Columnist: Big game a sellout in two ways

THERE WAS A stack of 1996 UNLV football posters sitting in Steve Stallworth's office the other day and the head of the school's sports marketing efforts turned to me and said, "Pretty sharp, huh?"

Yeah, pretty sharp. Except for one thing.

"What's that?" Stallworth asked.

You've got an error.

A horrific look embraced Stallworth's face. "What error?" he said.

You have six home games when you really only have five.

Stallworth looked at me like I was nuts. He started going through the schedule -- Air Force, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Fresno ...

Then, it hit him like Lawrence Taylor.

"Wisconsin?" he said.

You got it, Strip.

Thanks to former athletic director Jim Weaver selling two-thirds of the then 32,000 available seats to Badger interests, the Sept. 14 game at Sam Boyd Stadium has become a mini Camp Randall Stadium full of Cheeseheads singing "On, Wisconsin" until they're hoarse.

And while Weaver thought he was doing the right thing in guaranteeing a packed house and enough money to cover the $250,000 nut he had to pay Wisconsin by getting dibs on 24,000 tickets at $20 a shot, what he really did was sell out his football coach and his players.

Jeff Horton can make all the jokes he wants and try to put a psychological positive twist on it. But he and his kids deserve better, if not from the fans, then at least from his administration. By letting Wisconsin dominate the stadium, Weaver was saying he didn't trust Las Vegas to rally around his football program any longer and he would sell tickets to whomever wanted them, even if they lived in Madison.

Of course, Weaver is no longer here. He's now the AD at Western Michigan and he apparently didn't feel obligated to return a phone call to explain why he did what he did. Only he knows why he allocated 15,000 tickets to the Boyd Group, which in turn gave 14,500 of those tickets to Fun Jet, a Milwaukee-based airline tour company. Or how the Big Dog, Tom Wiesner, was able to purchase 1,000 tickets.

When these deals were done in 1994, UNLV football was not drawing flies. And a concerned Weaver apparently couldn't chance having sections of empty seats at the stadium. So he brokered some deals with some people who had been supportive of Rebel athletics, though he allegedly offered every major casino in town an opportunity to purchase big blocks of tickets before giving Wisconsin interests a crack at the coveted ducats.

Obviously, Weaver's sense of history is somewhat shortsighted. He apparently didn't realize that the last time these two teams met in 1986, there were more Wisconsin fans than UNLV fans. And I guess he wasn't around for the 1994 Rose Bowl when tens of thousands of Badger fans made the trek to Pasadena.

Who was he kidding? If UNLV fans didn't claim those tickets, the Cheeseheads certainly would've. But I guess the track record of Rebel football fans had been established in his mind and he was going to hedge his bet by selling the tickets to Badger fans.

Funny thing, though. Weaver never got the money in the bank for those tickets. So no interest was ever collected on those monies. Stallworth had to do the collecting, and UNLV certainly wasn't in a position to tell people like Wiesner and Chuck Ruthe, good people who have supported the school, that the deal was off. UNLV had no choice but to honor Weaver's agreement.

So the money is finally in the bank. The game will produce a record crowd and gate. It will help balance the books and it will create some artificial interest in Rebel football. Still, that doesn't help Horton or his players.

They'll come out and see 40,000 people, decked out in red, screaming and cheering. Problem is, they'll be screaming and cheering for the scarlet and white, not the scarlet and gray. The beer will be flowing and the brats will be cooking. All that'll be missing for the Cheeseheads are the mosquitoes.

But there's still plenty of tickets left for Air Force, Nevada-Reno and San Diego State. And maybe that's where the real problem lies. There is still a lack of interest in Rebel football. Even when the team won the Las Vegas Bowl two years ago, less than 15,000 showed up. Last year, they tried to sell out the stadium with a $5 ticket and came up short.

Now, with the best home schedule in years, Wisconsin is the only game that is a lock to produce a big crowd. And the majority of that audience will be belching at kickoff from a day of drinking brew and banging down brats.

That problem may be harder to fix than a schedule poster.

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