UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion interviewed Tuesday for San Diego State’s head football coach opening.
Marion is in charge of an innovative attack with a catchy nickname — the “Go-Go” offense — that is averaging 36 points a game and has fueled a meteoric rise for a UNLV team now on the cusp the Mountain West championship game.
Marion joins Nebraska defensive coordinator Tony White as two known candidates for the position, which became open when SDSU announced earlier this month that Brady Hoke would not return.
A short conversation with Marion confirmed his interview for the position.
Marion also showed he knows some Aztecs history, and that he’s interested in bringing back the offensive excitement many SDSU fans have yearned for in recent years.
“I think we can reach the pinnacle of college football at San Diego State, just like they have in basketball,” Marion said Wednesday morning when contacted by phone. “Ultimately, we would bring an explosive, exciting offense. I mean a lot like the Darnay Scott, Marshall Faulk days, where you would see a lot of huge plays and get fans in the seats.”
Marion, 36, was born in Virginia, and he was just beginning elementary school on the opposite coast when Faulk and Scott and Co. were lighting up scoreboards with eye-popping plays from 1991-93.
Casually dropping an Aztecs reference from three decades ago?
“Absolutely,” Marion said. “You always remember the good ones.”
The history lesson was just getting started.
“I know the greatest innovator in football, the deep ball, the reason I moved to the receiver position, Don Coryell, was there as the head coach,” Marion said. “A lot of innovative guys have been throughout that program, and it’s been a great stop for coaches to come and innovate and be a place where you can be explosive and get the players.”
Marion was an explosive player at Tulsa, where he set NCAA yards per catch single-season (31.9) and career (28.7) records that still stand.
He played for the Miami Dolphins in 2009 before tearing his ACL for the second time. He then transitioned to coaching.
Marion has worked at no fewer than 12 places — from high school head coach to Power Five position coach — the past 13 seasons.
Marion, too, is regarded as an innovator, blending the triple-option with the spread to create the Go-Go offense.
“Really, I created my own offense when I was a high school head coach,” said Marion, referring to 2014 at Pennsylvania’s Waynesboro Area Senior High School. “I’d say the uptempo stuff that we do, the motions, the shot plays, all that type of stuff came from (then-Tulsa OC Gus Malzahn) when I was playing under him.
“The offense that we created is completely unique from something I saw. I was watching old Roger Staubach film. Then I developed the two backs on the same side and shotgun and running the West Coast offense with all the runs that can be triple options.”
It first gained attention in 2017 when Marion was offensive coordinator for Howard, which beat UNLV as a 45-point underdog, making it the largest point-spread upset in college football history.
Marion was wide receivers coach at Hawaii (2020), Pitt (2021) and Texas (2022) the past three years before joining Barry Odom this year at UNLV.
Marion said the Rebels (9-2) didn’t require tremendous roster turnover to realize success for a program that has had just one winning season this century.
“You talk about our quarterback (redshirt freshman Jayden Maiava), he was here,” Marion said. “He didn’t get any reps last year or anything. We developed him and he’s one of the top quarterbacks in the country right now.”
“The biggest thing that I always talk about is retention. Being a high school coach, I learned that you have to keep the kids that you have first if you want to build real depth and continuity within the team.
“And then you have to bring in pieces that can help make an impact. The biggest thing for me is not throwing kids away. We value each kid in the program. Everybody who wants to stay, we want volunteers, not hostages.”
As for the challenges brought on by NIL and the transfer portal, Marion suggests finding “guys that love football.”
“If you have a chance to get a blue-chip player, a big-time quarterback or a big-time receiver,” he said, “you do what you have to do to get them and make sure you can get a once-in-a-lifetime talent if you have the opportunity to do that.
“But at the same time, you can build a roster with guys who love football and have that DNA in them to play regardless of the financial circumstances, and everything they do get they’ll be grateful for.”
What makes him ready now to be a Division I head coach?
“They just have to trust the fact that a cub is still a lion,” Marion said. “A lot of times people look at young coaches like you’re young. I’m unique in the standpoint that I’ve already run a program and fundraised over $1 million and had 125 kids as a high school head coach.”
He said he is not “green to the position of leadership” and turning around — or re-energizing — a program.
“I’m not a guy who’s coming from Ohio State or Oregon who had all five-star players and made it happen,” Marion said. “I’m a guy who made my name from blue-collar work ethic, taking the teams that nobody wanted.”
Added Marion: “Defense wins championships, but you would see a very explosive offense, kind of what we brought here to UNLV, and pretty much every stop that I’ve been at.
“I’ve always been around big-time offenses, so we’ll bring that as well to San Diego.”
