Rebels coach pits reality against perception on recruiting trail

By Brian Hilderbrand

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Depending on which “expert” you listen to, UNLV’s latest recruiting class ranks either a respectable fourth in the Mountain West Conference or a woeful 110th in the nation.

Granted, evaluating recruits and recruiting classes isn’t an exact science. Neither is the actual recruiting process, although after four go-rounds as the Rebels’ head coach, Mike Sanford sounds as if he has it down to something resembling a science.

More specifically, Sanford believes he has been successful in clearing at least one recruiting hurdle that is unique to his program: persuading parents to send their 17- and 18-year-old sons to live in Las Vegas — on their own — for four years.

“One of the things we have to overcome in recruiting is people’s perception of Las Vegas as being ‘Sin City’ and the Strip,” he said.

One way Sanford and his coaches attempt to do that is by having a recruit’s parents join their son when he makes his visit to UNLV.

“We recruited a lot of high school players this year and one of the ways you recruit high school players, in my mind, is to involve the parents,” Sanford said. “We do everything we can to get the parents to come on the visit and we do everything we can to show them that there’s more to our university and more to Las Vegas and more to our football program than what most people’s perception of Las Vegas is.”

While Sanford and his staff do their best to highlight the benefits of living in the Las Vegas Valley by showing them around town, they don’t ignore the Strip. Recruits (and their parents, if they make the trip) stay in a hotel on the Strip and often have a meal or two at nearby hotels.

Still, it can be a hard sell because of the type of people Sanford said he is attempting to recruit — those of “great character.” And when you’re recruiting players like that, he said, “you’re going to end up with kids that have parents that are concerned about Las Vegas.”

Other perceived obstacles, such as UNLV not having an on-campus stadium and the Mountain West Conference’s less-than-ideal TV contract, tend to be played up more by the media and competing schools, Sanford said.

The fact that most of UNLV’s football games are televised on the mtn., which has limited cable distribution, primarily in Mountain West Conference markets, has never been brought up by a recruit, Sanford said. And the fact that UNLV’s football stadium is seven miles from campus? Not an issue, according to Sanford.

“You’ve got the one side of it that it’s an off-campus stadium, but the other side of it is that it’s a beautiful stadium, and we sell that,” he said. “When we go out there, recruits really like our stadium.”

Although UNLV isn’t exactly competing against the Pac-10 powers for recruits, the Rebels still manage to lure some respectable high school and junior college players to a program that has won eight games in the past four years and has had one winning season since 1994. How does Sanford do it?

The positives about playing at UNLV, Sanford said, far outweigh any negatives — real or perceived. Among his selling points, Sanford cited top-notch facilities, including an 8,500-square-foot weight room, a “very good” strength and conditioning program, the addition of an academics building for athletes “in the near future” and an ever-expanding campus. Having several players advance to the NFL in recent years also figures into his sales pitch.

But when it comes down to it, Sanford said, it is the current players who perhaps have the biggest role in luring recruits to the program.

“We’ve had nothing but positive things said by recruits about our players and how they care about each other and how they believe in the program and believe in the future of this program,” Sanford said.

“Our competitors are negative about our record, our lack of winning, but I think when a young man comes here and meets our players and gets a feel for the attitude right now of what they expect and where they believe this thing is going, I think that ends up being a positive.”