Every five years when UNLV fires its football coach there is a great whoop-de-doo and la-di-da about football. It usually lasts until the UNLV basketball team plays a quality nonconference opponent. Is there a program out there UNLV ought to be imitating?
By now you probably are familiar with Notre Dame having hired a wildly successful high school coach named Gerry Faust to wake up the echoes. But there’s an even bolder experiment that better correlates to UNLV that was conducted in North Texas.
A couple of hours after Bobby Hauck resigned as UNLV football coach on Friday, Gonzaga beat St. John’s in one of those sort-of-attractive early season college basketball matchups on TV.
Mental blunder takes touchdown off the board, gives Oregon one instead.
Because it’s still college football season — and because UNLV has regressed to its losing ways faster than anybody could have possibly imagined — the subject changes often whenever sports fans gather ’round here this time of year.
The football coach was run out of UNLV after posting back-to-back 5-7 seasons and then out of Louisville. But he’s doing fine at Indiana State, which is 5-3 with three wins over ranked teams.
Mississippi State is the new darling of college football. The Bulldogs hail from “Stark Vegas,” according to a stenciled logo on their footwear.
It may not be the most scientific poll, but jersey sales at Dick’s Sporting Goods say Nevadans root for Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts.
As he watched his son play football, Dana White smiled. He did not have an episode with the referees. He did not use swear words. He was the ideal father, like Mr. Cunningham in “Happy Days.”
DeMarco Murray, the NFL’s leading rusher, had a history in Las Vegas as a Bishop Gorman alumnus.
If you spend any time around Jerry Izenberg, the 84-year-old Henderson resident and sports columnist emeritus of the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger — columnist emeritus is a title he bestowed upon himself; it pretty much means he gets to write about horse racing whenever he wants — then you know he also is a storyteller emeritus.
Houston routed UNLV, 69-0, in the season opener of 1989. The Cougars’ wide-open offense, led by quarterback Andre Ware, revolutionized college football.
UNLV lost 48-34, but the Rebels were driving late with another chance to tie before a tipped pass was intercepted in the end zone. Give UNLV tons of credit for hanging in there.
Beatty still has its proud football tradition but it doesn’t have a field on which to play after torrential rains washed away new grass seed.
When NCAA schools were jumping conferences almost daily for a little wider sliver of NCAA pie a couple of years ago, I recall speaking to then-UNLV athletic director Jim Livengood about it.
