This book’s a winner, on paper

Now that I have converted to online versions of a dictionary and a thesaurus, only two books remain on my desktop: The Baseball Encyclopedia and, because the local college football season starts Thursday, the 2012 UNLV football media guide.

There should be three books. I'm still waiting for my ex-friend Larry to return my copy of George Carlin's "Brain Droppings" that he "borrowed" around 1999. He must think my desktop is like the public library, and that I will have an amnesty day, and then he will be allowed to return my copy of "Brain Droppings" without recourse. And then we'll be friends again. He is sadly mistaken.

The Baseball Encyclopedia was a gift from my mother on my 12th birthday. It only goes up to 1969. As a reference tool, it still comes in handy if, say, you have dinner guests, and an argument breaks out over Wayne Terwilliger's lifetime batting average - and Baseball-Reference.com is down for backup or something. But as a booster stand for my computer monitor, it works just great.

I know what readers under 55 must be thinking: The next time I need to look up the Rebels' all-time record against Azusa Pacific (2-0, page 136), the largest crowd to watch UNLV play football (108,625 at Tennessee in 2004, page 133) or the name of defensive line coach Michael Gray's dog (Darby, page 41), why don't I just click on the Internet iteration of the football guide?

I'll tell you why. Because on my new monitor, which is roughly the size of the instant replay board at Cowboys Stadium, the type is too small. It's like reading the bottom line of an eye chart. And when I "resize to fit screen," the type is too large, like a Dr. Seuss book. Instead of Sam King's career passing yards (5,393, page 122), I get "Green Eggs and Ham."

But I'm told because these kids just out of college who write blogs and work for Yahoo.com know how to MacGyver the "resize to fit screen" button, printed college football media guides are becoming collector's items, like a receipt from Barnes & Noble.

Mark Wallington, the UNLV media relations director whose football guide is always bowl eligible, having won many awards (with a huge assist from graphic artist Paul Palmer), says the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference schools don't even print theirs anymore. Blame it on Missouri. When football guides literally were a big deal, Missouri supersized theirs, publishing a fat 614-page tome one season. It took two redshirt offensive linemen to lift it.

Wallington said there were 26 pages in the Missouri guide on what kind of gloves the wide receivers used. He was not exaggerating. He was reading from the 2004 Mizzou guide after removing it from the shelf with a forklift.

These football guides once were used as recruiting tools, which explains why the Missouri guide was 614 pages in 2004. It does not explain why Missouri lost 45-35 to New Mexico in 2005.

Because UNLV has been playing football only since 1968 - and gloves are for sissies, except maybe at Wyoming - it never has produced a 614-page media guide that weighed 2.2 pounds. To protect against the Missouris of the college football world gaining an unfair recruiting advantage - and to protect the Pacific Northwest rainforests from total annihilation - the NCAA in 2005 put in a rule limiting football guides to 208 pages.

That was a year or two after the UNLV guide glowed in the dark.

Wallington's idea.

He figured a lot of these 3½-star recruits the Rebels were after received a lot of thick football guides in the mail. (This was when there still was mail.) Maybe there would be so many, he'd put them on a bedroom shelf. Then when he went to sleep, he would be distracted by the only football guide with a glow-in-the-dark wire spine.

And then maybe he would get out of the bed and see that the guide keeping him up at night was UNLV's, and he'd take that as some sort of omen. And then, perhaps, Johnny Blue Chip would sign with the Rebels and break Mike Thomas' single-season record for rushing yards (1,741, page 109).

That's how Wallington explained it to John Robinson, who was coach during the glow-in-the-dark media guide era of UNLV football.

And how did Robinson react?

"He said you've got to (kidding) me," Wallington said.

Wallington told the story doing a spot-on impression of J. Rob, who compiled a 28-42 record in six years as UNLV coach (page 142) and beat UNR five straight times - a fact that today seems so preposterous I just had to look it up.

I found the scores on pages 142 and 143 of the 2012 UNLV football guide that is 188 pages long and, like the Rebels most nights, does not glow in the dark.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.