This bowl built for excitement

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The Las Vegas Bowl may not match the Holiday Bowl in terms of interest or attendance, but Joe Yates will stack the first bowl game of the season against its Southern California rival any day in terms of on-field excitement.

Yates, the executive director of Las Vegas Bowl V, merely points to the wide-open offensive displays that have become commonplace since the game moved to Sam Boyd Stadium four years ago.

"In the past, it has always been one of the more exciting games of the entire bowl season," Yates said of the Las Vegas Bowl, which will be played Thursday at 6 p.m. "Last year, for example, was the first college football bowl game to go into overtime. Throughout its history, there have been a ton of points put on the board in these games, especially since it has been in Las Vegas, and we anticipate that again."

This year's contestants, Nevada-Reno and Ball State University, certainly are up to the task. The Wolf Pack (8-3) leads the nation in total offense, averaging more than 527 yards a game, and is ranked second in passing offense at better than 355 yards a game. UNR averaged 45.2 points a game en route to the Big West Conference championship.

The Cardinals (8-3), while a bit more balanced on offense than the Wolf Pack, nonetheless averaged 25.5 points a game during their trek to the Mid-American Conference title.

"Nevada is one of the nation's top offensive teams this year," Yates said. "Ball State has the whole package: they throw the ball, they have some big running backs, they run the option -- it's all there. Even though Nevada may have a more potent offense, on paper, I don't think anybody should discount Ball State. The scoreboard should be busy that night."

With that in mind, Yates admits that he is more than a little surprised that the Las Vegas Bowl hasn't drawn better during its four-year run at Sam Boyd Stadium. In the previous four games, the average attendance was slightly less than 15,000 -- with a high of 17,562 in 1994 when UNLV defeated Central Michigan, 52-24.

While UNLV's victory in Las Vegas Bowl III was a lopsided affair, the other three games proved to be much closer -- albeit equally as high-scoring. In the inaugural Las Vegas Bowl, in 1992, Bowling Green edged Nevada-Reno 35-34 in what ESPN declared one of the best bowl games of the year. In 1993, Utah State outdueled Ball State 42-33 and last year, Toledo defeated UNR 40-37 in the first-ever overtime game in Division I-A bowl history.

"That's what we've been trying to tell people," Yates said of the game's history. "I think it's magnificent that the WAC Championship was such an exciting game, but we also think the Las Vegas Bowl will be more exciting. It's always been a high-scoring, up-in-the-air type of game.

"It's a little surprising it hasn't caught on a little bit better with the city of Las Vegas ... and the reason it's a little surprising is because they all have been good games."

Yates said that 16,000 tickets have been distributed for Thursday's game, but admitted that Nevada-Reno had only sold a little more than 2,000 tickets as of Monday morning. He said Las Vegas Bowl officials are anticipating a crowd of between 15,000 and 16,000.

"I'm not quite sure what the story there is, why the city of Las Vegas hasn't supported it a little better," Yates said. "I don't know if it's because there's too much to do in Las Vegas or what.

"That happens at a lot of things in Las Vegas, I guess."

But not at the inaugural WAC Championship game, which drew more than 41,000 to Sam Boyd Stadium on Dec. 7. Yates said the Las Vegas Bowl committee doesn't feel the WAC Championship had a detrimental effect on the Las Vegas Bowl's ticket sales.

"We don't look at it as having a negative impact, we look at it as a great tool to sell college football," Yates said of the WAC Championship.

"To cut right through it, the Las Vegas Bowl has not been a big draw, but that still doesn't keep us from pushing it as hard as we can. We're trying to ride on the coattails of the WAC Championship -- it was a great game, there's no two ways about it. We applaud them because it was a fantastic game and it sold the city of Las Vegas on national TV, just as this game will."

Thursday's Las Vegas Bowl will be televised nationally by ESPN and will be shown live in Southern Nevada. Yates said he doesn't believe that having the game on television hurts the live gate.

"If you come out there, you're going to be entertained from the time you pull into the parking lot until you pull out of the parking lot when the game's over with," he said. "It's going to be an entertainment spectacle that evening.

"We're going to have a hell of a game, no matter how many people show up. Make no bones about it, it's going to be an exciting game and shame on them if they miss it live and in living color."