Mountain West Football Coaches Rankings
Ranking the Mountain West coaches
Who is safe and who could be fired soon.
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The Mountain West is the only conference from the Group of Five which did not have any head coaching turnover, a very rare feat. That means we have a decent baseline for how good, or bad, these coaches are.
Keeping coaches around is great for the league with more and more experienced coaches like Rocky Long and Troy Calhoun who have been in the league for over a decade. Then there are guys like Bryan Harsin at Boise State who has been around for a few years and done well.
Even with the depth growing there are a few young guys and a coach or two on the hot seat. These rankings are not in order by who is safe or not but the order of how they are as a coach, so that does not mean a coach ranked middle of the pack could be on the hot seat — looking at you Wells.
12. Brent Brennan, San Jose State
Brennan has a huge rebuild ahead of him in the Bay Area with the Spartan and it showed as last year’s team won just two games in 2017. This year may not be all that better, but they do have young talent that could emerge to help this team in 2019.
– San Jose State podcast preview
11. Bob Davie, New Mexico
Davie is here because he has a terrible offseason with all sorts of issues and allegations (hear a lot of the details in this podcast) of covering up things with the program. This makes him on the hot seat the most, but it also does not help the Lobos were just bad last year and its identity of being an amazing running team fell apart en route to three wins this year.
New offensive coordinator Calvin Magee who came from Arizona is providing a bit of hope in the desert.
10. Nick Rolovich, Hawaii
Coach Rolo is great off the field with his crazy stunts he does at media days but wins need to happen or he will be just hanging out on the beach without a football team. He cleaned house and brought in a new offensive coordinator who installed a run-n-shoot offense.
9. Jay Norvell, Nevada
This could be a much lower spot once these rankings are done again after the season. The Wolf Pack’s second half showed what they can do offensively and keep that up and they could steal a game or two they probably should have no business competing in.
The defense, on the other hand, needs a ton of work and that could result in a lot of high scoring games, and that makes for some fun football but give coaches premature gray hairs.
8. Tony Sanchez, UNLV
Year four is beyond huge for Sanchez, especially since last year’s Howard lost blew the Rebels chances of a bowl game. This might be the year with the best running back in the league — well, according to this site — and quarterback Armani Rogers should make a huge jump in the second year.
As with most of these coaches in the bottom half of this list, it is the defense that has been an issue for these teams struggling and that is the case for UNLV.
7. Mike Bobo, Colorado State
Losing to rivals, bowl games, and big teams are why Bobo is in the bottom half of the league even though he has gone 7-6 in each of his three years as the Rams head coach.
This year may be a bit more of the same with quarterback issues at quarterback with Collin Hill who tore his ACL, for the second time, and is out for a few months into the season. Also, there are new coordinators on each side of the ball with Marty English retiring and Will Friend going to Tennessee.
– Colorado State podcast preview
6. Matt Wells, Utah State
Coach Wells is on the hot seat, to a degree. The Aggies rebounded from not making a bowl in 2016 but he did go to a bowl game last year. Utah State has taken a dip since Gary Andersen left the program, but the talent should be back to make this team a dark horse contender. No bowl game really could mean Wells is out.
