Days of UNLV football games against now-extinct schools a friendly reminder

By Ray Brewer (contact)

Thursday, June 17, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

UNLV should be happy to be involved in this football conversation.

In the mess that is conference expansion and league swapping, the Rebels' Mountain West Conference nearly took a big step forward last week in erasing its mid-major tag by getting football Bowl Championship Series regular Boise State to join the league in 2011.

However, losing Utah to the Pac-10 Conference, a move that should be official by the end of the week, puts the league right back where it started — on the outside looking in for a guaranteed BCS bid and the lucrative money that is part of that package.

Losing out on the millions of program-changing dollars an annual BCS game would generate is a significant blow, but it doesn't mean Rebel followers should be pressing the panic button.

The program, especially in comparison to where it was 20 years ago, is doing just fine.

Having any sort of national relevance — the kind that could have happened in a league featuring Boise State, BYU , TCU and Utah — always was a long shot for the often-underachieving UNLV program.

Big-time college football for us children growing up in Southern Nevada was when a program such as Houston would travel to play UNLV at the Silver Bowl.

Longtime UNLV followers surely recall the 69-0 drubbing in 1989 when Andre Ware threw what seemed like 100 touchdown passes. I remember sitting with friends in the front row near Houston's bench and talking trash to kicker Roman Anderson, who nailed nine extra points and two field goals that day in silencing my group of middle-school-aged children who were experiencing real football for one of the rare times.

Games against the likes of Long Beach State and Pacific, two schools now out of the football business, rounded out the schedule long before the Silver Bowl was renamed Sam Boyd Stadium in 1994.

That was during the days when qualifying for the California Bowl — one of three bowl appearances in the Rebels' 42-year existence — signaled a great season for UNLV or any other team in the Big West Conference.

The attendance figures from back in the day tell the entire story.

In 1991, for instance, UNLV's game at Cal-State Fullerton was played in front of 3,012 fans. The following year 3,507 fans, or roughly the same amount for last November's Bishop Gorman-Palo Verde high school football game, watched the two schools play at the Silver Bowl.

That makes inching closer to the national spotlight, something that arguably happens each year for the Mountain West, a big-time score for still small-time UNLV.

At the very least, the Rebels, who appear headed in the right direction under first-year coach Bobby Hauck, have a schedule that will yield several opportunities to continue the growth.

They will have five chances — against Wisconsin, West Virginia, BYU, TCU and Utah — in the fall for a victory that immediately would become one of the most significant in school history.

And that should be the only conversation Rebel fans should be concerned with.