Columnist Dean Juipe: Arkansas, UNLV may save bowl

Dean Juipe

Friday, Dec. 8, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

We all know and can recite the reasons for the Las Vegas Bowl's innocuous history.

Intrigue-challenged matchups.

Frosty weather.

Stadium location.

General apathy.

The end result has been an annual game of little interest to locals, and one hanging on by a thread from the NCAA's perspective. Toss in the fact that residents with a borderline temptation to attend the game have been able to see it live on TV instead, and the Las Vegas Bowl has had a gasping-for-breath aura to it virtually since its inception.

But by the grace of a UNLV football team that won its final three games of the regular season to finish 7-5, and by the good fortune of having a reputable team like Arkansas available to provide the opposition, this year's game may be the one that saves the Las Vegas Bowl.

Forty thousands seats are available and even though Sam Boyd Stadium hasn't moved from the hinterlands and the Dec. 21 evening weather is still apt to be chilly, perhaps 40,000 spectators should be expected. For the first time, ESPN2 will black out the game locally unless it's a sellout and surely Las Vegas and its 1.3 million inhabitants can muster 30,000 in ticket sales.

Arkansas will take care of the rest.

"That's a reasonable assumption if we can get our transportation situation figured out," Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles said Thursday. "We've got a lot of people who want to come and they're waiting to see what we can make available to them."

Air fare between Little Rock and Las Vegas has been running a steep $800 to $1,000, but Broyles anticipates leasing four or five chartered jets to accommodate the many Razorback fans.

"This is where our players wanted to come for a bowl game and it's where our fans wanted to come, too," said Broyles, a legendary figure as a coach and now a charming gentleman of 75. "It's just the glamour of Las Vegas that makes it so appealing. It's a place most of our players have never been to and may not see again for a while, and it's also more of a family Disney World than it once was when it was merely an adult Disney World."

Of course the focus of the visitors' experience is a football game that either side could win. While it seems UNLV may have the weapons to prevail, Arkansas did rally to win its final two games (against Mississippi State and LSU) to finish a bowl-eligible 6-5.

"We've got our momentum back," Broyles said. "In 54 years of being around college football teams I've never seen such a rash of injuries like we had this year, but we've turned it around."

Yet the Hogs run the risk of losing a bit of their stature at the expense of a UNLV program that is on the rise.

"That's true," Broyles agreed. "But anytime you're playing a John Robinson-coached team, you know you're in for a football game."

Previous Las Vegas Bowls with teams such as Ball State, Toledo, Bowling Green and Nevada-Reno were incapable of offering these types of storylines, lures and intangible draws.

But this time the aesthetics are in place and there are multiple reasons to see how the Las Vegas Bowl plays out.

The timing is ideal for the bowl, as its very solvency would seem to be at stake.