Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

A name for those who want to see Sanford gone

UNLV could do a lot worse than a 10-time national champion

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Should Mike Sanford be fired as UNLV’s football coach, one name already has surfaced in conjunction with the potential opening.

It has surfaced again and again and again and again on the discussion boards on the Sun Web site:

Larry Kehres.

“Hire Larry Kehres!” writes a fan with the user name revtomperl again and again and again and again.

Who the heck is Larry Kehres?

Larry Kehres is the head coach at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio. He is the winningest coach, in terms of percentage, in NCAA history. Since becoming head coach in 1986, Kehres has guided the Purple Raiders to 284 victories against 21 defeats with three ties.

Two hundred eighty-four victories.

Twenty-one defeats.

Three ties.

Put that in your Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl and smoke it.

Kehres’ teams have won 10 of the past 16 NCAA Division III championships. It will probably soon be 11 of 17. Mount Union had its big showdown game against 15th-ranked Otterbein last weekend. Mount Union won 58-7 to remain undefeated.

Lenny Reich, the Mount Union sports information director, told me this isn’t the first time the 60-year-old Kehres, who also was Mount Union’s swimming coach for a while — you gotta love NCAA D-III — has been mentioned in conjunction with an opening, or at least a potential opening, at the D-I level.

“We definitely have a loyal and dedicated fan base of alumni,” Reich said.

Reich said Kehres seems happy to remain a big fish in a small pond or, in his case, Orca, the Killer Whale in a small pond. Reich said Kehres also is the Mount Union athletic director. I told him UNLV needs one of those, too. His son is the defensive coordinator, Reich said. I told him UNLV really needs one of those.

“Wanna ask him yourself?” Reich said, mentioning that Kehres was walking down the hall that very minute with a box of doughnuts for his assistants.

Actually, I made up the part about the doughnuts, which would make this story even more Division III-like, but Reich put down the phone and said he would bring Kehres to it.

As I said, you gotta love Division III. I doubt I could have called Urban Meyer down at Florida or Joe Paterno up at Penn State and gotten them on the phone on Thursday afternoon less than 48 hours before the Alabama or Ohio State games.

Alas, Kehres respectfully declined to be interviewed. He didn’t want anything he might say to be construed as angling for somebody’s job. But he told Reich to tell me he was flattered that somebody in Las Vegas even knew his name.

Then he went back to preparing for the big game against Otterbein.

Ron Kantowski can be reached at 259-4088 or at [email protected]. Read his blog, “Now and Then,” at lasvegassun.com/nowandthen.

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