Columnist Steve Carp: Gimmicks not the answer to filling stadium

Steve Carp

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 1997 | 9:07 a.m.

THE WORD IS UNLV has pledges for 4,000 new football season tickets, which on the surface isn't bad.

Then again, when you consider the ambitious goal of the "Touchdown Club" to sell 10,000 season ducats at $35 a pop, 4,000 seems well short of pay dirt. It's certainly not enough to make you want to go for it on fourth down.

Of course, nobody at UNLV knows how many of those 4,000 pledged tickets actually have been purchased. At some point, someone will have an actual figure.

But forget the bookkeeping for the moment. Let's stick with the ticket-purchasing premise for now.

UNLV is trying to flood the market with ticket sales in the hope someone actually will go out to Sam Boyd Stadium to watch a team which went 1-11 a year ago. So far, the ploy's not working.

Assuming those 4,000 seats actually are sold and maybe another thousand or more get purchased, how many of those new season subscribers will show up and use those tickets?

That's the big question which needs to be answered. And when you ask those in the athletic department that question, the responses run the gamut from an apathetic "I don't know" to a wishy-washy "Your guess is as good as mine" to an optimistic "Hopefully, everyone."

Remember a couple of years ago when they tried to pack Sam Boyd Stadium with a flood of $5 tickets for Arkansas State? Remember how they sold 41,000 of those discounted seats and how proud everyone in the football foundation was?

Remember how more than 15,000 of those tickets went unused?

Obviously, if UNLV was a perennial winner on the artificial turf and going to a bowl game more than once every 10 years, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd be complaining about the lack of parking or lack of amenities in the stadium or something other than wins and losses.

But until the Rebels can find a way to stay on the plus side of the ledger more often than not, it's going to be hard to convince people to come out to the stadium. And Jeff Horton knows it. He is trying to get it done, believe me.

Yet it's not easy. Which is why the athletic department has to keep gimmicking itself to death to try to get people to make an appearance at the stadium. I don't begrudge them for trying. After all, to sit back and do nothing would be a lot worse.

Still, you can't help but wonder what can be done in the interim until Horton has enough talent to get the necessary W's and provide some genuine interest in Rebel football.

Fixing up the stadium would help, though that's not going to necessarily lure people to it. Upgrading the schedule isn't the sure-fire answer because if you can't beat the good teams, not many are going to come out and watch. Witness a Top-10 Kansas State team a few years ago which won in front of fewer than 11,000 spectators.

Essentially, it comes down to recruiting more Jon Dentons and hope you get over the hump. Winning is still the best formula for success at the turnstiles.