2023 Mountain West football preview: UNLV Rebels

LAS VEGAS – If things work out for Barry Odom at UNLV down the road, perhaps he will send Craig Bohl a thank-you note.
The former Missouri head coach is entering his first season leading the Rebels, who are picked to finish ninth in the preseason Mountain West media poll.
During the conference media day event in Las Vegas, Odom was asked by the Star-Tribune what he remembered about Missouri’s 37-31 loss to Wyoming in the 2019 opener at War Memorial Stadium.
“That’s part of the reason that I’m here. We lost that game, and we weren’t supposed to lose it,” Odom said. “Coach Bohl did a great job, and we started out 0-1. Fast forward six weeks and we were 5-1, so we flipped around very quickly. They were very physical, great game plan and they played extremely well that night. …
“That was obviously a huge win for the Mountain West. We end up 6-6 and I was shown the door.”
Odom finished his four seasons at Missouri with a 25-25 record. After getting the pink slip from the Tigers, he stayed in the SEC as the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator at Arkansas the past three seasons.
When Marcus Arroyo, the former UW offensive coordinator, was fired after his third season as UNLV’s head coach, the program turned to Odom to finish the rebuild.
However, the coaching change led to a mass portal exodus, which included losing running back Aidan Robbins (BYU), wide receiver Kyle Williams (Washington State), offensive linemen Leif Fautanu (Arizona State) and Noah McKinney (Oklahoma State) and defensive back Nohl Williams (Cal).
Some of the newcomers Odom has added include running back Vincent Davis, who rushed for over 1,800 yards with 16 touchdowns during his career at Pitt, and offensive linemen Jack Hasz (Buffalo) and Jalen St. John (Arkansas).
The biggest recruiting win was talking quarterback Doug Brumfield into staying. The 6-foot-6, 225-pound junior has completed 60.5% of his passes for 2,369 yards and 21 total touchdowns (12 passing, nine rushing) over 15 career games.
“I had to sit back and think, what’s the ultimate goal here?” Brumfield said. “What am I doing this for? And ultimately, I realized I wanted to win at UNLV. I spent a lot of time here, and I didn’t want all this time to be for nothing.”
Bobby Petrino was Odom’s first pick for offensive coordinator, but the former Louisville, Arkansas and Atlanta Falcons head coach was poached by Texas A&M before calling his first play at UNLV.
Brennan Marion, who was the passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach at Texas in 2022, was hired as offensive coordinator.
Odom needs to take advantage of Brumfield’s talents this season. The Rebels, who were 5-7 in 2022, probably would have qualified for their first bowl game since 2014 and saved Arroyo’s job had the talented dual-threat quarterback not suffered a midseason injury.
“I think the pressure to turn this into a winner, yeah, it’s very personal to me,” Odom said. “When we took over at Memphis and Justin Fuente was the head coach it was a similar situation. They hadn’t won in some time but had some history but needed to get it revisited. And we did that. We had some success at Missouri, we had some success at Arkansas. I want to do the same thing here; I want to turn it into a winner. Pressure? You bet.”
The Rebels, who have only had two winning seasons since 1994, play at Michigan (Sept. 9) and host Vanderbilt (Sept. 16) during non-conference play.
UNLV, which is facing projected bottom-half teams Hawaii, Nevada, Colorado State and New Mexico in the first five weeks of the conference slate, has a chance to get off to another fast start in MW play
Odom will try to get even with Bohl when the Cowboys play the Rebels on Friday, Nov. 10 at Allegiant Stadium.
“I have respected this conference for a number of years and being in this business for 20-plus years now, the Mountain West brand has always been very strong,” Odom said of his perception of the conference coming from the SEC. “If you look at the champion of this league when the playoffs expand, we should be in the playoffs. I don’t think there’s any question about that.”