Santoro: Nevada emerges as Stepping Stone U. for ambitious coaches

Sports Fodder:

Stepping Stone University, known in some circles as the University of Nevada, has done it again. Another one of its alumni has found greatness somewhere else. Former Nevada Wolf Pack baseball head coach Jay Johnson won the College World Series on Monday as LSU’s head coach. Johnson is the second former Wolf Pack baseball coach after former assistant John Savage to win the College World Series as a head coach. Savage, a Pack assistant from 1991-96, won the College World Series as UCLA’s head coach in 2013. Johnson has been a head coach in three College World Series (two at Arizona in 2016 and 2021 and this year at LSU). Savage also went to three in four years at UCLA from 2010-13. The Wolf Pack, of course, has never even won a regional. But don’t blame Stepping Stone University for letting Johnson and Savage get away. Stepping Stone University was just doing its job, providing opportunities for young coaches so they can eventually succeed elsewhere. This is just a hunch, but it is unlikely Johnson or Savage would have ever reached a College World Series at Nevada. They also likely never would have earned over a million dollars a year like they do now. So don’t blame Savage or Johnson for leaving Nevada. Despite what you may have seen with former football coach Chris Ault or baseball coach Gary Powers, you don’t live forever at a Stepping Stone University. You just step on the stone and move on.

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Johnson is one of five notable Wolf Pack head coaches in the last two decades to leave for more money and a greater opportunity. Men’s basketball coach Trent Johnson started the trend when he left for Stanford after taking the Wolf Pack to the Sweet 16 in 2004. Mark Fox, Johnson’s protégé, left the Wolf Pack for Georgia after the 2008-09 season. Jay Johnson left the baseball program for Arizona after compiling a 72-42 record in just two years (2014-15) at Nevada. Basketball coach Eric Musselman left Nevada for Arkansas after winning the College Basketball Invitational and going to three NCAA tournaments in four seasons and three regionals from 2015-19. Football coach Jay Norvell left for Colorado State after leading the Wolf Pack to four bowl games in five years (2017-21). It was five easy decisions for that Fab Five to leave Northern Nevada. Those five started the Wolf Pack exodus and now, thanks to the transfer portal and Name Image Likeness deals, the players are doing the same. The successful coaches and players are now leaving Nevada so rapidly and often you can hardly see their footprints on the silver and blue stepping stone.

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Johnson, you can now argue, is the best and most celebrated former Pack head coach to leave for another job over the last two decades. He’s the only one, of course, that has won a national title. He also has a record of 302-157 with three College World Series appearances and five regionals in eight years since leaving Nevada. Norvell is never going to win anything more than a meaningless Mountain West title and an even more meaningless bowl game at Colorado State. But, hey, he can now afford Denver Broncos season tickets for himself, his family and all his Colorado State recruits if he so chooses. Musselman has gotten to two Elite Eights and one Sweet 16 the last three years at Arkansas and will likely go insane thinking SEC basketball is as powerful as SEC football. Fox got to two NCAA tournaments (going 0-2) and three NITs in nine years at Georgia and struggled mightily the last four years at California (38-87 record) before getting fired in late March. Trent Johnson got to one Sweet 16 and three NCAA tournaments in four years at Stanford but then went to one NCAA Tournament (at LSU in 2009) over his last 10 years as a head coach. He has a record of 211-237 in 14 years as a head coach after leaving Nevada. The pocketbook is always greener after leaving Nevada, but the grass usually isn’t.

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The best coach to ever leave Nevada? That might be football coach Buck Shaw. Shaw was just 10-20-3 in four years (1925-28) for the Pack when he was 26-29 years old. He would later become the head coach at Santa Clara from 1936-42, going 47-10-4 and winning two Sugar Bowls. He was also the head coach at Cal for one year (4-5-1 in 1945) and was the second head coach in Air Force’s history, going 9-8-2 combined in 1956 and 1957. Shaw later was the San Francisco 49ers’ first head coach, going 71-39-5 in nine years (1946-54), losing to the Cleveland Browns in the 1949 All American Football Conference title game. Shaw then went 19-16-1 in three seasons (1958-60) as the Philadelphia Eagles’ head coach, winning the 1960 NFL championship over Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers.

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It appears that the Pac-12 is planning on replacing USC and UCLA, who will join the Big Ten for the start of the 2024 football season, with San Diego State and SMU. That, for those of us of a certain age, is sort of like replacing Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company with Jenilee Harrison or replacing Farrah Fawcett on Charlie’s Angels with Cheryl Ladd. But blondes, as Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company found out, are not created equal. And the Pac-12 will find out that Southern California and Texas schools are also not created equal. San Diego State has as much of a Southern California presence as San Jose State has a Northern California presence. But the Pac-12 is desperate and crumbling right before our eyes. San Diego State and SMU is the best the Pac-12 can do? This is how the once mighty and relevant conference will replace USC and UCLA, the heart and soul and glitz and glamour of its conference? The Pac-12 has resigned itself to existing as a bunch of meaningless regional rivalries such as Oregon-Oregon State, Cal-Stanford and Washington-Washington State. They should have taken that theme and run with it. Instead of reaching into the bargain bins at Goodwill and pulling out San Diego State and SMU, they should have just pulled out Colorado State and BYU so that Colorado and Utah could have their own meaningless regional rivalry.

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Since we are on the subject of replacing USC and UCLA with San Diego State and SMU, we should point out that Jordan Love and Romeo Doubs are the new Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams for the Green Bay Packers. “I believe Jordan (Love) can do the same exact thing (as Aaron Rodgers),” Doubs, the former Pack receiver, said recently. “I don’t really see what’s the big difference.” Doubs, of course, would have said the same thing at Nevada if asked to compare Nate Cox to Carson Strong. It is a meaningless statement because that’s what good teammates do. They praise teammates. But Wolf Pack fans clearly saw the difference between Strong and Cox last year in the Mountain West standings. Packers fans will see the same difference between Love and Rodgers and Adams and Doubs this year.