Columnist Dean Juipe: Poor record aside, Horton safe at UNLV

HIS 1997 team lost its last five games to finish 3-8, and through four seasons at UNLV Jeff Horton is 13-33 as head coach.

There are those in Las Vegas who feel he has to start winning some football games if he's going to be around for the turn of the century or beyond.

Some unsympathetic souls feel the reversal had better start this season or Horton could be gone long before the millennium -- as in December 1998.

But they're wrong. Horton is as safe as a coach with a losing record mired in mediocrity can be.

And it's a good thing, considering the Rebels' schedule this year.

It's brutal -- maybe not by the standards of an Ohio State or a Nebraska, but it's unquestionably brutal by UNLV's jaded yardstick.

How tough is it? It's tough enough that Horton may start feeling like Sisyphus, resigned to the endless toil of pushing a boulder up an insurmountable hill.

He'll open practice next month staring at a schedule that is laden with heavyweights, particularly at the outset of the season when the still-developing and quarterback-depleted Rebels will be at their most susceptible.

It's possible they could lose their first eight games.

For sure they'll lose their first four.

Here's the lineup, with the opponent's 1997 record in parenthesis: at Northwestern (5-7); Air Force (10-3); at Wisconsin (8-5); at Colorado State (11-2); Nevada-Reno (5-6); at Brigham Young (6-5); Wyoming (7-6); at Southern Methodist (6-5); Tulsa (2-9); at Rice (7-4); and Texas Christian (1-10).

Toss out weak links Tulsa and TCU and the other nine teams were a collective 65-43. Add in the fact a team like Northwestern -- even with its '97 losing record -- has major, inherent advantages over UNLV and the Rebels' chances for success are skewered even further.

By the time they get to their last four games and the easiest portion of their schedule, the Rebels could be beat up, run over and run down -- a team in ruins as they finally reach their supposed smorgasbord.

Five wins would be very good. Something like two or three may be more plausible or realistic.

And yet Horton survives the carnage for these reasons: He's liked at the university and within the community; the program is still trying to climb back from the depths of the Jim Strong era; and with UNLV moving from the Western Athletic Conference to an even better (though still unnamed) football league in 1999, it can be argued this is no time to be changing captains of the ship.

Fact is, Horton may coach the Rebels for as long as he likes, although that's not to say the program won't be discontinued a few years down the road if a financial crisis or absolute lethargy sets in.

For better or worse, it appears as if the job is his. His 7-5, 2-9, 1-11 and 3-8 records for the first four years of his tenure have not detracted from his image as an enthusiastic, qualified man in a difficult situation.

No matter how many 3-8 seasons lie ahead, Horton may have the staying power to become synonymous with UNLV football. The question is: Is that a legacy anyone would want?

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