Chris Ault
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-8
’92L’95L’05W’06L’07L’08L’09L’10W’11L’12L
Show all 10 games
1992Las Vegas BowlL 34-35
1995Las Vegas BowlL 37-40
2005Hawaii BowlW 49-48
2006MPC Computers BowlL 20-21
2007New Mexico BowlL 0-23
2008Humanitarian BowlL 35-42
2009Hawaii BowlL 10-45
2010Kraft Fight Hunger BowlW 20-13
2011Hawai'i BowlL 17-24
2012New Mexico BowlL 48-49
Report card
Top-quarter offense — 84th percentile.
Nevada, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Each season is his team’s percentile among every team with that stat (the share it beat), averaged over his completed seasons here; a mid-season takeover year and the season in progress aren’t graded. Letters: A+ 90th percentile and up, A 80, B+ 70, B 60, B− 50, C+ 45, C 40, C− 30, D 15, F below.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
1-0 against his rivals at Nevada.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
1-1 against his rivals at Nevada.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
8-1 against his rivals at Nevada. Just 1-4 against June Jones.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
10-2 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against June Jones.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
4,770 run and pass snaps at Nevada, 2004–2012, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points. Play-by-play starts in 2004, so his earlier seasons there aren’t in it.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2012 roster arrived on his watch — 103 of 103 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1992-2012) predates 2021, when transfer-portal tracking begins in this database. Portal usage cannot be measured for this tenure at all -- this is not the same as '0% portal'.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his Nevada rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2010–2012 rosters on record).
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 178 of 226 signees (79%) across his 2002–2012 classes on record (his tenure ran 1992–2012), drawn from 13 states in all. Next: NV (19).
94% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (NV 19, AZ 15).
Off this map: 9 signees to the east (TX 3, GA 2, others), 2 to the north (WA 2) and 1 to the west (AK).
- median hometown distance
- 357 mi
- within 100 mi
- 20%
- within 500 mi
- 89%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 7%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here (a floor — see the note below). He brought in 2 of them himself. 12 more can’t be traced to who brought them in (no roster record).
At least 14 — the draft class following his 1995 season is missing from this table entirely; and his 1992 season predates the modern 7-round draft, so this table’s pre-1994 pick counts are a floor, not a full count, for that season.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | R4.08 | Duke Williams | Safety |  Buffalo Bills | |
| 2013 | R6.34 | Khalid Wooten | Cornerback |  Tennessee Titans | Estimated |
| 2012 | R4.25 | James-Michael Johnson | Inside Linebacker |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 2012 | R5.07 | Brandon Marshall | Outside Linebacker |  Jacksonville Jaguars | Estimated |
| 2012 | R6.14 | Isaiah Frey | Cornerback |  Chicago Bears | Estimated |
| 2012 | R7.20 | Rishard Matthews | Wide Receiver |  Miami Dolphins | |
| 2011 | R2.04 | Colin Kaepernick | Quarterback |  San Francisco 49ers | Estimated |
| 2011 | R3.02 | Dontay Moch | Outside Linebacker |  Cincinnati Bengals | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | R7.01 | Virgil Green | Tight End |  Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2009 | R7.34 | Marko Mitchell | Wide Receiver |  Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2007 | R5.14 | Jeff Rowe | Quarterback | Cincinnati Bengals | Estimated |
| 2006 | R5.32 | Tony Moll | Offensive Tackle |  Green Bay Packers | Estimated |
| 1993 | R5.05 | Forey Duckett | Defensive Back |  Cincinnati Bengals | Estimated |
| 1993 | R7.28 | Brock Marion | Defensive Back |  Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
A pick counts toward his tenure when the player’s final college season was one he coached, a checkable rule rather than a claim about who developed the player. A blank note means the player is on a verified roster and arrived on his watch. “Estimated” means no roster record, so the final season is assumed to be the year before the draft.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
4th-best Nevada tenure of 11 by the numbers.
Followed Joseph Sheeketski (1947–1950) · succeeded by Jeff Horton (1993) · returned in 1994 · succeeded by Jeff Tisdel (1996–1999) · returned in 2004, succeeding Chris Tormey (2000–2003) · succeeded by Brian Polian (2013–2016).
| Season | 1992 | 1994 | 1995 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||
| Record | 7-5 | 9-2 | 9-3 | 5-7 | 9-3 | 8-5 | 6-7 | 7-6 | 8-5 | 13-1 | 7-6 | 7-6 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | — | L bowl | — | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | 40 | 86 | 26 | 85 | 69 | 98 | 95 | 95 | 96 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | 23 | 13 | 66 | 32 | 66 | 30 | 55 | 87 | 12 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | 59.1 | 35.9 | 33.3 | 31.3 | 34.8 | 19.8 | 30.6 | 23.9 | 29.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | 29.2 | 29.7 | 31.1 | 30.5 | 17.1 | 32.0 | 32.0 | 27.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | 27.3 | 25.0 | 34.9 | 31.7 | 39.4 | 44.4 | 36.7 | 49.1 | |
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
3rd-most wins by a Big West coach