A bizarre football day in Sin City
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LAS VEGAS — As Fridays go, this one was, shall we say, interesting, for Las Vegas’ football community and beyond.
You could also substitute the word “devastating” or "bizarre" and I would understand.
In a matter of hours, the Raiders’ best player was shut down for the rest of the year, adding to the already growing conspiracy theory that there’s a full-out tank job underway to help the Silver and Black obtain the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft come April.
Over at UNLV, the star quarterback, who put up amazing numbers and led the Rebels to a 10-4 season and a third straight bowl game appearance, has decided to leave after telling everyone a week ago that he wasn’t going anywhere.
And for the Las Vegas Bowl, it appears to have lost one of the coaches in its game on New Year’s Eve after he decided to keep his career going, at Michigan of all places.
I’ve been here since 1988 and I’ve seen a lot of weird things happen, mostly with UNLV basketball and particularly during Jerry Tarkanian’s final year. I’ve seen injured players, both stars and scrubs, forced to the sidelines with injuries. More recently, I’ve seen players leave for greener pastures. Or have we already forgotten quarterback Jayden Maiava’s departure from UNLV after the 2023 season for Georgia, which lasted about 24 hours, then on to USC? And college football coaches leave their teams in the lurch every year, so we should never be surprised when it happens.
But within the decision by the Raiders to shelve Maxx Crosby, Anthony Colandrea’s imminent departure from UNLV to who-knows-where and Kyle Whittingham’s moving on from Utah after 21 years to coach at the college football cesspool called Michigan, we find ourselves staring at three separate yet connective conundrums for the fan bases that support the Raiders, UNLV and the University of Utah.
They’re all angry to varying degrees over what has transpired. Yet there’s a flip side to each situation that could ultimately lead to sunshine out of the darkness. Let’s examine each individually:
The Crosby Conundrum
The idea that Maxx Crosby would not play Sunday against the New York Football Giants runs counter to everything the All-Pro edge rusher stands for and believes in. If it were up to Crosby, he’d be in the lineup making life hell for Jaxson Dart, the Giants’ quarterback. If the Raiders were to win and louse up their chances of getting the No. 1 pick, he could care less.
"Yeah, I don't give a (bleep) about the pick, to be honest," Crosby said earlier in the week. "I don't play for that. That's not my job. My job is to be the best defensive end in the world. That's what I focus on every day. Being a great leader, being an influence. Being that guy on a consistent basis for my team.”
The 2-13 Raiders had other ideas obviously. Their chances of winning minus Crosby, not to mention tight end Brock Bowers and safety Jeremy Chinn, are greatly reduced. So they had a handy excuse to shut down their best player. Crosby has been playing with a bum knee since Week 7 against the Chiefs. He never wants to sit out.
So when coach Pete Carroll told Crosby he was done for Sunday, and most likely, the year, Crosby promptly left the Intermountain Health Performance Center. Carroll said he understood how Crosby felt and supported his best player leaving the building.
"The competitor that he is, the reaction that he … we've been talking about it for a couple days what's going,” Carroll told reporters Friday. “This didn't just spring on him. We've been talking about it, and it was exactly like you would think he would do and he should do, and I agree with him 1,000 percent on how he responded, and I responded the same way, and I get it. And so, we fought our way through it, and just came to, hopefully, the right conclusion for his long betterment."
The conundrum? Obviously Raider fans want to get the top pick, get a quarterback — likely Indiana’s Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza — and while many would say that they don’t subscribe to tanking in order to get it, they can live with losing two more games, even if it means not having Crosby, Bowers and Chinn to cheer for these next couple of weeks.
Carroll is coaching to save his job and decisions like the one to put Crosby on the shelf don’t help his chances for survival. Maybe the Raiders follow up their strong effort in Houston last week and try to win Sunday against the G-Men but fall short. If Mark Davis sees Carroll’s players still haven’t quit on him, perhaps he decides to keep Carroll, who’ll be 75 next September, around for at least one more year.
The Colandrea Conundrum
When someone says something, we should be able to believe them.
Prior to the Frisco Bowl, Anthony Colandrea went on the record with a reporter and said he was returning to UNLV for his senior season.
“I’m not transferring,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here. I just want to play in the (bowl game) and finish out the year with the guys.
“Money is never going to be part of my decision. I’m never making a decision based on that. I base it on my future, and my future is here with (offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Corey) Dennis and Coach Mullen. I don’t want to do that again because it’s not that fun.”
So what happened?
Colander’s success (He was the Mountain west’s Offensive Player of the Year) sparked interest beyond Las Vegas. He hired an agent to see if his NIL deal, which at UNLV is a reported $200,000, could be maxed out somewhere else.
Apparently there’s interest and maybe a seven-figure deal awaits. For Colandrea, it’s life-changing money because there’s no guarantee he’s going to the NFL. Maybe he can ultimately play in Canada but in this day and age and given the state of college athletics, it’s hard to blame Colandrea for taking advantage of a system that he’s part of.
What you can blame him for is going back on his word. He probably would’ve been better off keeping his mouth shut about his future, let the speculation around him run rampant and when his decision to leave was announced, UNLV fans would be disappointed, but at least they wouldn’t have been lied to.
So Colandrea, who started his football career at Virginia, flourished at UNLV under Mullen’s and Dennis’ tutelage, will be moving on to his third program in four years. My guess is Mullen will move quickly to find someone who can play the position, grow as a person and enjoy going to school and living in Las Vegas. You know the old saying, when one door closes, another one opens. Mullen will find a suitable replacement.
The Kyle Conundrum
This one isn’t as complicated. Kyle Whittingham never said he was retiring from coaching football. All he said he was done coaching football at Utah. He even joked about going into the “transfer portal.”
With the Utes arriving in town Friday to prepare to play Nebraska in the Las Vegas Bowl next Wednesday at Allegiant Stadium, it probably is going to be somewhat awkward. Whittingham reportedly was accepting a five-year deal to clean up the mess at Michigan, which likely means his departure from Utah will be accelerated (think Lane Kiffin not being allowed to coach Ole Miss in the College Football playoff after accepting the LSU job).
Apparently, Whittingham went to Vegas to tell his team in person that he was leaving them to be the coach at Michigan. Then he was off to Orlando, where the Wolverines are preparing to play Texas in the Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Eve.
With that being the case, athletic director Mark Harlan’s decision was pretty much made for him. Someone not named Whittingham will coach the Utes in the Las Vegas Bowl.
He had an amazing run in his 21 seasons in charge at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. He was 177-88 at Utah, a winning percentage of near 67 percent. He guided the program from the Mountain West to the Pac-12 to the Big 12. Utah got its money’s worth from Whittingham, who is reportedly going to make more than $8 million a year at Michigan for the next five years.
Whittingham never said he was retiring as a college football coach. All he did was move on to the next chapter of his career.
Still, it’ll be weird not seeing him on the sidelines at Allegiant Stadium Wednesday. Hey, maybe Urban Meyer can come back for a day and coach the Utes, you know, for old times sake.
And while I’m sure most Utah fans are sad that he’s leaving, they probably appreciate the success he generated during his time there. And it wasn’t like Whittingham said one thing and did another. They won’t get to give him a proper sendoff and thank him for what he did.
Then again, they knew he was likely going to coach somewhere else, though probably not this quickly. Of course, in today’s world of college football, things tend to move rather fast. Just ask Anthony Colandrea.
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