Night of racing will go head to head with Rebels

Thursday, July 8, 2004 | 9:06 a.m.

Wednesday's announcement of a rare Sept. 25 racing doubleheader at Las Vegas Motor Speedway might be one of several factors that could affect UNLV's early-season football attendance.

UNLV starts its home schedule at Sam Boyd Stadium on Sept. 18, against Air Force, the same date that Oscar De La Hoya is slated to battle Bernard Hopkins in a much-anticipated middleweight title fight at the MGM Grand. On the 25th, Utah State visits Sam Boyd.

"We might sell out both games and hurt attendance at those places," Rebels coach John Robinson said of the LVMS and the Grand Garden Arena. "(But) they might still break even, I think."

For dramatic, if not comedic, effect, Robinson paused. Having returned from a Hawaiian vacation with his wife, Linda, late Tuesday, he was in an easy mood Wednesday afternoon.

"I don't know the demographics of all that, but I tend to think the people who go to football games are going to go to football games, and so on," Robinson said. "It might hurt our crowd some, but I just don't know."

The Rebels open their 2004 season at Tennessee (Sept. 5) and then travel to Wisconsin (Sept. 11), two destinations, and foes, that would normally challenge most teams in the country.

The unique LVMS doubleheader will consist of a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, which about half-filled the 130,000-capacity oval last year, followed by a 300-mile Champ Car open-wheel race. The Grand Garden Arena holds almost 17,200.

Brigham Young, with an average crowd of 61,500, led the Mountain West Conference in attendance, followed by Utah (41,478), Air Force (39,210) and New Mexico (35,124). UNLV, at 25,805, was sixth. If needed, Sam Boyd's capacity can be stretched to 40,000 for football.

Those Rebels figures were buoyed by a season-best crowd of 34,287, for a Friday night game against Hawaii that was shown on ESPN2, immediately after the team's upset victory at Wisconsin.

The times of this season's Air Force and Utah State games are currently listed as "TBA," to be announced, on UNLV's football schedule.

Mark Wallington, UNLV's associate sports information director, said those starting times will be dictated by television interest (by an ESPN outlet or KLAS Channel 8), which will likely be dictated by how well the Rebels play in Tennessee and Wisconsin.

The earliest the Air Force and Utah State games will begin is 4 p.m,, according to Wallington. The team's television contract, he said, stipulates that a kickoff time will be set at least two weeks before each game.

Until Robinson was hired as UNLV's football coach, before the 1999 season, the school catered to a consensus of fans, Wallington said, by starting September games at night, to offset typically hot Vegas afternoons.

Robinson's national recognition value enticed more interest in the team, thus kickoffs were moved up to accommodate a larger television audience.

How UNLV could counter the allure of a major boxing match and a rare racing doubleheader on consecutive weekends might best be left to the Rebels themselves, in Knoxville and Madison, Wis.

"Yeah, sure," Robinson said. "Unfortunately ... we have a lot of people who are 'maybe' fans, as in, 'Maybe if you do well, we'll go,' similar to all the events in this town. This town doesn't have a lot of hardcore fans who will go to events no matter what.

"If we're riding high going into those (first two home) games, we'll have a good crowd."