Ferd Lewis: New coaches make Mountain West Conference football race tough to predict

When the Mountain West Conference announced this week that it was postponing its 2020 Football Virtual Media Days until further notice, it meant the head coaches would have to wait at least a little — and, perhaps, a whole lot — longer to formally introduce themselves.

This is a largely new-look group for whom those “Hello, my name is …” tags will someday come in handy.

Between the impact of COVID-19 and a wholesale turnover in head coaches in the league, this season — if there turns out to be one — shapes up as one of the hardest to pin down in a lot of ways.

Which is why, when it comes to the preseason poll announced Tuesday, you might as well flip a coin to choose an order of finish. Preseason polls are normally to be taken with a grain of salt, but this year a whole barrel is necessary.

The poll had San Diego State atop the West Division followed by Nevada, Hawaii, Fresno State, San Jose State and Nevada-Las Vegas.

Defending conference champion Boise State is the pick in the Mountain Division for a seventh consecutive season.

But, then, you’d be hard pressed to find a conference in general or a division in particular in any of the 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences where there have been as many changes in coaches.

Six of the 12 MWC head-coaching jobs have changed as have four of the six in the West Division, where the Rainbow Warriors are the defending champion from a 2019 season that, given the developments of the past seven months, seems like ages ago.

All of which leave UH’s Todd Graham the “rookie” in terms of MWC seniority though not by much in a division where four coaches came aboard in the space of six weeks. But he does have the most games (156) and victories (95) of any head coach in the division.

In the MWC West, only Brent Brennan at San Jose State and Nevada’s Jay Norvell, return for what would be their fourth seasons, which is where the seniority bar is set these days.

Gone are two of the conference’s most veteran and accomplished coaches, Fresno State’s Jeff Tedford, who departed for health reasons and San Diego State’s Rocky Long who just up and walked away because, well, he is Rocky Long.

He will be the defensive coordinator at his alma mater, New Mexico, assisting one of his proteges, first-year head coach Danny Gonzales, a former Lobo player.

Long’s replacement, Brady Hoke, isn’t exactly a new face around the circuit having been an Aztecs head coach for two seasons until leaving after the 2010 campaign to try his luck at Michigan. (He didn’t have much, lasting just four seasons). But Hoke does figure to bring a new approach to retooling the Aztecs’ slumbering offense.

Fresno State’s Kalen DeBoer and UNLV’s Marcus Arroyo have never been head coaches on the Division I level and both have significant rebuilding jobs ahead of them.

Preseason polls can be fun when they come out and even more interesting to review when the season is over. But the way things are going, you wonder if we’ll get that opportunity.

Meanwhile, those new head coaches might want to hang onto those name tags.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.