Ault deserves credit for coaching accomplishments
Tuesday, Sep. 25, 2007 @ 1:21 am
Asking the casual Syracuse or LSU fan about Nevada football coach Chris Ault would probably be about as insightful as asking Britney Spears about steps 3-12 on the path to sobriety. Yet both teams run packages from Ault’s “Pistol” offense.
And if you raised Ault’s name in a circle of coaches, most would surely be able to talk about his prowess as a tactician.
This is the paradox of Ault’s career – well-respected, but not well-known.
Ault is one of college football’s great offensive innovators in the last two decades, he and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden are the only two active coaches in the College Football Hall, and his 178 career wins are fifth most among Football Bowl Subdivision team’s, but he’s done all that at Nevada, an institution lacking in national exposure until the last few years.
For all his success at Nevada, it’s hard to gauge where Ault’s legacy will fall in gamut of great coaches.
Ault has also been fairly polarizing figure in Northern Nevada, where it seems he’s either loved or hated. And surely, to go along with his successes, Ault has done some shady things - like in 2003 when he fired coach Chris Tormey and took the job himself a few weeks later.
But despite personal feelings, or lack of a national reputation in the layman’s college football lexicon, Ault’s success cannot be denied.
When Ault took over as head coach in 1976, the Wolf Pack existed in the dirges of college football as little more than an afterthought.
The Wolf Pack has risen to a level of respectability during Ault’s tenure. He’s won eight conference championships with only two losing seasons entering his 23rd year as coach.
“You can’t dispute the record that he’s had,” said Dennis Farrell, commissioner of the Big West Conference, which Nevada was in before moving to the WAC. “Chris, I think, could have been a successful coach at any level of football because of the traits that he has. I think the only reason is he hasn’t gotten the national attention is Nevada has not been on TV a lot. Almost two decades of his career was at the I-AA level.”
While Ault has spent his entire career at Nevada, he’s found success at different levels. He successfully turned the Wolf Pack into a Division I-AA powerhouse in the 80s, and he set the Wolf Pack up for success moving to Division I-A in the 90s.
Most recently, he’s restored the Wolf Pack as a solid Division I-A program following a period of serious struggles under other coaches.
“He’s been able to adapt as he’s been able to mature in coaching,” said Grant Teaff, former Baylor coach and executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. “He’s very similar to Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno in that they’ve been through several generations of kids because of the culture that they’re in.”
“In the coaching profession, coaches know the job he’s done,” said former head coach Jeff Horton, who succeeded Ault in 1993 only to leave for UNLV the following season in the red defection. “He’s one of the best and he’s well-respected around the country by coaches.”
Finally, Ault deserves credit for sticking around. He had chances to go the route of so many other coaches and rise up by jumping ship. Instead, he elevated himself by elevating the program, and at a substantial discount.
“I’m one of the very few coaches in the country who can say ‘I didn’t have to move to move the program. I moved the program,’” Ault said. “And that’s special.”
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on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 1:21 am and is filed under 2007 UNLV Preview, Football, Sports.
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