Columnist Dean Juipe: UNLV makes it a night to remember

Dean Juipe

Friday, Dec. 22, 2000 | 9:39 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.

An hour or so before the game the naysayers had the floor, and one by one they ticked off all the incidental negatives they could muster.

Yes, the crowd certainly wasn't going to be huge.

Yes, TV's influence aside, maybe this game should be played in the afternoon before the evening chill sets in.

Yes, the field looked a little patchy.

Yes, the parking situation remains abysmal.

No, the scalpers out front can't be getting any more than face value for the tickets they were hawking.

But by game time, and for the three-plus hours that followed, Thursday night's Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium provided relief from all the earlier complaints. An energized crowd and a highly competitive game, one that played out in favor of the home team, made the ninth annual edition of the bowl the first one worth remembering.

Helped greatly by UNLV's 31-14 victory over Arkansas, this Las Vegas Bowl has to go down as hugely successful in spite of its peripheral shortcomings.

Granted, attendance wasn't what it should have been considering the opponents and the stakes, yet 25,868 snuggled in and fought off the increasingly cool temperatures. Likewise, you can make a good case for playing this game earlier in the day, as even a 2 p.m. starting time would be 5 p.m. in the East and arguably acceptable to the TV moguls.

The spray-painted field held up OK and anyone who has been to Boyd Stadium in recent years already knows UNLV makes an annual promise to have the parking lot paved yet never delivers. But as the game progressed, each of those grievances lost a little of their luster.

Bowl officials can thank the Rebels for making the experience worthwhile. Thanks, too, should go to both teams' fans, as UNLV's followers rejoiced in what they were seeing, and the Razorbacks' faithful, while losing some steam as the game progressed, never lost their commitment.

(Quick sidebar: One thing about being a Razorback fan is that you can make any vocal noise whatsoever, from barnyard impersonations to a collection of vague utterances, and the players will know whose side you're on.)

The first few moments of the game belied the direction it would later take, as Arkansas not only put a touchdown on the board on its first possession but UNLV was called for penalties on its first two plays from scrimmage. The early picture: UNLV might be in for a rough night.

A 1-point favorite on the underground betting line, the Rebels twice fell a touchdown behind, yet, by all accounts, didn't panic. To the absolute shock of those looking on, UNLV wore down those hog-fed Arkansas linemen in the second half and its explosive offensive attack broke the game open with 17 unanswered, second-half points.

Amazingly, the Rebels finish 8-5 and if ever this program has reason for optimism, it's right now.

Naturally, there's talk of bigger and better things in the near future, and of playing in bigger and better bowl games. But even if they never win another game the Rebels won this one, and that was paramount to the UNLV fans as they swarmed the field with the clock ticking down.