College Football

2024 UNLV football predictions: Ranked No. 69 by RJ Young

Updated Aug. 12, 2024 10:38 a.m. ET

FOX Sports National College Football Analyst

[Check out RJ Young's ultimate 134 college football rankings here]

Conference ranking: 3rd in Mountain West (+550 to win conference)
Teams ahead of them: California (68), Jacksonville State (67), Tulane (66), Arkansas State (65), Georgia Southern (64)
Teams behind them: South Florida (70), Marshall (71), Minnesota (72), Old Dominion (73), UCLA (74)

[UNLV 2024 schedule]

RJ's take: Give Barry Odom, a defensive coach by trade, credit for hiring one of the best young coordinators in football at any level in Brennan Marion. Before Marion, UNLV went 5-7. After Marion, UNLV finished 9-5.

Go-Go Offense, is how he built the Runnin Rebels' rep into a G5 challenger. Now losing last year’s starter at QB, Jayden Maiva, to USC hurts. But that's the way the college football machine slots, especially in Vegas.

And like Vegas, the Rebels ain't above stopping by a Tunica or Thackerville to steal a game from us out in the sticks to build their fortune: So Odom snatched Matt Sluka from Holy Cross and Hajj-Malik Williams from Campbell, handed both to Marion and said, Make me a winner.

Sluka is a four-year starter, an FCS All-American in 2023, a year when he passed for 1,728 yards and rushed for 1,247 with 29 total TDs and just five picks. Williams passed 2,604 with 24 TDs and nine picks for the Fighting Camels.

Either way, they're tossing the ball to Ricky White III, who was 2023 First Team All-He-Down-There-Somewhere, with 88 catches for 1,483 yards and eight TDs.

The back end of Odom’s defense will feature a couple of eye-catchers, too, in Tony Grimes, a corner who was seen as so good that Mack Brown let him reclassify to join UNC before his senior season, and Jalen Catalon, who Odom made into a star at Arkansas before Catalon trotted off to Texas.

In 2020, Catalon made 99 tackles, made three INTs, forced two fumbles and scored one TD. The dude he was in 2002 is the one that can help UNLV get to 10 wins 1984 when they went 11-2 in the Pacific Coast Athletic Association behind the arm of Randall Cunningham.

UNLV's Win Total Odds: Over 7.5 (+125) Under 7.5 (-160)

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