Lucas Peltier / UNLV Athletics
The UNLV football team celebrates its victory against UNR in the Fremont Cannon rivalry game on Oct. 14, 2023, at Mackay Stadium in Reno.
Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023 | 2 a.m.
There’s this guy at my daughter’s bus stop who is a die-hard supporter of UNLV athletics. He loves Rebel basketball from the days of Wink Adams and that Sweet 16 run of the mid-2000s, and has been a longtime suffering football season-ticket holder.
Cam pulled me aside Friday to talk about the Fremont Cannon football rivalry game with UNR, saying “he had a bad feeling” and pointing to his gut. And when folks like Cam have a bad feeling about the outcome of a UNLV game, it’s for good reason.
The Rebels were clearly the better team entering the contest. And they proved it in a 45-27 blowout victory, scoring more than 40 points for the fourth consecutive week. Still, UNLV football loyalists have lived through plenty of heartbreak over the years. They’ve come to expect the worst.
The program’s early-season success under first-year coach Barry Odom seemed too good to be true, many loyalists reasoned in bracing for the annual Fremont Cannon rivalry game meeting in Reno.
They surely remember that 2017 loss as 45-point betting favorites to lower-division Howard — still the biggest upset against the spread in college football history. They also remember needing a victory in the regular-season finale to become bowl eligible in 2008 at one-win San Diego State, only to be crushed by 21 points.
UNLV has only played in four bowl games, and never in consecutive seasons.
Many UNLV seasons unfold the same way: The Rebels win a handful of games and are constantly in some stage of rebuilding.
Then, every five years, a new coach is shuffled in with a different vision to get the program to achieve the seemingly simple task of going .500 — a 6-6 record is all it takes to be bowl eligible.
But times are changing. Thank you, coach Odom.
The UNR win gave the Rebels a 5-1 overall record, meaning they need just one win in the six remaining games to qualify for a bowl. The initial opportunity for win No. 6 is 4 p.m. Saturday against Colorado State at Allegiant Stadium.
The blowout of UNR gave the Rebels something else that was unexpected: Four votes Sunday in the USA Today Coaches Top 25 poll. They didn’t receive votes in Monday’s rankings by The Associated Press.
UNLV hadn’t received votes in a national poll since 2003, when John Robinson was the coach and it opened the season with four wins in five games, including a 23-5 victory at No. 14 Wisconsin.
The quick success is surely surprising for UNLV supporters like my friend. But it’s not surprising to Odom.
When he was hired last December, he made sure to stress the program wouldn’t be in the typical rebuilding mode of a first-year coach.
“I feel the urgency to win and win now,” Odom said at his introductory news conference. “Every year is a rebuild of a team. That doesn’t mean it’s a rebuild and not have success. My goal is to take this team and go win and win immediately.”
Plenty of coaches have arrived in Las Vegas over the years with a similar mentality, only to see their vision unfulfilled.
Mike Sanford called UNR “the team up North” and vowed to beat them. He never did.
Jim Strong, Tony Sanchez and Marcus Arroyo never qualified for a bowl, with Arroyo last year losing six of his final seven games before he was fired. Jeff Horton, Robinson and Bobby Hauck led the program to one bowl game, but each were dismissed after underachieving seasons.
Odom’s tenure could be different.
The program has a legitimate chance at sustained success because of the resources the university has put into football the past five years. You can’t be serious about having a winning team without making serious financial investments, which UNLV finally did.
It starts with the money shelled out to attract Odom, who at $1.75 million a season is the highest paid coach in the Mountain West. He isn’t some up-and-coming coach like Sanchez or Arroyo, whom UNLV saw as lottery tickets and were given a chance to prove themselves.
Odom is a leader with a proven track record who was formerly a head coach in the SEC at Missouri. The dude, as witnessed in the first half of the season with close wins against Vanderbilt and UTEP, knows how to organize a team on game day.
The university, with Sanchez’s lead and vision, also fundraised for the nearly $30 million Fertitta Football Complex. Those buildings are commonplace at major college football programs across the nation, but UNLV was stuck in an outdated building built in the 1990s.
The most notable upgrade was in 2020 when Allegiant Stadium opened with UNLV and the Raiders as “roommates,” as Raiders owner Mark Davis calls the Rebels.
Sure, the stadium is most famously known as home to the NFL’s Raiders, but if it weren’t for UNLV also getting to play there, who knows if the Nevada Legislature in 2016 would have approved $750 million in state funding through a small room-rate tax increase. The split was so close that it came down to the vote of one lawmaker.
The result is UNLV football in position to consistently do what it has never previously done by being a consistent winner.
The Rebels are averaging 37.5 points per game to rank in the top-20 nationally. They are getting recognized in the polls for the first time in two decades. They beat Reno — again.
Even for those pessimists like Cam, it’s obvious that the modern-day version of UNLV surely isn’t what those loyalists are used to. This appears to be the beginning of some memorable seasons of Rebel football.
