Sanchez winning the battle of perception

The carpets were dirty, and as Tony Sanchez ran his finger along a desk, it picked up enough dust to fill a small neighborhood in Bakersfield.

Welcome to the small time of college football.

“When you walk in as a head coach your first day and everything is nice and clean and tidy, you get a sense of pride,” Sanchez said. “But when you walk in and it’s dirty like that, you go, ‘Well, people really didn’t care about those things.’ Maybe it was good it looked like that, because we have nothing to do but make improvements. We can win a lot of those little battles.

“The apathy everywhere just can’t be. People have to move and we have to go fast. It’s like watching a player walk down the hall here. We’re like, ‘Dude, you walk too slow. You have to go. Go faster. Let’s go. You have to have energy.’ That’s always been my deal. Go hard. Go fast. Communicate. Be a good teacher. Make things happen.

“Excuses are for losers.”

Where do I sign up?

It will be months and, well, if you have glanced at UNLV’s football schedule for next season, likely a few years before we know if Sanchez can translate his high school coaching success to the college level.

If the winning he produced at Bishop Gorman might relocate itself at all to the Rebels.

If he has the same mojo on Saturdays as he did Fridays.

One thing we know doesn’t lie: the scoreboard.

But in the wait to recognize if Sanchez can one day produce a program worthy of annually being among the Mountain West’s best, he already is winning another significant battle. One of perception.

Before you become relevant, you must look the part.

Before you’re considered big time, you must act it.

Since being hired to replace Bobby Hauck, Sanchez does and has.

He introduced his first recruiting class as UNLV’s coach on Wednesday, and while I am sure there are many fine young men and perhaps some terrific talents among 22 names, I could care less about any such news. Football games aren’t won in February and certainly not with a majority of first-year players. The only thing a mindless ritual of attaching stars to recruiting resumes has done is make those who run such services more money.

J.J. Watt, arguably the best football player on the planet, was a two-star prospect who walked on at Wisconsin.

Not one five-star prospect played in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Do you know who wins on signing day? Everyone, in their own minds.

The best haul Sanchez landed during this recruiting season was the group of veteran assistant coaches standing in the back of a room Wednesday as their boss spoke on the newly signed class. That he wanted his staff there to celebrate the moment says a lot about Sanchez — you never saw such a scene under Hauck — and points also to this sort of self-deprecating trait UNLV’s new coach displays at times.

It’s sort of refreshing, because there isn’t a football coach alive who doesn’t think he’s the most important person in a room.

There is also this: In an incredibly short amount of time, Sanchez has breathed a higher level of excitement and spirit into UNLV football as has been seen around these parts in, um, forever?

He has delivered the Rebels deeper into the national consciousness as they have been the past several decades. He understands the power of social media and, more importantly, the massive part it plays in the lives of those he now recruits. He gets the perception part as well as anyone I’ve encountered.

So when pictures are posted on Twitter of Sanchez and members of his staff scurrying to visit recruits on a private jet or when national columnists stop by to document his first few months on the job or when he is a guest on national radio and television shows or when he is prominently shown on a popular ESPN documentary series, kids notice.

UNLV has nothing in common with Alabama, except maybe that Nick Saban also doesn’t fly commercial.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Sanchez said. “It shows we have genuine support in our program right now. It’s not where it needs to be. A lot of people are talking about supporting us and we hope we see that. But this kind of (perception) is something that has been badly needed in this program for a long time. Kids followed all of it during the recruiting process. They were curious about it.

“At the end of the day, I hope it’s not just perception. I hope we’re making strides. I’m committed to turning over every rock to find out how we can be first class in everything we do, what resources we need to tap into, who we need to help us. It’s going to take a lot of people. We need people to help us with season tickets, to cheer on our kids, to help build us facilities. In a town of 2 million people, I can’t wrap my mind around why we can’t be successful in football. There’s a buzz right now and we have to do everything we can to hold onto it.

“Now, we need to go win a game.”

The carpets and furniture and computers have been replaced and the only dust one might notice now would be remaining specks from the construction to improve coaching offices, part of a $100,000 donation from the UNLV Football Foundation.

UNLV isn’t any better on the field today than it was when Sanchez took the job.

It’s not any good yet.

But more and more, it looks and acts the part.

In the first week of February of a new coaching regime, you can’t ask for more.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.