Coach Fran should be the man for UNLV's head coaching job

Interim UNLV athletic director Jerry Koloskie is being bombarded these days by perspective candidates to replace Mike Sanford as head football coach.

Despite it’s poor locker room, minimal community support and the lack of a student-athlete academic center, things that Sanford has said hindered his rebuilding job, there is no shortage of candidates to become UNLV’s 10th head football coach.

I’ve learned one who has inquired is Dennis Franchione. If so, this is a no-brainer for new school President Dr. Neal Smatresk and whoever gets the athletic directors job.

Franchione, now a radio announcer for ESPN, has done a masterful job of rebuilding not one but two programs currently in the Mountain West Conference.

New Mexico was a WAC laughingstock when Franchione took over in 1992, having not played in a bowl game since 1961. Five years later the Lobos were 9-4, champions in the WAC Mountain Division and playing in the Insight.com Bowl led by a lightly-recruited linebacker named Brian Urlacher.

Franchione then went to TCU, which was just 1-10 a year earlier. The Horned Frogs, behind a junior tailback named LaDainian Tomlinson, went 7-5 in his first season and beat USC in the Sun Bowl. Two years later TCU was 10-1 and co-champs of the WAC when Alabama hired Franchione away, leaving the TCU job for his defensive coordinator, Gary Patterson.

The Crimson Tide, 3-8 a year earlier, went 7-5 in 2001 and then 10-3 in 2002, winning the West Division of the SEC.

But heavy NCAA sanctions, including a two-year bowl ban, from infractions occurred during the Mike Shula era, led Franchione to Texas A&M where he was eventually forced out because of a secret VIP email newsletter he sold to top-end boosters for $1,200 a year.

Here’s the kicker: Franchione, who beat arch-rival Texas in each of his last two seasons, received a $4.4 million buyout that still pays him $1 million in 2010 … minus what he earns in another job.

So not only could the Rebels land a master-rebuilder, the first year’s salary, much like head basketball coach Lon Kruger’s buyout package with the Atlanta Hawks, would be mostly covered by Texas A&M.

A no-brainer, right? Now all the school needs is a full-time AD and a school president that can make it work … quickly.