Ron Kantowski: Exposure not a good thing for Rebels

Monday, Oct. 14, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

THE THING about joining a conference everybody has heard of is that when you have a bad team, you can't run -- in UNLV's case, literally -- and/or hide.

The Rebels have had a lot of bad football teams. But as a Big West member that seldom strayed from the environs of obscure football outposts such as Las Cruces, Stockton and Logan, hardly anybody knew it.

Until now.

After playing so many rank teams, the Rebels are playing so many ranked ones in this, their first WAC campaign. Three of their conference brothers are listed among the Top 25. Add nonconference games against Tennessee and Wisconsin, and the Rebels have become a fixture in the college football roundup.

Fight promoter Bob Arum once said bad publicity is better than no publicity at all. But he never had to recruit an outside linebacker. People are starting to notice how bad this UNLV team is, or at least appears to be.

When the wire services refer to your five down linemen, two linebackers and four DBs as "the Keystone Cops of college football," as the Associated Press did today, you've got an image problem of Hugh Grant proportions.

Rebels coach Jeff Horton kept a stiff upper lip following Saturday's 63-28 loss at 19th-ranked Brigham Young, even after BYU released quotes attributed to "Fred Horton, UNLV coach."

Actually, Horton must have felt like Johnny Horton, who penned "The Battle of New Orleans" and took it to the top of the polls -- er, charts -- in 1959.

"When you are not a real good team and you are playing a real good team, and the real good team is struggling a little bit, then things are going to get away, and that's what happened," said the Rebels coach somewhat cryptically.

What Horton really was saying is that the Rebels fired their guns but the Cougars kept a-coming. And there seemed twice as many as there were a-while ago.

But early on, with the UNLV linebackers dropping back in the vicinity of Cedar City to help cover the BYU wideouts, Cougar QB Steve Sarkisian looked mortal. By the time he discovered his backs had carte blanche in the flat and that a pair of wooly-toothed mammoths disguised as tight ends owned the middle of the field, the Rebels led 7-0. And it could have been 14-0, were it not for a costly fumble.

Still, critics will have you believe this is the worst UNLV team of all time. But show me a schedule as tough as this one and I'll show you another row of L's in the media guide.

There's no shame, at least at this stage of the program's development, in losing 63-28 at BYU. The bigger embarrassment was losing to Idaho two years ago and being Vandalized for more than 700 yards. That was the year the Rebels were Big West champs. Big deal. They couldn't beat Idaho.

They can't beat BYU, either. But they can march the ball down the field to take the lead against a quality opponent. And then nearly do it again. That's a start.

The defense still stinks. But after the previous week's debacle against UNR, at least the Rebels have found another small hook on which to hang their helmets.