Ault sees rivalry through knowing eyes
The years of perfecting offensive strategy thinned his hair. The battle to move Nevada up to the highest level of college football wrinkled his face.
But the eyes, the ones that have dissected 23 seasons of the weekly game film, stay unchanged. They remain as blue – what other color could they be? – as the day Chris Ault was named Wolf Pack football coach in 1976.
Through those eyes, Ault sees the landmark moments of the Wolf Pack’s greatest rivalry.
He sees the 1978 Battle for the Fremont Cannon, the first time he beat UNLV in Las Vegas as a head coach, when his players disassembled the mountain howitzer and carried it home to Reno on the airplane.
He sees Charvez Foger and Lucius Floyd running roughshod over the Rebels in 1985 on the way to a 48-7 victory, at the time the biggest winning margin in the rivalry.
He still sees four straight losses under Chris Tormey that helped prompt him back into coaching, and the 48-13 loss in his return in 2004 in what he says is the ugliest game ever played by his team.
Ault is the lone figure that knows the battle in its entirety with such intimacy. In many ways, he is the rivalry.
“One of the benefits I have is I can talk about tradition because I’ve been apart of it and have been a part of it as a player, as a administrator, and as a coach,” Ault said. “Other people can talk about tradition, but they haven’t experienced it from within. And that’s a great advantage.”
Seeing Red
When the Ault household is due for a remodel, Ault’s wife Kathy is restricted.
Red – that color associated with the devil and the flags of communism – is not part of the Ault family color palette. That’s because it represents UNLV, too.
The way Ault figures it, he hasn’t worn a single thread of red since he was an assistant at UNLV from 1973 to 1975.
“I tell all my players, ‘If red was so good for Santa Clause, which he wears, why would they call it a blue Christmas?’” said Ault, who doesn’t allow players or coaches to wear red into Cashell Field House.
Ault’s quips about the color red have become his signature to the rivalry, along with winning.
At the beginning of the rivalry, the game didn’t take place on a yearly basis and the schools were headed in different directions. While Nevada, the state’s flagship university, started its football program in 1896, 72 years before UNLV, the Rebels were the first to join Division I-A, college football’s highest division.
The Rebels had a much larger budget and the better status, but they didn’t have a lot of desire to play Ault’s Nevada teams.
“Our university at that time (the early to mid-80s) had to make some decisions on the football program,” Ault said. “I was the head football coach at the time and those decisions were pretty easy to make. Compete with them or get out.”
So Ault went about playing catch up, moving the Wolf Pack from an independent through the Division I-AA ranks and finally to Division I-A in the 90s.
He also lobbied the state to make the Battle for the Fremont Cannon a yearly game, which happened starting in 1989.
Ault says that’s when the rivalry really began. It’s also when Ault’s dominance against UNLV began. He won four straight games starting in 1989 and the Wolf Pack would go on to win 10 of 11.
“It means so much up here,” Ault said. “There’s a different feeling. Even when I was down there at UNLV and we won, it was a different feeling.”
Dennis Farrell, Ault’s friend and commissioner of the Big West Conference, which Nevada used to be part of, remembers watching a football game with Ault in his luxury box at Mackay Stadium several years ago.
The Nevada drill team marched onto the field with new uniforms. They had red on them.
“He couldn’t believe they would dare wear UNLV colors,” Farrell said with a chuckle. “Believe me, whoever the drill coach was heard about it.”
The Legacy
Ault’s legacy extends past the Battle for the Fremont Cannon. He innovated the “Air Wolf” and “Pistol” offenses, the latter of which Ault started running in 2005 and is now used in packages by LSU, Syracuse and Virginia Tech. He’s won eight conference championships, and is one of only two active coaches in the College Football Hall of Fame, along with Flordia State’s Bobby Bowden. With a career record 178-75-1, Ault has the fifth-most wins among Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) coaches.
“You cut him open and you know he bleeds Wolf Pack silver and blue,” Farrell said. “He’s an institution.”
But beating UNLV is at the heart of Ault producing a successful program.
The importance is shown by the alcove at the end of the hall next to Ault’s office in Cashell Field House. It was built with the purpose of housing the Fremont Cannon, and Ault has to walk by it several times every day.
Ault’s understanding of the rivalry also shows in his results. Ault-coached teams have won seven of nine games against UNLV.
When it comes to talking about the rivalry, Ault can speak of great wins and tough losses. There are events like the red defection that followed the 1993 season when Ault’s original successor, Jeff Horton, left the Wolf Pack after one season to coach the Rebels and the infamous helmet-tossing in 1995 when Ault’s Wolf Pack beat Horton’s Rebels and a UNLV player threw his helmet at Ault during a midfield skirmish.
“I think he personifies the rivalry,” former university president Joe Crowley sad. “He has been around so long. He has been a fixture not only for this institution, but statewide.”
Ault can translate all that history to his players, make them understand the importance of the Fremont Cannon at a depth UNLV can’t answer.
Ault has faced seven Rebels coaches during his tenure at Nevada.
“He’s an intense coach who demands the most out of his players,” said senior nose tackle Matt Hines, who was a sophomore during Ault’s first season back. “But he made us winners. We weren’t winning championships. We weren’t going to bowl games (before Ault). Now I have a championship ring on my finger.”
If a former Wolf Pack player drops by the locker room for Ault’s pregame talk on Saturday, they will recognize the words leaving his mouth.
The speech will be different – it’s always personalized to every team and situation - but those blue eyes, the ones that break down film and dissect defenses, narrow with extra intensity as he delivers the same message.
Represent the community. Represent the university. Beat UNLV.
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