What you don’t see on TV

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, Sept. 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

I’ve always believed the best way to watch a football game is from your living room sofa, at least now that Dennis Miller is doing stand-up again.

But if the game’s not on TV, walking around the stands at Sam Boyd Stadium on a night when the sky is purple and orange is a good second option, if you’re running a one-man Wishbone.

That’s what I did Saturday, sticking a notebook in my back pocket.

This is what I saw:

• They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Or something like that. I actually had forgotten they started redoing Russell Road, the main artery into Sam Boyd Stadium, during the middle of last season, and it was nice to go to a UNLV football game and not lose a hub cap or break a strut. Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? Sorry Joni, I don’t miss those potholes the size of Rhode Island.

• It is now possible to walk from the kids’ soccer field to the stadium because there are sidewalks on both sides of the new Russell Road. If you do, you will save time getting out of the parking lot after the game. And you also will notice that once you get to the stadium, there are big concrete barriers topped with NASCAR-style catch fencing, like at Darlington or Talladega, although I couldn’t figure out what this was for.

• There was the usual mini-disaster at the ticket windows, although this one wasn’t UNLV’s fault. The out-of-town computer server that powers the ticket office software crashed like one of the Lohan sisters, about a half-hour before kickoff. It came back up about 15 minutes later but the outage, combined with the usual late-arriving crowd, resulted in long ... long ... long ... lines at the south box office.

• At least every ticket window was open. That wasn’t the case on opening night two years ago against Idaho State, when some fans didn’t get in until midway through the second quarter.

• At kickoff, the stadium was three-quarters empty because half the crowd was still standing in line for tickets. At the end of the first quarter, there still was a line. “You think they’d give us a discount,” one guy told me, after he and his buddies waited in line 30 minutes to buy a ticket. “This is why we don’t support UNLV.”

• By then, it was apparent the Rebels were going to win (the final score was 27-17). Omar Clayton, the UNLV quarterback, was doing a nice job managing the game. He kept throwing the ball to Phillip Payne of Western High, who kept catching it. And Utah State, called the worst team in college football by Sports Illustrated, kept making dumb mistakes — like fumbling the ball, for no good reason, and letting the Rebels kick it down the field like an empty beer can before falling on it.

• At halftime, everybody was finally inside — or sitting on his living room couch, watching the second half of Illinois vs. Missouri. I noticed the cops had been called to the intersection of Russell Road and Tropicana Avenue, where two cars had collided. There was broken glass everywhere. Upon further review, I now know what the NASCAR-style catch fence is for.

• Part of the charm of Sam Boyd Stadium is that unless Wisconsin, Nevada-Reno or Hawaii is playing, you can pretty much sit wherever you want. “Around here, you don’t grab a seat, you grab a section,” said a guy wearing a cap promoting a local plumbing outfit. He had a beer in his hand and didn’t seem to be complaining, just stating a fact.

• The announced crowd was 18,815. You cannot balance an athletic budget when the football team only draws 18,815 on opening night. Unless, perhaps, you are the athletic director at Lehigh, or some place like that.

• Rebels coach Mike Sanford is doing his part, however. During almost every time out, he was selling something over the public address system or on the scoreboard, which had a black patch on the video screen, like some bulbs had burned out. Maybe its software was getting ready to crash, too. One time, I think it was when Sanford was hawking chicken wings, his eyes lined up with the black patch and he looked like a pirate, or somebody in a detective magazine.

• The second half was pretty boring as Utah State, which was playing without Merlin Olsen and Rulon Jones, somehow managed to stay in the game, which irritated Sanford. In his postgame remarks, the Rebel coach said you’ve got to put away a team like this. He’s right, but it sounded strange to hear a coach with a 7-29 career record complaining about putting people away, like he was Les Miles.

• Maybe it wasn’t exactly like watching the old Oklahoma Wishbone, but give the Rebels credit for being efficient on offense. The quarterbacks didn’t throw an interception and their teammates didn’t lose a fumble. They’ll win some games playing like that. Especially against San Diego State, which lost to Cal Polyester Saturday.

• And give Sanford credit for teaching the Rebels some discipline. Last year’s serial personal-foulers were nearly model citizens Saturday night, penalized just four times for 30 yards. And two of those were intentional delays of the game.

• I expected a little more from Frank “The Tank” Summers (14 carries, 87 yards) against a weak team. So did Summers’ fans, who wore T-shirts with his name on the front and a picture of a Sherman tank on the back. They wanted to know why he wasn’t getting the ball in the fourth quarter. Rumble, young man, rumble.

• Those T-shirts said Chuck Norris couldn’t tackle Summers. Last year, it was Utah that couldn’t tackle Summers. Or was afraid to. At least that’s what Sanford said after the Rebels’ stunning 27-0 victory.

• The Utes tackled everybody wearing a Michigan uniform Saturday. Blocked everybody in Maize and Blue, too.

• The Rebels play at Utah Saturday.

• Of course, there’s nothing wrong with 11-1.