UNLV should take page from Gonzaga playbook

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.

Gonzaga, like UNLV, is considered a basketball school. One of the announcers said this might be the best Gonzaga team ever, a legitimate threat for the Final Four.

Gonzaga is a household name in college sports. Everybody has heard of the Zags; everybody at one time or another has cracked wise on Adam Morrison’s feeble attempt at growing a mustache.

After Gonzaga beat St. John’s, Michigan State beat Marquette in another sort-of-attractive early season college basketball matchup. After he was through praising Coach K and Duke and the toughness of Tom Izzo’s diaper dandies or whatever, Dick Vitale said I also should watch Northern Iowa this season.

UNLV could be just like Gonzaga.

It could be like Northern Iowa.

It could be like Butler, which knocked off North Carolina the day before Thanksgiving.

It could be like Wichita State, or Villanova, or Virginia Commonwealth, or Creighton, or Providence, all of which are ranked among the top 25 despite not fielding a football program, or at least not one that competes at the highest level, which is Alabama’s level, and Ohio State’s.

The announcers did not say that Gonzaga has become a household name despite having a modest athletic budget of $20.5 million, whereas Ohio State’s budget is $120 million and Alabama’s is $115 million.

UNLV spends $34.8 million on its sports teams annually, according to the latest U.S. Department of Education statistics, which is a lot more than Gonzaga spends. It also may explain why you can never find a parking spot on campus without a meter in front of it. It’s hard to provide free parking when the Rebels keep fumbling against Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.

Not having a football team allows Gonzaga to spend more money on its men’s basketball program, close to twice as much as UNLV spends. I’m told you also can find a place to park your car up there.

And so, one asks after yet another demoralizing football season: What’s wrong with being like Gonzaga?

No, UNLV is not going to drop its football program, at least not now. But somebody at least should be crunching the numbers to determine what moving forward without one (someday) would mean in overall savings to the athletic department, and to the prominence of men’s basketball.

And so long Title IX compliance issues. You could even add men’s track and wrestling teams if you wanted.

With the gap between the haves and have-nots widening in college sports, UNLV at least should be asking the difficult question of how much longer it can still afford to have a football program.

It’s not asking the question, because it stubbornly refuses to acknowledge economics or the record book. Either that, or the people at the top making these decisions are more optimistic than Charlie Brown when Lucy held the ball for him on field-goal attempts.

So there’s the lack of football success here, which is overwhelming, and there’s also the lousy locker rooms at Sam Boyd Stadium of which former coach Mike Sanford spoke on the day he was shown the door. Together, these engender the losing culture that UNLV athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy said was not Bobby Hauck’s fault.

Still, UNLV spends $8.3 million on football every year, which ranks sixth among the 11 Mountain West teams that report to the Department of Education (Air Force reports only to Uncle Sam). Sometimes it costs a lot of money to engender a losing culture.

Sometimes, ousted football coaches blame it on lack of a nice weight room.

For comparison’s sake, San Diego State annually spends $12.3 million on its football program; Colorado State, $12 million; Boise State, $11.5 million; Fresno State, $10.3 million; Hawaii, $9 million. UNLV’s football budget is $8.3 million. Then come New Mexico ($8 million); San Jose State ($7.6 million); Wyoming ($7.5 million); Utah State ($6.2 million); UNR ($6.2 million).

Utah State and UNR are pretty competitive for spending as little as they do.

Boise State turns a tidy $7 million profit on football; the rest basically cook the books to break even.

Would a new weight room help UNLV become more competitive in recruiting 2½-star athletes?

It absolutely wouldn’t hurt.

The big rumor is that UNLV may reach out to coach Eric Taylor and his right-hand man, Buddy Garrity, in yet another/one last attempt to finally turn things around.

I should point out that it did not pan out for Coach Taylor at TMU on “Friday Night Lights,” and that in real life, they already had a nice weight room at Notre Dame when the Fighting Irish named Cincinnati high school legend Gerry Faust coach.

Faust, you may recall, didn’t exactly wake up the echoes at Notre Dame. He didn’t win much at Akron, either.

But should UNLV turn to Tony Sanchez of Bishop Gorman and his chief benefactor, Lorenzo Fertitta, at least it would be something it hasn’t tried before. It would be nice to have a new weight room, and maybe they’ll even bring Matt Saracen and Tim Riggins along for the ride.

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