UNLV Rebels AD Erick Harper Talks About Hiring Head Coaches Dan Mullen and Josh Pastner

UNLV Rebels athletic director Erick Harper hit not one but two home runs this offseason when it comes to hiring head coaches. Both the Rebels football and men's basketball head coaching jobs became available, and there is no questioning that Harper swung for the fences. He somehow managed to convince two elite former Power 4 coaches to leave their studio jobs and come to Las Vegas and take a G5 job in the Mountain West Conference.

Recently, Harper spoke with UNLV's official website about how the hiring of Mullen and Pastner came together and whether or not they were his primary target. He was very candid and went into great detail about how achieved this incredible accomplishment.

UNLV Rebels Athletic Director Erick Harper On Hiring Dan Mullen And Josh Pastner

"Every athletics director is going to have coaching short lists for their programs, but particularly football and men’s and women’s basketball. And I can tell you that Dan and Josh were on those short lists.

Now, do you put all your eggs in one basket? You can’t. You have to have multiple conversations going simultaneously.

It was a plus that I knew Dan a little bit; I’d met him a couple of years ago. And I’ve known Josh since 2004. So having already had some familiarity with them, it was an easier phone call to both guys.

With Dan, the first thing to figure out was if he was ready to get back into coaching [after sitting out t hree seasons]. Once we started talking football, it was evident that he was excited about getting back into coaching again.

Did that mean it was going to be at UNLV? I didn’t know. But the more we talked, the more he understood our vision and mission to build on the foundation from the previous two years. Playing home games in a $2 billion stadium provides potential recruiting advantages that distinguishes UNLV from others, and he’d be taking over a program that has momentum and energy behind it. The fact this wasn’t going to be a rebuilding situation was exciting for him.

As for Josh, I hosted an assistant coach’s radio show with him when he was a young assistant at the University of Arizona and I was an associate AD there. Through that, I got to know who he was as a person and possible future head coach. The energy, emotion, and passion that you see in Josh today is the same as it was at UA. It was just channeled differently back then because he was working for a college basketball icon [Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson].

Since getting his first head coach job, Josh has proven that his coaching style works — the evidence is in his record. Which is why he was at the top of our wish list."