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Nevada Football: Ken Wilson Named New Head Coach of Wolf Pack
On Friday, Ken Wilson tabbed as the new head coach of the Nevada Wolf Pack
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Ken Wilson Named New Head Coach of Nevada Wolf Pack On Friday
The Nevada Wolf Pack’s search for a new head coach has led them to a person familiar with the inner workings of the football program.
Ken Wilson has been hired to be the 27th head football coach at Nevada on Friday. Wilson, who is 57 years old, got his first collegiate assistant coaching job at Nevada back in 1989 and spent almost 25 years with the Wolf Pack. Before joining the Wolf Pack, Wilson was a grad assistant at New Mexico from 1987 until 1988. Now Wilson returns to Reno as the new head football coach to replace Jay Norvell who left this week to take the head coaching job at Colorado State.
Welcome back home to Nevada!
Nevada names Ken Wilson as 27th Head Football Coach in program history 🐺
📝: https://t.co/9P1aHp5sfu#BattleBorn // #ThePackIsBack pic.twitter.com/EixFhDmYHf
— Nevada Football (@NevadaFootball) December 10, 2021
𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘, 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍, 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄@CoachKWils 🗣#BattleBorn // #NevadaTUDE pic.twitter.com/RWCLCI1lkQ
— Nevada Football (@NevadaFootball) December 10, 2021
𝙊𝙉𝙀 𝙊𝙁 𝙐𝙎@DougKnuth 🗣#BattleBorn // #ThePackIsBack pic.twitter.com/qQssS92a9A
— Nevada Football (@NevadaFootball) December 10, 2021
Wilson got his coaching start in 1989 when Nevada hired him to be the outside linebackers coach. During a 10 year span, Wilson stayed on staff moving up from being the linebackers coach until 1996 where he became the defensive coordinator and stayed in that position until 1998. During that time period as an assistant, Wilson worked for three Nevada head coaches: Chris Ault, Jeff Horton and Jeff Tisdel.
In 1999, Wilson then moved away from the field to the office as he worked in the athletic administration department under then athletic director Chris Ault. Wilson worked as part of the athletic department at Nevada until 2003 when he returned as an assistant head coach under Ault from 2004 until 2012 when Ault resigned. During that time period, Wilson moved up to assistant head coach and linebackers coach all the way up to associate head coach.
After not being retained by Brian Polian when Polian took over as head coach in 2013, Wilson passed on the job offer to be Nevada’s director of operations and went to Washington State where he coached outside linebackers from 2013 until 2018. He then moved to Oregon in 2019 where he once again coached linebackers for two years before becoming co-defensive coordinator this past season under Mario Christobal.
Wilson will be taking over a Nevada football team that went 8-4 in 2020 and could be headed towards a rebuild since key players like Carson Strong, Cole Turner, and Romeo Doubs more than likely look to be NFL-bound and an exodus of other Wolf Pack players such as Melquan Stovall and Justin Lockhart have headed to the transfer portal.
The hiring of Wilson is a move that makes sense in that Wilson knows the Nevada football program and is well aware of the positives and negatives of building a winning team in Reno. Wilson, who was linked to the head coaching job at Montana State last year before turning it down to stay at Oregon, will now be at the head of the table in getting Nevada to the top of the Mountain West.
