Columnist Steve Guiremand: Las Vegas Bowl did its job of bolstering the city

Steve Guiremand

Friday, Dec. 27, 2002 | 9:10 a.m.

Steve Guiremand covers college football for the Sun. He can be reached at steveg@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-2324.

The happiest people who watched Wednesday's latest Las Vegas Bowl game between UCLA and New Mexico should be the stockholders of Pulte, Beazer and Kaufman and Broad.

For the second straight Christmas, the biggest college football game of the day was played in Las Vegas. And for the second straight year, the sunny weather and scenic backdrops televised by ESPN were something a Chamber of Commerce could only dream of.

You don't think some of those poor folks on the East Coast, who had to shovel out from beneath three feet of snow, weren't dreaming of a Las Vegas Christmas?

When all is said and done, this is the reason why cities host college football bowl games each year.

Sure they want to have a good matchup on the field. And although tapes of Wednesday's UCLA-New Mexico contest won't be shipped to the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., it certainly wasn't a bad game (OK it was, but I don't want to get Las Vegas Bowl executive director Tina Kunzer-Murphy too upset at me).

But the main criteria for a bowl game these days, as long as college officials want to keep their heads in the sand and ignore a cash-cow called a Division I-A postseason football tournament, is to fill hotel rooms and sell your city on national TV with the hope of luring future visitors to your town.

One of the best examples of that over the years has been the Rose Bowl and Rose Parade. The Southern California landscape is filled with stories of midwesterners who decided to pull up stakes and head west after watching another sunny 70-degree day every January 1st.

Give Kunzer-Murphy and PR whiz Michael Mack and the rest of the Las Vegas Bowl staff credit -- they do a nice job of selling the city and game to their national audience, be it with showgirls on the field for the coin toss, the Fremont Street pep rally and buffet bowl, the well-attended kickoff luncheon, or having players visit with sick kids at Sunrise Children's Hospital.

When all is said and done, it was another successful year for the Las Vegas Bowl ... no matter what the final score was.

The recruiting diet

UNLV coach John Robinson spent his Christmas afternoon at Sam Boyd Stadium doing the national radio broadcast of the Las Vegas Bowl with former Rebel announcer Larry Kahn.

When a reporter asked Robinson what he had been up to lately, he quickly replied, "Recruiting. ... I've been on the road working my butt off recruiting."

That hard work paid big dividends for Robinson and the Rebels when he landed two of the top junior college players in California, running back Alvin Marshall (5-11, 190) and linebacker John Andrews (6-1, 215) of Compton, Calif., College.

Compton College coach Cornell Ward, who previously shipped wide receivers Nate Turner and David Relf to UNLV, called Marshall "the Marshall Faulk of J.C. Football." Andrews runs a 4.4 forty and was regarded as one of the top linebackers in the state.

Marshall had previously committed to Fresno State, where a brother is a freshman wide receiver who is redshirting.

"But that was before I took a recruiting trip there," he said. "It didn't go as well as a I had hoped."

To clear up some confusion making the Internet circles: Marshall's signed letter of intent did arrive at UNLV this week and he does have his A.A. degree which means he can enroll in the school in January.

With Marshall, Larry Croom, Dominique Dorsey, Earvin Johnson, Deon Burnett and Dyante Perkins all returning next fall, Robinson and new quarterback Kurt Nantkes will have quite a few weapons to work with.

The Rebels also added some much needed size to the offensive line in the early recruiting period. One big need that still needs to be filled before February is the addition of a J.C. defensive back or two.

Notes, quotes and anecdotes