No, Coach O and Chris Petersen are not candidates for UNLV

The UNLV Rebels will have a new head coach to replace Marcus Arroyo at some point, but it is not going to be popular former head coaches such as Ed Orgeron or Chris Petersen.

While it was strange when UNLV fired Marcus Arroyo after three years of growth, it was even stranger when the Rebels were reportedly targeting Ed Orgeron and Chris Petersen as possible candidates to replace him.

Coach O and Petersen would quickly refute their candidacies for the UNLV gig. Sadly, we are not going to live in a world of Coach O in Vegas leading the Rebels in Sin City, or Petersen coming out of retirement to transform a long, downtrodden Group of Five program into a winner. Landing either the former LSU or Washington head coach would have really moved the needle for UNLV.

At this point in time, the two known candidates for the job are Mike Stoops and Kevin Sumlin…

UNLV rumors: Ed Orgeron, Chris Petersen are not candidates to lead the Rebels

While it remains to be seen what is in store for Orgeron as a future college head coach, a middling Group of Five program is probably not a good re-entry point for him. He is an elite recruiter, has a one-of-a-kind personality and did win a national title only three seasons ago at LSU. Then again, the air could not get out of the balloon fast enough once Joe Burrow and the boys all turned pro.

Petersen surprisingly walked away from a great gig at Washington not that long ago. He is an outstanding head coach, but the grind of it all and having his national profile raised are reasons why he stepped down. Though he could turn around UNLV in an instant, one would think if Petersen were to get back into coaching, taking over at Stanford would be the ideal fit.

As far as Stoops is concerned, he is on his younger brother Mark’s staff at Kentucky. The middle Stoops brother is a well-established college defensive coordinator with a somewhat decent run at Arizona as the Wildcats’ head coach over the course of eight seasons. He may have only gone 41-50, but Stoops may be in a position to lead a program for the second time; it has been a decade…

And for Sumlin, he is a head coach through and through, but it hit the fan for him at Texas A&M two college jobs ago and Arizona was absolutely pitiful under him when he was the head coach. He is now back in Texas running the USFL’s Houston Gamblers. It is Sumlin’s four-year run leading the Houston Cougars prior to going to College Station that makes him a strong candidate at UNLV.

While Orgeron and Peterson are not going to Las Vegas, Stoops and Sumlin might be going there.

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