandalay did this type of bundling of their products before when they opened their convention center. The problem was that they did not have the talent to actually get the job done. MGM brought in better leadership and look what is happening.

The interesting by stander in all of this convention talk is the Venetian. The talent that has left this facility over the years is spread out inside of Harrahs, Mandalay and other hotels. JCK leaving is a massive blow, this is on the heels of other shows moving on down to Mandalay in the past 12 months from the Venetian. Something is wrong at Sheldon's place and as quiet as they are being now, you have to wonder if anyone is noticing or caring about how they are getting clobbered by Mandalay taking their shows. They talk about cost structures, I would like to hear about how their convention calendar is looking and how they plan on replacing shows of 30,000 - 50,000 attendees when they have their quarterly calls. Mandalay is finally grabbing events away and you have to ask why the Venetian could no longer hang on to them?

LVCVA - where are you on bringing new conventions to town? Is MGM's move just another sign that the LVCVA is not bringing in these large events that can be placed any where other than the LVCC? They too look to be not adding anything new and are just trying to hang on to what they have in their building.

I totally agree with the post above. Sorry, but UNLV needs to get someone with BCS Conference experience not a local. They might be good people, but they all seem to be connected to people who continue to run UNLV throughout all of these bad times. I dont understand how there are Coaches who have been at UNLV less than 2 years on this panel? I dont know why that there are not some people from outside this local circle on this committee. Where is the real experience of how a big time athletic department is run among this group. Sure there are some loyal people who have been at UNLV for a long time. How about some new voices to provide some perspective about how to get it right?

Get a BCS guy please!

The Governor's Conference was compelling when they had Weidner speak on the panel with the other Vegas hoteliers. This was a panel that did not require money to make happen and it was the star powered discussion that provided insight into the back stories that everyone needed to understand. Sorry but hearing about how RENO is marketing is a joke. The big issue is that instead of spending money on so called gurus - how about getting the one thing that all hoteliers want to have with a trade show - BUYERS. If there is no one to buy your product, why attend especially if held in Reno. The Commission has become less and less relevant under the LT Governor. Can anyone name the leader of the organization? NO.

Pay for Buyers to show up like major events do and then we are talking. Have discussions that BUYERS want to be a part of then you have attendance. I could put this event on in a minute, but having a Commission who does not understand how to reach the key people who help this State go - mainly the travel buyers, meeting planners and convention planners -they will never hold a succesful conference.

Give the event to some one else to run and then you would see an event worth attending. Right now with budgets cut, hard to make a case for this event having any real merit.

Since we wish to talk about the proclaimed greatest Todd Christensen on the Mountain. What in the world qualifies his son to be on this network?
This is the first line in his bio for the network:
A four-year wide receiver at BYU, Toby Christensen earned Academic All-Mountain West Conference honors two years in a row and ranked third in academic performance on the BYU roster.

All Academic, yet never all conference and he is an analyst? Robert Griffith tonite could not put 2 sentences together and was flatout awful.