UNLV football needs better spin on news

At UNLV’s state of the athletic department address and free lunch held last week at Buca di Beppo near campus, the Rebels’ new sports marketing guy said football season-ticket sales were at 84 percent of last year’s total. Which at first sounded promising. Until somebody said UNLV sold only 3,890 season tickets last year.

So then that 84 percent figure didn’t sound so promising, not with only a month to go before kickoff, and so much for building on that bowl game appearance against the Mean Green of North Texas.

At least the new sports marketing guy — his name is Darryl Seibel — admitted there was much work to be done despite the 84 percent because, as Billy Preston once famously said, nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

On the same day it also was learned that UNLV’s proposed domed stadium was shrinking, to around 45,000 seats, and they were removing the dome.

Instead of a dome there will be sun shades, like at Baylor’s new stadium, or like those deals you fold up and put in the back seat when you’re not protecting the dashboard of the Buick from the elements.

The usual suspects were blamed — lack of financing; the casinos don’t want it; yada, yada, yada. But where’s the creativity in that?

UNLV should have said it was scaling back for the sake of the birds.

Apparently, birds at the Minnesota Vikings new stadium have been slamming into its clear glass exterior at an alarming rate, or at least will, when it opens in 2016.

The bird people aren’t too happy about this.

I have received an email from these Angry Bird people.

At first I thought it was just more satire from The Onion. There was a picture of a bird, said to be a Cooper hawk, in the left-hand margin. It said the Cooper hawk is one of many bird species killed by collisions with glass buildings.

It apparently happens a lot in Toronto.

There were ominous quotes from Angry Bird people, including one from ABC — the American Bird Conservancy.

“There is very little doubt that this new stadium will be a bird-killer,” said Dr. Christine Sheppard, identified in the news release as an “internationally recognized leader on the issue of bird collisions with buildings.” She and Tippi Hedren, one supposes.

“The NFL clearly derives huge benefits from the marketing of inspirational birds such as eagles, falcons, seahawks, ravens and cardinals. We think it’s a travesty to use birds to advance your brand and then kill them over what amounts to pocket change for your organization,” Dr. Sheppard said in her missive.

The Angry Bird people have requested a meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. They might have to take a number, though. They might have to line up behind the concussion people, and the I-don’t-think-a-star-running-back-should-have-gotten-off-with-a-slap-on-the-wrist-for-knocking-his-wife-unconscious-in-an-elevator people. And the people who want the Redskins to change their name.

But if I were The Commish, I would ask to see some credentials. Because according to Smithsonian magazine, there is no such thing as a seahawk, lower case. Smithsonian says one could use that term to describe a skua or an osprey, though biologists don’t.

The new downtown stadium in Minneapolis is close to the Mississippi River. Apparently migrating birds (but not skuas or ospreys) will mistake its glass walls for an open-air thoroughfare.

I can relate. Sometimes after my wife wipes down the glass doors to our patio, these littlegrayish-brown birds mistake it for an open-air thoroughfare to Boulder Highway.

This is a great excuse not to wipe down patio doors, even when you’re expecting company.

By spending another million dollars — roughly a tenth of what it costs to build the stadium — the Vikings could install this special glass with a dot pattern. The conservation people and the biologists say the special glass would prevent a lot of birds from crashing into it.

The Vikings and their stadium authority at first agreed to install the glass. Now they say it’s too expensive. Now the politicians back there are getting involved.

It makes you wonder if they should have just built the new stadium out of Teflon or Nerf or out of a huge garbage bag, like the old right-field wall at the Metrodome.

It also makes you wonder that when it comes to revenue streams, which is what the UNLV football team must generate to become self-sufficient, just how much is 84 percent of 3,890 season tickets sold anyway?

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