Three hours, 37 minutes. That’s how far it is from the Cotton Bowl to North Shore High in Houston, from where some key UNLV football players will compete in the program’s first bowl game since 2000 on Wednesday to where they played for a prep program led by one of the winningest coaches in Texas history.
In the depths of failure, Jim Livengood still believed.
It was, more than anything, a defense of folly.
You don’t accept a postseason game in 2013 to make money. You don’t agree to play North Texas in the Heart of Dallas Bowl on Jan. 1 with the idea your athletic department’s bottom line is going to realize a sudden influx of cash.
How to define a great day for UNLV football: That some 13 years after the school qualified for its last postseason game, the Rebels on Sunday accepted an invitation to play North Texas in the Heart of Dallas Bowl on New Year’s Day.
If a mirror is in the football coaching offices at UNLV, and I have to believe there is given the egos of men who choose such a profession, those paid to instruct the Rebels should spend this day looking into it.
The crowd spread across the pavement near the Student Union and onto adjacent stairwells Monday, hundreds gathered to celebrate a rivalry victory in football and the promise of what still might transpire for UNLV in the coming weeks.
The Rebels never were going to beat Fresno State. But that’s not to say UNLV shouldn’t contend to win each of its final five games and in the process qualify for the program’s first bowl since 2000.
Nolan Kohorst is not for dramatics, which is all the more ironic when you consider the spot he holds on a football team. But his is a simple, candid study of how many college coaches might view a kicker when deciding whether to offer a scholarship.
UNLV expects a crowd in the range of 25,000 Saturday when the Rebels host Hawaii, and anything short of it would disappoint given a few factors: UNLV will try to win a fourth straight regular-season game for the first time since 1984, and Hawaii’s healthy and passionate fan base wants nothing more than to trample such thoughts.
This weekend, most everyone here in Albuquerque wants to know if Walter White will die. I’m guessing Bobby Hauck couldn’t give a hoot.
Uncle Si of “Duck Dynasty” is 65 and struggles staying on task, so he often takes midday naps and plays with the security equipment around the family business. I officially am nominating him as special teams coach for UNLV’s football team.
I absolutely believe that within the next 80 or so years, perhaps around the time Bobby Hauck’s great-great-great grandson is arm wrestling elks in Montana, UNLV will navigate through a schedule unscathed. Here’s why it could happen this season.
Tim Hauck is 46 and 2½ years younger than his brother, Bobby, but he arrives at UNLV with the sort of experience and clout that immediately earns the respect of those players he will now instruct as the team’s defensive coordinator. On paper, it’s not a good hire. It’s a terrific one.
There might not be any bigger hermits in college athletics than head football coaches, secluded from society in dark film rooms and often absent from social events that don’t include glad-handing those boosters with deep pockets.
