Virtual-reality tours latest example of UNLV searching for recruiting edges

By Taylor Bern

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Show a kid a college library or on-campus housing building and he might shrug his shoulders. Throw some virtual reality goggles on that kid and show him a 360-degree view of that same building and you get a different reaction. That’s one way UNLV football is trying to use technology to its advantage on the recruiting trail.

“Some guys aren’t that excited by (a building), but they’re excited when they look at it here,” said Drew Jennison, UNLV’s recruiting coordinator, while motioning to UNLV’s VR headset. “It’s a cool way to show a not-so-cool thing.”

Recruit with style and keep with substance has been one of first-year coach Tony Sanchez’s mantras. Keeping with that, the Rebels are one of only a handful of teams currently using EON Sports VR’s SIDEKIQ technology, which essentially takes their standard on-campus tour and puts it into a series of 360-degree scenes available to anyone with a smartphone and a headset that costs as little as $5.

Some headsets will travel with Rebels coaches out on the road recruiting this week and, if the NCAA allows, they’ll also go out through the mail starting next week for an easy and innovative way for high school students to visit UNLV without visiting Las Vegas. The system runs through the free app YouVisit VR, though they expect to use their own separate app in the near future. The Rebels are looking for any type of edge they can get, and until the rest of the country catches up this qualifies.

“A year from now, if every team has this it’s not that crazy,” Jennison said. “But right now, for a lot of these guys it’s their first experience.”

That experience usually involves several whoas, a few unprintable exclamations and at least one player who forgot that virtual reality still isn’t actual reality and nearly ran himself into an actual wall. It’s a tool for fans, too — several people attending Sanchez’s coach’s show taping last Wednesday took turns trying it on — but the Rebels see recruiting as a big untapped marketplace.

Similar technology allows you to ride a roller coaster, walk through a haunted house or watch the "Saturday Night Live" 40th anniversary special with a full, 360-degree view. Instead of watching the show, would you prefer to turn around and see what Dana Carvey thinks about the jokes all night? That’s possible, and we’re a few years, or less, from having the option to purchase a ticket for a sporting event or concert and getting the full view from the couch.

“It’s pretty wild once you think about it,” Jennison said. “You could do a lot of stuff.”

UNLV hasn’t even had this system long enough to show many recruits, but by the time coaches are doing in-home visits next month the experience will be more substantial than what a reporter saw last week.

The scenes currently include still shots from around campus, in the huddle at practice and out at midfield for the coin toss against UCLA. The locker room shot recently got a re-do to include the Fremont Cannon, and the Rebels hope to add Sanchez voice-overs to guide the tour and some video elements, up to and including snippets from Cirque du Soleil or other Vegas specialties.

The possibilities stretch as far as the imagination, and with Sanchez and Jennison, who met while Sanchez was at Bishop Gorman High, leading the way the Rebels seem to be in good hands. Jennison, 23, held an assistant recruiting position at Arizona, and while he wasn’t necessarily looking to leave, an hourlong meeting with Sanchez convinced Jennison that instead of selling Vegas as a nearby destination, as he did in Tucson, this was the place to be.

“(Sanchez) had ideas that I had and wanted to do at Arizona and heard ‘No,’ ” Jennison said. “He was like, ‘I want to do this.’ I was like, ‘I want to do that!’ ”

The virtual reality tour was one of their first ideas, and it’s easy to imagine a future development offering an inside look at the potential new practice facility that to date exists only in drawings.

The coaching staff believes it has what it takes to improve and impress kids once they’re in the program, but a place like UNLV has always had an uphill battle to get better players into that position. So while a virtual reality tour likely isn’t going to persuade someone to pick the Rebels, it could be the extra bell or whistle that puts UNLV over the top.

Winning can start with recruiting, and “especially 18-year-old kids, they like shiny stuff,” Jennison said. “New uniforms, new field; what cooler way to show it off?”

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.