Columnist Ron Kantowski: Friday nights work for UNLV

Friday, Sept. 19, 2003 | 10:25 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Three weeks ago, when UNLV played Toledo on Friday night at the insistence of ESPN, the game came and went with nary a letter to the editor, telephone call or e-mail accusing the Rebels of infringing on the local high schools' territory.

That must have come as a shock to Mike Hamrick, the new UNLV athletic director, who was roundly criticized at East Carolina, simply because he went along with a Conference USA edict and switched last year's Pirates-Cincinnati game to Saturday because ESPN said so.

The benefits to playing on a Thursday night are so immense -- especially for a publicity-starved conference such as the Mountain West -- that you'd almost be crazy not to jump at the chance.

In the case of UNLV, it was not a matter of if it would jump when the NCAA lifted the ban on Friday night football in 2001. It was a matter of how high.

ESPN elected to televise five Friday night games as part of the experiment, and when it went looking for volunteers, UNLV was more willing than Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly." The Rebels agreed to visit the Friday night laboratory twice, against Northwestern and Colorado State, although the CSU game was postponed by 9-11.

Oh, there was a smattering of opposition at first. A column I wrote on May 3, 2001, indicated that then Clark County School District athletic director Larry McKay was not very happy, but his biggest beef was that UNLV didn't seek the high schools' blessing before committing to Friday.

For that reason, when UNLV belatedly asked McKay to move the conflicting high school games from Friday to Thursday, it went over about as well as a beer vendor in LaVell Edwards Stadium.

But when the Northwestern game passed with neither UNLV nor the preps being affected dramatically at the turnstiles, that was about the last negative word spoken or written about head-to-head football around here.

Elsewhere, it's a bigger issue, although most high school organizations seem to understand why their local college teams would want to play on Friday.

Last year, when Marshall turned on its Friday night lights, the West Virgina high school governing body wasn't exactly thrilled.

"But I also understand the economics of the situation," said Mike Hayden of the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Association. "They're aware of our concerns, but it helps them pay for their program. If someone offered $350,000 or $500,000 to televise one of our games, we'd certainly move it too."

Maybe if you're SMU or Pitt, where high school football in your own backyard is still a pretty big deal, you might think twice about playing on Friday. But in Las Vegas, where the biggest Friday night tradition is video poker and a lounge show, what's not to like? Nothing, says Rebels coach John Robinson, whose Rebels will receive another nice check and some more decent exposure Friday night when it hosts Hawaii on ESPN.

"We're very fortunate in that three of our first four games are on national TV and the second game, well, we would have preferred that that game not even be on radio," Robinson said in reference to the Rebels' blowout loss at Kansas, which was sandwiched between ESPN games against Toledo and Wisconsin.

"This is something that presents our university in a unique manner. There are a lot of people who are going to see our football program, our school ... you can't imagine what kind of money we would have to pay for that kind of advertising."

He has a point. If you want to trace Colorado State's rise from whipping boys to mid-major poster boys, look no further than Thursday night football on ESPN.

CSU has played in 11 Thursday games since coach Sonny Lubick arrived in 1993. It is 6-0 on Thursday in Fort Collins, an even bigger bonus when the game is on TV.

The only game on TV.

Sure, the Rams could be stubborn and play on Saturday. They might even be the Mountain West Game of the Week on SportsWest, which is seen throughout the Mountain Time Zone -- in other words, those mobile home parks where the trailers come equipped with rabbit ears.

But if CSU and Utah were to play on TV on Saturday afternoon, I'll bet even Brad Van Pelt, Bradlee's old man, might be tempted to switch channels if Michigan and Ohio State were playing on ABC.

Thursday night is the NL West of TV college football. There's no competition. And no need for a remote control when Lee Corso is busy trying on mascot heads.

Last Thursday's Utah-Cal game, for instance, turned into a 3 1/2-hour Utes infomercial. Corso, the ESPN analyst, spent most of the evening raving about Utah's new stadium (refurbished for the Salt Lake Olympics) and new coach (Urban Meyer). He even encouraged high school recruits who were watching to sign with the Utes, to get in on the ground floor of a program that was headed up.

Of course, that won't work as well on Friday, when the prep blue-chippers will be teeing it up at roughly the same time as the Rebels and Warriors.

But there's always the chance that some of the recruits UNLV and Hawaii are pursuing may also be considering an Ivy League school. In which case, they've probably figured out how to program a VCR.