Former Nevada baseball coach Jay Johnson is a national champion again. Now at LSU, Johnson has won two national titles in the last three seasons, bringing the Tigers two crowns during his first four years on campus after being hired, by among others, Stephanie Rempe, who was at LSU at the time and now runs the Nevada athletic department as athletic director. We lead this week’s Monday Mailbag with a Johnson-focused question before hitting some other topics. Thanks, as always, for the inquiries.
Put Jay Johnson near the top of the list, but I have him No. 2 right now. Here’s the top 10.
1. Head football coach Buck Shaw (won 62 college games with five top-15 national finishes in 10 years post-Nevada while winning 90 more games in the AAFC/NFL, including the 1960 NFL Championship with the Eagles; he was the 49ers’ first head coach)
2. Head baseball coach Jay Johnson (two national titles; four College World Series in 10 years post-Nevada)
3. Assistant baseball coach John Savage (800-plus wins; four College World Series; one national title post-Nevada)
4. Assistant football coach Bobby Petrino (137 college wins, one NFL head job, one famous motorcycle crash and one neck brace post-Nevada)
5. Men’s basketball coach Eric Musselman (two Elite Eights, three Sweet 16s in six seasons post-Nevada)
6. Head football coach Ray “R.E.” Courtright (two nationals titles as Michigan’s men’s golf coach post-Nevada)
7. Swimming and diving coach Mike Shrader (nine Mountain West titles and 11 coach of the year honors in 18 seasons at San Diego State post-Nevada)
8. Football assistant coach John L. Smith (157 college wins with stints at Idaho, Utah State, Louisville, Michigan State, Arkansas, Fort Lewis and Kentucky State post-Nevada)
9. Men’s basketball coach Sonny Allen (most of Allen’s great career happened before he was Nevada’s coach, but he did go on to coach a WNBA team, the Sacramento Monarchs, post-Nevada)
10. Head football coach Jim Aiken (just 21-20 at Oregon post-Nevada, but that included a top-10 season and Cotton Bowl appearance in 1948)
Next would have been former Nevada track and field coach Curt Kraft, who led East Carolina to three conference titles in 19 seasons post-Nevada. Former Nevada baseball assistant Jay Uhlman has done a nice job at Tulane, leading that team to two NCAA Regionals in four years. And a special shoutout to Nevada football coach James Hopper, who was the Wolf Pack’s coach for one season in 1900 (4-2-1) and a year at Cal in 1904 (6-1-1) before turning to writing where he published 450 short stories and six novels as a influential writer in the first couple of decades of the 1900s.
Among head coaches to move on, the only one I know who would win a national title outside of Jay Johnson is former Nevada football coach Ray “R.E.” Courtright, who won two national titles as Michigan’s men’s golf coach.
As far as Dodgers vs. Padres, only two times was a batter intentionally hit in that series. And both times it was Shohei Ohtani. So, I don’t know why the Padres were so upset. They brought up the fact the Dodgers have hit Fernando Tatis Jr. six hits since he made his MLB debut. In the same time period, the Padres have hit Dodgers catcher Will Smith 11 times, Max Muncy nine times and Mookie Betts six times. Cry me a river, Padres. San Diego pitchers have hit 68 Dodgers batters to the Dodgers pitchers hitting 37 Padres batters since Tatis’ MLB debut. And the Dodgers have as many World Series titles (two) in the last five years as the Padres have NL West championships in the last 26 seasons. This is not a rivalry. The Padres just want to make it one. If it did come to blows, Joe Kelly would come out of retirement to be Nolan Ryan to Tatis’s Robin Venutra.
I actually could see that happening at some point as Jay Johnson remembers his time at Nevada fondly. I’m surprised he hasn’t scheduled a game against Nevada, either when he was at Arizona or now at LSU. Let’s make that happen.
And as LSU won its second national title in three years last season, I got to thinking former McQueen High standout Robby Snelling could have been on both of those Tigers teams. I don’t blame him for taking the $3 million signing bonus after being a first-round draft pick in 2023. That was the right move. But he would have been a freshman on the 2023 LSU title team and a draft-eligible junior this season after committing to Johnson and LSU out of high school before turning pro. Snelling is having a solid season at Double-A Pensacola as a 21-year-old this year, sitting a 2-5 with a 4.18 ERA in 12 games with 70 strikeouts in 60.1 innings as his velocity has spiked back up over a dip last season. But those would have been cool experiences for him.
