School scores profit in bowl

Steve Guiremand

Friday, Dec. 29, 2000 | 10:17 a.m.

Home sweet home.

While stories continue to pop up about college football programs losing hundreds of thousands of dollars after accepting bowl game invitations, you won't hear any whining coming from UNLV on that topic.

Although exact final figures probably won't be available until next week, UNLV administrators estimate the school will pocket in the neighborhood of $400,000 for the Rebels' 31-14 Las Vegas Bowl victory over Arkansas on Dec. 21 at Sam Boyd Stadium.

UNLV was guaranteed an $800,000 payout by the Las Vegas Bowl. However, the school was required to purchase 12,500 tickets with the value of any unsold tickets being deducted from that payout.

"We don't have our final numbers yet, but we sold well over 10,000 of our allotment," Terry Cottle, UNLV's associate athletic director in charge of sports marketing, said Thursday.

The school shelled out $20,000 to buy 2,000 of the $10 tickets it received and distributed them free to UNLV students. Another estimated $30,000 was used to buy down the price of some $50 tickets which then were sold for $30.

Assuming the school was stuck with 2,000 of the unused $50 tickets, that would mean UNLV would have to deduct another $100,000 from its payout for a total of $150,000 in lost ticket revenue.

Senior associate athletic director Jerry Koloskie said the school also spent between $250,000 to $260,000 for team expenses related to the bowl game, including hotel costs, meals, transportation and gifts for players and coaches.

That leaves an estimated surplus of about $390,000 to $400,000 for UNLV to keep out of its bowl payout -- minus about another $7,000 for a new goalpost at the south end of Sam Boyd Stadium.

"We certainly won't lose any money," Koloskie said. "By having the game here locally saved us a lot in transportation costs and also helped in the selling of our ticket allotment."

That hasn't always been the case for Mountain West Conference teams in recent years.

According to a recent article in USA Today, 18 of the 38 schools that provided the newspaper with copies of their 1999 bowl financial reports lost money, including 12 with deficits of $100,000 or more and three with shortfalls exceeding $300,000.

One of the biggest losers somewhat surprisingly was Brigham Young, which had to eat almost 13,000 tickets from last year's Motor City Bowl in Pontiac, Mich., valued at an astounding $413,536. Even with a $100,000 subsidy and help with unsold tickets from the Mountain West Conference, BYU still suffered a net loss of about $250,000 from a bowl game that pays out $750,000 to each school.

"Everybody wants to talk about the big money the bowls pay out," BYU athletic director Val Hale said. "But if you don't sell all your tickets and you have to travel a long way, that money gets eaten up very quickly."

Utah, which was able to bus its band to the 1999 Las Vegas Bowl from Salt Lake City instead of buying costly plane tickets, managed to come out $264,000 ahead last year.

Cottle says the Las Vegas Bowl payoff will be even bigger for the Rebels when expected increased season ticket sales for the 2001 campaign are figured in.

"This was huge for the program," Cottle said. "It was the shot in the arm it needed. You get a couple of weeks more press on the football team and then all the national exposure it received by playing the game on ESPN2. It was great PR and marketing for the school and program."

Cottle said he has already begun receiving phone calls from fans wishing to buy 2001 season tickets.

"Right now we're just taking reservations because we still don't have our price schedule finalized yet," Cottle said. "Hopefully we'll have that done in the next two or three weeks."

UNLV's exact 2001 home football schedule probably won't be released until late spring or early summer because of the Mountain West Conference's TV contract obligation with ESPN, which has a big say in which games it wants to televise and when.

The Rebels will play five home games --- Sept. 8 against Northwestern and Mountain West Conference dates to be determined against BYU, Utah, Colorado State and San Diego State.

The 2002 home schedule will be even more attractive with seven home games scheduled, including non-conference contests against Wisconsin (Aug. 31), Kansas (Sept. 8), Baylor (Sept. 28) and Nevada-Reno (Oct. 5).