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.
How many people around here wish UNLV were playing Arkansas or somebody like that in its bowl game on Wednesday morning? (Ooh! Ooh-Ooh! That was me raising my hand and doing an Arnold Horshack impression.)
It was Dec. 15, 1984, and the Hawaiian Airlines charter, a DC-9, was sitting on the tarmac at the air terminal in Fresno, Calif., ready for takeoff.
Before Tuesday, the last time I saw David Hollis, who played defensive back for UNLV in the 1984 California Bowl, was 1994. He still was known as “Hot Dog” Hollis then.
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.
The Rebels have been stuck on five wins since Oct. 26. Almost everybody believes it has been a fine season. Another way to look at it is that it has taken Bobby Hauck nearly four years to get the program to where Mike Sanford left it.
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.
