Nevada tries to stay focused on game with Eastern Washington despite uncertain future of Mountain West Conference
From a historical perspective, Nevada – Eastern Washington’s opponent at noon Saturday in Reno – stands as a success story and a model for teams that may wish to climb the ranks of college football.
Four times a Big Sky champion in 1983, 1986, 1990 and 1991, the Wolf Pack also have five Big West championships and two Western Athletic Conference titles in the 33 years as an FBS team since leaving the conference and subdivision in which Eastern Washington still resides.
Yet Nevada’s upward trajectory stalled a bit after it joined the Mountain West Conference in 2012. Just three winning seasons in conference play. No conference or division titles.
Now, with the MWC facing an uncertain future with the Pac-2 tripling into the Pac-6 by adding four of the conference’s top programs, Nevada again sits at a crucial juncture in its history.
“I’m not shocked. It is what it is,” Nevada coach Jeff Choate said during his Monday news conference. “If I spend too much time worrying about the Mountain West and conference realignment, then I’m not worrying about Eastern Washington. I’m pretty focused on Eastern Washington right now.”
Choate is the first-year coach of a Nevada program that is three seasons removed from an 8-5 record that included a 5-3 mark in MWC play and an appearance in the Quick Lane Bowl – a 52-24 loss – against Western Michigan.
Head coach Jay Norvell left that season to take the same job at Colorado State, one of the four programs recently announced as a future member of (what is at least for now) the Pac-6.
The Wolf Pack replaced him with Ken Wilson, a former Nevada assistant during a highly successful stretch from 1989 to 2012 who was later an assistant at Washington State from 2013 to 2019.
It didn’t go well.
In two years under Wilson, the Wolf Pack went 4-20, including home losses to FCS teams Incarnate Word (55-41) and Idaho (33-6). All but one of Nevada’s 10 losses last season came by double digits.
Choate’s first task is just to help the Wolf Pack be competitive again, and so far they generally have been. Nevada’s losses are to SMU (29-24), Georgia Southern (20-17) and Minnesota (27-0), while its win came over Troy (28-26).
“The margins of victory, as I’ve said a number of times, they’re not very big,” Choate said. “So we’ve got to do a really good job of doing the little things that are going to help us have success: control time of possession, (win the) turnover margin, play well on third down.”
While Choate has never been in quite this spot before, his resume includes a four-year stint at Montana State from 2016 to 2019, when he turned what had become a mediocre Bobcats program back into a playoff team. After serving as assistants on the staffs at Washington State, Florida and Washington, Choate inherited a Bobcats team that finished 5-6 overall and 3-5 in the Big Sky.
Montana State finished 4-7 and 5-6 in Choate’s first two years, but in his past two it went 8-5 and 11-4 with two playoff appearances, including a run to the FCS semifinals in 2019. Choate left to become an assistant at Texas, Brent Vigen took over at Montana State, and the Bobcats have won 32 games in the three seasons since.
It also doesn’t take much digging to find a prognosticator who will point to Montana State as a potential fit to join the MWC, although when asked about it during his Monday news conference, Vigen deferred to his bosses at MSU.
“I feel strongly that our administration is going to have the most aggressive approach possible, whatever that means. We only control so much,” Vigen said. “There are so many things that are beyond just that move last weekend (by the MWC/Pac-2) that are yet to happen and will continue to happen on the national landscape that we just do the best we can to keep pushing our program forward, our university forward, and that’s what we need to be about right now.”
Whatever the Mountain West looks like over the next few years, the task ahead of Choate at Nevada remains the same: climb back to the top of its conference and win a conference title that has, for 13 years, eluded the Wolf Pack.
For Choate, that starts by focusing on Saturday’s game against Eastern Washington, a team that in three tries at Montana State his Bobcats never defeated – and a team that, during Choate’s years at WSU and UW, gave both the Cougars (24-20) and Huskies (59-52) a scare.
“I remember being at both Washington State and Washington as a coach, having to play them, and even if we were fortunate enough to win, it was down to the wire,” Choate said. “They took Fresno (State) to overtime last year.
“Whatever you see on film, you’re going to get a much better version of that outfit when they show up at Mackay Stadium. And I know (EWU) coach (Aaron) Best and his mindset and his personality. He’ll have his guys ready to go.”