This is a Christmas story that has nothing to do with the one that will be shown on TBS on a continuous loop Friday. This one is about UNLV coaches with soft spots in their hearts, and a Rebels basketball player who is much better beyond the 3-point stripe than he is with a Mexican yo-yo, and sick kids in the hospital, and the local sports radio host who brings them all together each year.
They were lining up the NASCAR trucks for Saturday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when a guy wearing a Route 66 shirt in the media center noticed one of the TVs had been switched. Instead of the race broadcast, it was showing the Arizona State-UCLA football game.
UNLV played its annual game against a Football Championship Subdivision opponent at Sam Boyd Stadium on Saturday night. The official stat sheet said only 16,717 were on hand to watch the Rebels tally a school-record 80 points — Idaho State had 8 — and do chest bumps on the sideline.
Marquel Martin went from playing college football, to becoming a reality TV star (for five weeks) on ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” to baking cookies for the media and freeloaders from the hospitality suites during halftime of Saturday night’s UCLA-UNLV game at Sam Boyd Stadium.
If there’s anything most Las Vegas sports fans can agree upon, it’s that Sam Boyd Stadium and Cashman Field stink, and that hopefully there will be places to park at the new hockey arena.
When you’ve been down for as long as UNLV has in football, you’re going to have to take an occasional risk on the recruiting trail — you might have to accept an Alabama reject or two, or maybe go for a quick fix via the junior colleges. Longtime observers of the local football scene are aware of this.