Steve Alford played at Indiana a number of times while Iowa’s head coach from 1999-2007 but has not played the Hoosiers since then. That’s 18 total seasons, including six each at New Mexico, UCLA and Nevada. If it hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t happen. Although that’d be a cool moment for Alford as he’s still an Indiana legend.
I’m sure Nate Yeskie’s had a lot of head-coaching offers as he reportedly turned down Mississippi State a number of years ago and has been one of college baseball’s top pitching coaches for the last two decades, which includes a national title at Oregon State in 2018 and LSU in 2025. At LSU, Yeskie has a base salary of $400,000 and got $80,000 in postseason bonuses this season. That’s head-coach money at most places. It just comes down to whether Yeskie wants to be a head coach. I would guess he will be a head coach soon as he wanted the Oregon State job that instead went to Mitch Canham in 2020. LSU’s last pitching coach, Wes Johnson, became Georgia’s head coach in 2023, so Yeskie could be in for a similar kind of job.
I sat down with Steve Alford today for a 25-minute interview on the offseason that I’ll post on our website later today or tomorrow. I asked about the smaller point guard model that’s being used this season (6-foot Tyler Rolison, 6-1 Tayshawn Comer and 5-9 Myles Walker) and he said that’s largely coincidental, adding the team’s ballhandling and ability to pressure the ball defensively should be improved over last year. He said the Wolf Pack’s post size (7-1 Jeriah Coleman, 6-10 Joel Armotrading, 6-9 Elijah Price, 6-8 Kaleb Lowery, 6-9 Ethan Croley) should be a plus. He added shooting is a question mark but something that’s been fine in the first couple of offseason practices.
I would agree Nevada seems to have a faster, more athletic, more defensive-oriented team compared to last year, although that does carry some offensive efficiency questions. Alford’s first impressions of the 2025-26 team have been positive.
“Really good, really excited about it,” Alford said. “It’s just adapting to a new era. Last year was the first year in 34 years we didn’t have a freshman on the team. As I enter year 35, it’s gonna be the first year we’ve had nine new players. You only get 13 scholarships, and we’re gonna have nine new players. That’s a lot. … We wanted to, I think first and foremost, become more athletic. I think last year’s team, though we were a little bit older, wasn’t quite as athletic as we’d like to be. I think we’ve increased our athleticism. I think we’re gonna be deeper up front now, which will help us. Jeriah getting an extra year. Ethan being a freshman. Joel and Elijah playing those positions. Our freshmen don’t look like freshmen. Ethan and and Peyton (White) are very physical, and Myles is a very quick, explosive point guard. They don’t look like freshmen, which is good. I think we’ll be a more athletic, more physical team is my hope.
“And then we wanted to add scoring and obviously shooting. There’s some question marks with shooting, but as I’ve watched the four or five practices that we’ve had, these guys know how to shoot the basketball. I think Tayshawn brings us another point guard with TR, which will really help us. I think Kenan gave us that presence. Last year, Kobe (Sanders) not a true point guard, more of a combo. And then TR really came on from January on. But a lot of the success that we’ve had prior to Nevada is playing multiple point guards. And I think the way the game has gone, you’re looking at the Pacer-Thunder series, you’ve got a lot of ball-handling guards. And I think our ball handling has a chance to be at a level that we haven’t had it. And if we can do that, then I think that creates more opportunities for us offensively and opens up better shooting opportunities for us. But also what we can do defensively, I think this has the potential — again, it’s just potential; it’s early — but potentially our deepest team, our most athletic team where we can increase pressure when we wanna increase pressure and be a little bit more disruptive defensively is my hope than what we’ve been maybe in the last year or two.”
There are a lot of great writers in the league. I’ll shout out the Albuquerque Journal’s Geoff Grammer; the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Mark Zeigler; The Coloradoan’s Kevin Lytle; The Gazette’s Brent Briggeman; the Fresno Bee’s Robert Kuwada; and BJ Rains going independent with Bronco Nation News and making it work is really cool. Those guys have been covering the league for a long time.
