Friday, Oct. 16, 1998 | 11:11 a.m.
During his senior year at Norton High School in Norton, Kan., Jeff Boyle had scholarship offers from Big 12 Conference powers like Nebraska and Missouri.
Instead, the 6-1, 280-pound nose guard signed with Wyoming for one simple reason ... football.
Seems the Cornhuskers and Tigers wanted Boyle, a three-time Kansas state champion heavyweight wrestler, to continue his mat career at their schools. However, Boyle, who had been wrestling competively since kindergarten, wanted to give football a shot.
Enter Wyoming coach Dana Dimel, who knew of Boyle from his days as a Kansas State assistant. Dimel gave Boyle a football scholarship.
The move has paid big dividends for the Cowboys (4-1, 2-0), who enter Saturday afternoon's WAC Mountain Division game against UNLV (0-6, 0-3) at Sam Boyd Stadium ranked first in the WAC and 14th in the nation in scoring defense, yielding an average of just 15.0 points per game.
Boyle (22 tackles, 2 sacks), a true sophomore who earned second team Freshman All-American honors from The Sporting News a year ago, and junior defensive tackle Brian Van Emmerik (10 tackles, 2 1/2 sacks) have played key roles, especially when it comes to stopping the run up the middle.
Wyoming is third in the WAC and 31st nationally in rush defense, yielding just 124.0 yards per game.
"Those guys are both physical and strong up front," UNLV coach Jeff Horton said.
"(Boyle) and Brian Van Emmerik are both about 275 pounds and they both have waistlines of about 33 inches," Dimel said. "Both are ex-wrestlers. Between the two of them, in high school they lost one match in their whole career. That's how they go into every ballgame ... that they're going to win the wrestling matches that go on in the trenches."
Few, if any, offensive linemen are going to be able to win a wrestling match with Boyle.
In his junior year at Norton, he was named the Outstanding Wrestler of the West Regional Junior Nationals in Las Vegas. Boyle won the heavyweight divisions in both Greco-Roman and Freestyle that year.
"That was at the end of my junior year," Boyle said. "But going into my senior year I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go to college to wrestle or play football. I decided I wanted to concentrate on football."
Wyoming's defense comes into Saturday's game with UNLV off its best performance of the season. The Cowboys held SMU to just seven first downs and 196 yards in total offense in a 12-7 victory in Laramie last Saturday.
Meanwhile, UNLV, which will once again start fifth-year senior Chad Reed at quarterback, is trying to bounce back off of its worst offensive showing of the season, managing just five first downs and 98 yards in total offense in a 38-14 loss at BYU last week.
"Running the football is going to be the crucial thing," Horton said. "If we can't do that, we'll be in trouble. And we have to be real sound up front picking up their twists and stunts."
Rebel notes
The Rebels are 3-1 in Homecoming games under Horton, including a 41-6 win over Illinois State last year. ... UNLV has lost 11 straight games and will tie its school record in that category with another loss Saturday. ... Wyoming has lost its last four games on the road. The Cowboys last win away from Laramie was a 34-30 victory on Oct. 11, 1997 at Nevada-Reno.
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