<a href='http://www.elkodaily.com/articles/2004/07/07/news/sports/sports2.txt' target='_blank'>http://www.elkodaily.com/articles/2004/07/...rts/sports2.txt</a>

Pundits' predictions not kind to Wolf Pack

By Mike Christensen, Sports Editor

It's July and that means football pundits are putting forth their plethora of predictions regarding the coming season. And if the gridiron gurus are accurate, things won't be very pretty for the Wolf Pack this fall.

New - "recycled" would be a better description - Nevada coach Chris Ault takes over the Pack program for the third time, having coached at UNR from 1976-1992 and from 1994-1995.

While hoping the third time's the charm for Ault, it could be a rough season. Yes, Ault only experienced one losing record in his 19 years as Pack coach, but that was in a different time and against a different level of competition.

Says Fresno Bee reporter Marek Warszawski in the Sporting News college football preview: "Evidently small improvements aren't enough for Ault, who fired Chris Tormey after a .500 season and named himself Nevada's coach for the third time. Returning to the kind of glory this team had in Division I-AA is an admirable goal, but anything above a fifth-place finish would be a surprise."

Sporting News picks the Pack eighth in the 10-team WAC. Athlon projects Nevada to wind up sixth.

Still, there is hope thanks to one of the softest schedules in college football. Not only does Nevada get Boise State in Reno, it also faces a couple cupcake nonconference games. After opening 2004 with a WAC game at Louisiana Tech, the Wolf Pack returns home for a pair of games against Sacramento State and Buffalo.

A 3-0 - or at least 2-1 - start is quite feasible.

But while those games may result in wins, they won't be very meaningful wins. More importantly, games against Sacramento State and Buffalo won't fill the seats at Mackay Stadium.

And even with those "gimmee" games, Nevada could be hard-pressed to win more than four games while adjusting to Ault's "Air Wolf" offense. After playing Buffalo, the Pack plays three-straight road games - at San Diego State, at UNLV and at Hawaii - that will likely result in a three-game losing skid.

It's interesting to note different schools' philosophies on non-conference scheduling. While Nevada went for the "soft" approach in hopes of getting some early wins, the overzealous schedulers in Provo went a bit overboard in filling BYU's non-Mountain West Conference slate.

The Cougars will host Notre Dame and USC, while making visits to Stanford and Boise State. It smells like a winless year outside of the conference for the Y.

Ultimately, Nevada and BYU will both probably win five or fewer games this fall. Thank goodness for Boise State and Utah. Those two should be bowl bound again this December.

And if your allegiance is up for grabs, now seems like a very good time to become a fan of the Broncos and the Utes.

Nice to see a journalist who has a glimmer of a clue (for a change). LOL

This is the guy that wrote the infamous "Nevada got lucky" article after Nevada beat BYU a couple years ago. Not one of our favorite writers to say the least.

He sounds like a pissed off byu fan or a Ute fan! He obviously Does not like Nevada. Probably an UNLV guy....

I would like to know more about his website and where he bought or got permisinn to use that picture?

Picture????

Yeah....this one

<a href='http://www.westweb.org/brewster/Copy%20of%20nevadaprep.pdf' target='_blank'>NevadaPrep website</a>

Boy, that picture does look familiar!!!
I remember when a Boise State logo that I created started showing up all over the internet on different sports websites.
I guess a lot of borrowing goes on, on the internet. My running blue horse is an example!