I actually began this journey last year when I sent out my coaching resume to about 20 different collegiate programs. I knew that I didn't have a chance at landing a big time coaching job (at least not yet) but I had hoped that somewhere some Head Coach or AD would take notice of my talents and give me the opportunity that I believed I could use to take my coaching ability to the next level. Once our 2011 season had ended (after a game losing missed field goal in the state championship with 2 seconds left) I began getting offers from schools. As with my initial playing recruitment, it was from mostly smaller name schools, A head coaching offer for a D3 school in Minnesota that hadn't won a game in 2 years, a couple offers to be an assistant in the FCS for Portland State, Cal Poly, and North Dakota, and of course the offers I truly wanted, the FBS ones. while the majority of the responses I got were from teams telling me that their coaching staffs were currently full, I was able to get a few Offensive Coordinator offers from 3 teams. These teams were: Rice, UNLV and Florida Atlantic.

I weighed these options against each other and talked with the AD about what was expected from me at each school. While all three schools understood that the currently were near the bottom of the FBS and wanted to get out, each one had a different way of believing they could do so.

Rice: Rice University has always been one of the top Universities in the nation when it comes to Academics. It is here where their strengths are. The school told me that they only wanted players who were serious about academics and considered Academics to be at least "Above Average" when being recruited. In addition, with the small athletic budget, I would be restricted to recruiting players from the states that were closest. That would mean I could only get players from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

UNLV: While there are a lot of schools that are considered "party schools" at UNLV this is especially true. Located in Las Vegas, the AD told me that if I accepted their offer and became the Offensive Coordinator there I would need to be willing to do whatever I could in order to improve UNLV. As with Rice, UNLV gave me specific rules about recruiting players, saying that I could only recruit players from the west coast. That would give me more options than Rice, but still limit my recruiting reach to California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Montana, and Utah. They also said that UNLV wants football players and does not care which part of the school they want the most or which pitches mean the most to them, all that matters is to land the best players possible, and to win as many games as possible.

FAU: On the other side of the country was my third offer from an FBS school. While FAU is still one of the newer schools to have a FBS team. Starting in 2001, their football team has had a mix of successful seasons and complete failures. my meeting with the AD told me that it was their goal to make FAU a force in the Sun Belt. They believed that Florida and the surrounding states had the talent to make FAU a SBC power. If I accepted the job at FAU, I would be allowed to recruit players from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

Each of the schools that I talked gave me certain restrictions when it came to recruiting and I was sure that when I looked at the contracts that they had sent me I would find that there would be even more decisions to be made.

Rice:


UNLV:


FAU:



Which School Should I begin my coaching career at?

Contract goals for Rice University:

2 year contract

Win 6 games in 1 season
14+ points a game
Win 8 games in 1 season
2400+ yards in 1 season
10+ rushing TDs each season
7+ passing TDs each season
2400+ yards each season
Win 4 games in 1 season

Contract goals for UNLV:

2 year contract

Win 8 games in 1 season
13+ Passing TDs in 1 season
14+ Points a game
7+ rushing TDs in 1 season
2400+ yards in 1 season
2400+ yards each season
Win 4 games in 1 season
2000+ yards each season

Contract goals for FAU:

2 year contract

Win 8 games in 1 season
3+ rushing TDs each season
2000+ yards in 1 season
1000+ rushing yards in 1 season
10+ passing TDs in 1 season
1000+ passing yards in 1 season
500+ rushing yards in 1 season
Win 4 games in 1 season

As I looked through my options, I understood that whichever choice I made would affect my coaching career for years to come. I had to decide between 3 good choices for a first time Coordinator. At Rice and FAU I would have recuriting hotbeds in my own state to choose from, as well as select choices from the surrounding states. However, at UNLV, I would have more choices, and be able to recruit players out of my home state of Oregon. I would also have a small advantage since I had already made some connections in my past few years of coaching high school football.

I decided that I would sleep on it, and decide in the morning.

UNLV enough of a challenge to be fun and good enough facilities to recruit with some bigger programs

UNLV Football news.

Sam Boyd Stadium- It was here at the home of the Rebels that UNLV was proud to announce their newest signing in the form of Offensive Coordinator Bruce Jackson. Jackson, who has spent the last 9 years coaching high school football for Lake Oswego High School (OR) and played college football at the University of New Mexico. He brings with him a offensive system that he says will hopefully allow the Rebels to improve their prestige both in the conference and nationally. He was on site to take questions from the media.
Below is part of that interview.

Media: Welcome to Las Vegas, What are you most excited about with this football team?

Jackson: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to finally be here. I am looking forward to a lot of good things with this football team. It is my goal that we will compete for Mountain West in the next few years.

M: What is your first step in getting UNLV to where you want to be?

J: Well, it isn't going to be easy. Obviously the on the field stuff needs to be a priority. Getting the players to learn the system, and buy in to what us as coaches are selling is important. In addition, getting in on recruiting and finding the best and right players that will help make this team better in the coming years.

M: In regards to recruiting, what kinds of players are you looking for?

J: Here at UNLV I believe that we have something unique to sell to the kids here. The atmosphere at the campus is really great and with the type of football that I want to play, I believe that in time we will have a lot of kids who want to come and play for us here. Until then, I want to focus more on the types of recruits who will help us. I know that we will be going up against really high level colleges for recruits. I want to go and get players from this state and make sure that UNLV is a place that the top high school kids from Nevada can play for. Other than that, I want to go after other high level players from the west coast.

For the entire interview go to UNLVRebels.com

I had put pen to paper and signed my name to be the Offensive Coordinator at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. My dream of coaching college football was finally becoming a reality. There was a lot to be done in order to make UNLV the team that I and the rest of the coaching staff wanted it to be.

Early on, I had decided to keep the One Back offensive scheme that I had used the last five years while at Lake Oswego. I usually ran the ball about 60% of the time while using it and believed that it would work well at the college level.

My First step into making UNLV into a respectable college football team was figuring out which kids we would decide to recruit this year. Due to our team's restrictions of only West Coast kids being in effect, we set our sites out for the best players who could play. We knew that we could not recruit with the USCs and Texas of the NCAA, so we had to make our choices carefully. Looking at our gradating class, we knew that we had to sign a quarterback and a punter. However, with 11 graduating seniors on our 70 man roster, the AD gave us 15 scholarships to use for this year. We chose a shortlist of 25 players who we believed that we could sign and would give us the best recruiting class we could have.

Our Initial Shortlist comprised of players from:
Idaho: 1
Montana: 1
Utah: 1
Arizona: 3
Washington: 2
Oregon: 4
Nevada: 6
California: 7