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.
Sports Columns
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.
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.
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.
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.
The wide receiver spotted the quarterback holding the football. He instinctively knew what to do. He ran a post pattern, accelerating at full speed — or what seemed like it, at least.
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.
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.
Forty-four years ago, it was 1969. Bullets were flying in Southeast Asia. And Mark Larson said it was getting dark at Mackay Stadium up in Reno.
There have been 26 college football seasons since I first rolled across Hoover Dam. There have been three winning ones. It could be argued the Rebels’ run of futility over the past quarter-century is unsurpassed.
1
2
3
4
5
Aces waive rookie guard four games into WNBA season
Holzhauer doesn’t go all-in, reflects on loss in ‘Jeopardy! Masters’
Vegas Loop tunnel reaches off-Strip resort
‘I just hope she’s in a safe place’: More than 40 children missing in Nevada
Restaurant closing after more than a decade on Las Vegas Strip