And I’ll take mini-golf, although I love TopGolf. We go to Roseville once or twice a year to hit some balls at that facility. It will be nice to have that in Reno at the Grand Sierra Resort in a couple of years.
Here are the 10 biggest betting-line underdog spreads for Nevada dating to 2000:
1. at Penn State, +43.5 (2025) — TBD
2. at USC, +38 (2023) — Didn’t cover
3. at Florida State, +35.5 (2013) — Didn’t cover
4. at Texas A&M, +32 (2015) — Covered
5. at Colorado State, +30 (2001) — Covered
6. at Washington State, +28.5 (2017) — Didn’t cover
7. vs. Kansas, +28 (2023) — Covered
8t. at Fresno State, +27.5 (2004) — Didn’t cover
8t. at Boise State, +27.5 (2011) — Covered
8t. at Notre Dame, +27.5 (2016) — Didn’t cover
So, that’s 4-5 against the spread and 0-9 straight up. The biggest underdog line Nevada has won straight up is 17 points (against San Diego State in 2019 and Washington in 2003). Since joining the FBS in 1992, Nevada has played eight top-10 teams, going 1-7 in those games, the win coming against No. 3 Boise State in 2010.
Jeff Tisdel went 23-22 overall and 13-8 in conference in four seasons at Nevada with two first-place finishes and a second with a bowl win (the 1996 Las Vegas Bowl). Yes, he inherited a much better situation than Ken Wilson, but Tisdel’s time had some legitimate successes. And while Wilson didn’t have much success as a head coach (4-20 in two years), he did contribute to a lot of success to Nevada as an assistant. If you’re just looking at head-coaching tenure Tisdel <>> Wilson. Tisdel had a really good head-coaching career post-Nevada, too, going 82–36 in 11 years at Sierra College.
Zero percent.
No. The revenue sharing the colleges can now pay athletes is on top of NIL deals, not in replacement of them. And while there’s a clearinghouse to approve these deals, NIL Go, I don’t think that will do much to limit NIL deals. Major donors can still have a huge impact on roster construction.
Many colleges have announced which teams they will share revenue with, although few have offered specifics per team. Nevada has only said its goal is to hit $5 million combined in revenue sharing and NIL for the 2025-26 season, which should put it in the competitive range of the Mountain West if it gets to that number. We don’t have a per-sport breakdown on which teams will get money, but that list will definitely include football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball. I imagine softball will be on that list, too. It should be. Nevada should be investing heavily into softball right now.
No. LSU would get destroyed. There’s a massive jump from the SEC to Triple-A let alone MLB.
I watched zero seconds of this year’s NBA Finals, and it had nothing to do with the talking heads on ESPN, although those talking heads are annoying. Pacers versus Thunder just didn’t interest me, and almost none of the games were close. Games 1 and 4 had some tension. That’s about it. And while we’ve seen a lot of ink spilled trying to figure out why pitchers keep needing Tommy John surgery, let’s get some think pieces on why three Eastern Conference stars who wear No. 0 — the Bucks’ Damian Lillard; the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum; and the Pacers Tyrese Haliburton — all tore their Achilles in the playoff. Tatu is 27 and Haliburton is 25. That’s too young to suffer that kind of injury.
1) I’ve tried to make Smashburgers on my Camp Chef flat-top grill and they don’t turn out as well as my regular burgers, so I’m off the trend.
2) Caramelized onions.
3) Mustard if I have to pick one. If I get two, add ketchup. Never mayo. That’s gross.
4) I’ve never met anybody who publicly admits they like coleslaw. French fries are the best. If you can’t have that as a burger side, just do a salad.
No idea. There are many “pros” to living on the West Coast, but one of the best is the Pacific time zone sports starts. Staying up until 10 p.m. to watch games end on the West Coast is tough enough. But that’s 1 a.m. on the East Coast. That’s crazy. NFL games don’t start until 1 p.m. on the East Coast rather than the 10 a.m. start on the West Coast. More proof the west coast in the best coast.
See y’all next week!
Sports columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. He writes a weekly Monday Mailbag despite it giving him a headache and it taking several hours to write. But people seem to like it, so he does it anyway. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter @ByChrisMurray.
