The Nevada football team takes the field at Mackay Stadium at the start of the 2020 season. (Photo: Steve Ranson/Nevada News Group, file)
The University of Nevada doesn’t even attempt to disguise its obsession with football and men’s basketball anymore. It’s football and men’s basketball on top of the Pack world and everything else (women’s sports, baseball, history, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc.), is forced to take a backseat.
Actually, it’s not even a backseat. Football and men’s basketball drive around in their very own BMWs and Teslas while all the other sports are crammed in one minivan.
On May 1 the Wolf Pack football team will stage its annual Silver-Blue scrimmage at Mackay Stadium at noon. It’s a meaningless, glorified practice that will be long forgotten by that evening. But the university stages the event as a nice reminder for the community to buy football season tickets. It‘s a glorified bake sale.
That very same day, at almost the very same time, the baseball team (yes, the university still has a baseball team) will play an extremely important Mountain West contest against San Diego State across the parking lot at Peccole Field. Which event is more important? A hotly contested battle that could mean a path to a Mountain West title or a glorified bake sale designed solely to help the athletic department get fat? Why, the glorified bake sale, of course. That’s why the university is allowing nearly 2,000 fans to pay their way ($5 for charity) into Mackay to watch the bake sale.
Peccole Park, on the other hand, is still on COVID-19 lockdown, with only family members and friends of players, coaches and the administration allowed in the stadium.
But you don’t even have to go to Mackay to watch the bake sale because it will be, for the first time in school history, televised in Northern Nevada. The baseball game can be consumed only via the sensation of the 1920s and 1930s, the radio. Then again, if you turn up the volume, you can hear the baseball announcer at the back of the minivan.
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The University of Nevada, of course, isn’t alone in its obsession with football. The media, such that it is in 2021, is equally obsessed with the sport. Turn on your radio, or your favorite sports television network or podcast and, odds are, you will hear a monotonous, meaningless, repetitive conversation about quarterbacks. NFL quarterbacks. College quarterbacks in the NFL draft. Every day, seven days a week, 12 months a year.
There is no off-season when it comes to quarterbacks anymore. Nobody on radio or television knows a thing about quarterbacks but that doesn’t stop them from talking about them. Every other position in football, just like every other sport (baseball, hockey, golf, tennis, horse racing, boxing, soccer, even basketball when LeBron James is hurt and the NCAA Tournament when it is over) are all crammed in that minivan puttering along in the slow lane.
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How much the NFL does not know about evaluating a quarterback is well documented by the draft each and every year. In just the past four years, Mitch Trubisky was picked ahead of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Rosen was picked ahead of Lamar Jackson and questionable quarterbacks such as Jordan Love, Will Grier, DeShone Kizer, Davis Webb, C.J. Beathard, Ryan Finley and James Morgan were all taken in the first four rounds.
But college coaches are equally inept when it comes to judging quarterback talent. No Football Bowl Subdivision school (Division I-A) deemed Trey Lance worthy of a scholarship in 2018 despite the fact that Lance had a very successful three-year career as a starting quarterback in high school and was rated as the best quarterback prospect in the state of Minnesota. The University of Minnesota wanted Lance as a wide receiver or defensive back. Lance ended up at North Dakota State and tossed 28 touchdowns without an interception in 2019 and won the Football Championship Subdivision national title. And now he is considered a possible Top 10 pick in the NFL draft next weekend.
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There’s a chance the San Francisco 49ers will draft Lance with the No. 3 pick. Lance won the FCS national title over mighty James Madison the same season (2019) Jimmy Garoppolo led the 49ers to a runner-up spot in the Super Bowl to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Will the 49ers prefer Lance over Garoppolo? Is a win over James Madison more impressive than losing to Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl? Lance has only played one season (a season in FCS, no less) and is already considered a possible NFL savior. Garoppolo is on his way to losing his job.
The Bears were the ones who picked Trubisky in 2017 over Mahomes (and Deshaun Watson) and now, just four years later, would sell Soldier Field for the right to draft Lance or any of the so-called top five quarterbacks in the draft. This obsession the NFL (and the media) has with the latest Flavor of the Month quarterback is getting out of control.
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If Lance is worthy of a first-round pick, then where would Pack quarterback Carson Strong get drafted if he was in this draft? Lance is 6-foot-4, 225 pounds while Strong is 6-4, 220, give or take a trip or two to In-N-Out Burger.
Strong has played 28 games in his college career and has completed 486-of-729 passes for 5,193 yards and 38 touchdowns against the likes of Purdue, Oregon, San Diego State, Tulane, Ohio, Hawaii and Fresno State. He was the Mountain West’s Offensive Player of the Year this year and led the conference in every passing category.
Lance has played 20 games, completing 208-of-318 passes for 2,947 yards and 30 touchdowns against the likes of James Madison, Illinois State, Northern Iowa, Youngstown State, Central Arkansas, Western and Southern Illinois. If Lance is considered worthy of a pick in the top half of the first round, then why wouldn’t Strong be worthy of at least a pick in the bottom half of the first round?
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Former Wolf Pack linebacker Gabe Sewell (his last season at Nevada was 2019) is fortunate to have a talented little brother. Sewell participated in the Oregon Ducks’ Pro Day last weekend in front of three dozen NFL scouts just because his little brother Penei, a Ducks offensive lineman, was also involved.
Penei, though, is not so little and not just another Ducks offensive lineman. The 6-foot-6, 330-pounder just might be the best non-quarterback in this year’s NFL draft so, of course, you’ve barely heard of him. Oregon, as an obvious favor to Penei, allowed Gabe to participate in its Pro Day despite the fact that the only time Gabe stepped on a field with the Ducks present was a 77-6 Wolf Pack loss to Penei and the Ducks at Eugene, Ore., in 2019.
Gabe’s first Pro Day, back in March 2020 at Nevada, was wiped out by COVID-19. Gabe then took part in this year’s Wolf Pack Pro Day in early March in front of a half dozen NFL scouts before stepping on the big Pro Day stage last week. Gabe, just 6-feet tall, played at 245 pounds at Nevada, and is not expected to be drafted next weekend. Then again, he could get invited to the mini-camp of the NFL team that drafts his little brother.
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The national media has no idea about this because, well, it involves the little known sport of baseball and the media is preoccupied with figuring out where Lance, Mac Jones and Justin Fields will end up in the NFL draft. But the Oakland A’s are the best story in sports right now.
The A’s began the season (yes, baseball season has started, folks) by losing seven of their first eight games, allowing eight or more runs in each of its first five games. The A’s, though, are now on an 11-game winning streak and sit atop the American League West with a record of 12-7.
Matt Olson, of course, is not as interesting as Mac Jones or Trey Lance, but he does have six homers and 15 RBI for the A’s already. The A’s haven’t lost since dropping a 6-2 decision to Houston on April 8.
We understand that is just a time frame of only two games in football. No big deal. But in baseball it is a streak that ordinarily comes along only once a decade. The Bay Area, of course, is obsessed with which quarterback the 49ers will take with the No. 3 pick.
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