Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
While I'm not saying that the UNLV football team hasn't had a lot of significant victories, upon closer inspection, you can probably count them on one hand.
On Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown's pitching hand.
On second thought, maybe that's exactly what I'm saying.
Let's see, there was the 45-41 victory at No. 8 Brigham Young in 1981. Those Cougars, led by Jim McMahon, were the highest-ranked team UNLV has beaten.
There was the 2000 Las Vegas Bowl and Pig Roast, a 31-14 thrashing of Arkansas. Most fans may have forgotten that the Razorbacks weren't ranked coming into the game, but when college football calls a tradition meeting, the guys with the plastic pig hats are always invited.
And then there was Saturday past, when the Rebels went into Wisconsin and cut the Cheeseheads down to size, blitzing the 14th-ranked Badgers, 23-5.
Other than those three, am I missing something? What about last year's 36-33 win at No. 13 Colorado State, one might ask.
Sorry, doesn't count. When one non-BCS team upsets another non-BCS team, it doesn't register on college football's Big Win-O-Meter.
Part of the reason the Rebels haven't had many big wins is that they've only been playing Division I-A football since 1978 and have scheduled more games against West Texas A&M (1) than Texas A&M (0). In fact, of the 11 conferences that constitute I-A, they have a winning record against only one, and it's the worst one. Thanks to its 9-3 record against New Mexico State, UNLV is 19-9 all-time against the Sun Belt.
What about the WAC? Oh, you mean the Leather Belt. The WAC, considered a step below the Mountain West in college football's pecking order, has taken a strap to the Rebels, as UNLV is only 35-59-1 against WAC teams. The Rebels have done a little better against the MWC, with a 28-41-1 all-time mark.
But they are 3-0 against the Southwestern Athletic Conference. Maybe the Rebels should just call "next" whenever Grambling or Southern come to town for one of those Black College classics at Sam Boyd Stadium.
Obviously, as the Rebels showed at Wisconsin, there is the potential to rise above the morass of all these 4-7 seasons to which we've become accustomed. So should the shocker at Wisconsin, the Dali Madison, if you will, be considered the greatest win in UNLV football history?
Perhaps.
I hate to be more indecisive than Badgers quarterback Jim Sorgi in the face of a pass rush, but it's probably not fair to classify the win at Wisconsin until we see what the Rebels make of it.
For instance, after punking McMahon and the Cougars in 1981, the Rebels returned home the following week against Utah and were greeted by a big crowd (in those days) of 27,883. The Utes destroyed them, 69-28. In fact, UNLV lost four consecutive games after upsetting BYU, allowing 69, 57, 42 and 38 points in lopsided losses to Utah, Hawaii, Fresno State and San Diego State, en route to a 6-6 season.
In that the Rebels hog-tied Arkansas in the last game of 2000, it was hard to screw up the momentum that win generated. Until the following year, that is, when UNLV stumbled to -- you guessed it -- another 4-7 season.
So for now, the Wisconsin victory, as impressive as it was, should be viewed as a potential building block. Nothing more, nothing less. OK, a little more. What it showed is that on any given Saturday, these Rebels are capable of stepping up against big-name competition.
Ah, but as luck would have it, this week's game against Hawaii is on Friday night. In a lot of ways, the Warriors will be a tougher matchup for the Rebels than Wisconsin was, but in that Hawaii has never been to the Rose Bowl, the average fan probably isn't buying it.
My guess is that if the Rebels don't follow up with a win, there will empty tables at the next football luncheon, as there were following the unexpected defeat at Kansas.
But beat Hawaii, and all of a sudden you're 3-1 and knocking on the door of respectability and the Top 25 with the conference schedule yet to come.
Ah, but as luck would have it again, the Mountain West is looking more solid than petrified wood, and as coach John Robinson said, there's probably not a team remaining on the schedule against whom the Rebels should be favored (maybe not even Wyoming, which is much improved). But, as Robinson added in the same sentence, there's not a team that UNLV can't beat, either.
You can credit Wisconsin for that.
Maybe one day the Rebels will finally turn a corner, which for them, has been banked higher than those at Daytona. Maybe they already have, and just neglected to tell Kansas about it.
And maybe the day will come when we'll need another Cubs pitcher, Antonio Alfonseca, who was born with six fingers, to count the Rebels' big wins on one hand.
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