Monday, Sept. 13, 2004 | 9:25 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
A show of hands, please: Is there anybody besides John Robinson and perhaps about a third of his players (the other two-thirds had to know better) who thought the Rebels were going to beat Tennessee and Wisconsin to open the season 2-0?
Didn't think so.
I've got my left hand halfway in the air, but I'm not exactly waving it around like a second-grader who knows the answer or has to go to the bathroom. That's because I thought the Rebels might actually give Tennessee a game and even said so in this space. (Credibility is overrated, anyway.)
So I guess I should be partially upset by the developments of the past two weeks, a 42-17 loss at Rocky Top and an 18-3 defeat in America's Dairyland that transported college football back to the leather helmet days. Sitting through the Wisconsin-UNLV game was sort of like ... well, milking a cow by hand. Two safeties in one game? The last time that happened, ol' Bessie was just a calf.
But anybody crying over the spilled milk of these two losses needs to get a sponge or a grip on reality. Man, the way Rebels fans are talking, you would think Robinson had sprouted a fu manchu mustache and become Fresno State's Pat Hill. Where are all these crazy expectations coming from?
Not there won't be plenty of time and/or reasons to criticize these Rebels between now and the time they hand out the postseason booby prizes -- er, bids to minor bowl games. But a semi-whipping at No. 14 Tennessee and a slap on the wrist at No. 21 Wisconsin are hardly grounds for a divorce, especially given the real season, the games with an asterisk behind them on your pocket schedule, doesn't start until this week.
Now if the Rebels don't beat Air Force, whose usually befuddling option attack is not exactly well equipped this season, feel free to express your irreconcilable differences. If UNLV loses its conference opener at home, there are going to be quickie divorces around here that would make Brittney Spears' head spin.
But I wouldn't discard the Las Vegas Bowl ticket office telephone number just yet. After all, unless the Mountain West has entered into another crazy business venture without conferring with the media, it still has three guaranteed bowl slots and, after two weeks of the season, only two teams (Utah and New Mexico) that seem worthy of filling them.
Besides, defense wins championships, and if it took Wisconsin, with those six Amanas in its offensive line, 10 possessions to finally dent the UNLV end zone, what chance could itty-bitty Air Force have?
Sure, the Rebels' offense sputtered like an old Buick up in Madison, but let's not forget the kid behind the wheel hasn't experienced many joy rides as a college football quarterback.
At first, when Shane Steichen came into the game for injured Kurt Nantkes after the first offensive series, I thought it might be a good thing, as Nantkes has yet to reprise his form against Colorado State in the 2002 season finale. Plus, and this isn't his fault, he's got about the same mobility as Orson Welles after Thanksgiving dinner.
So the Rebels had to throw Steichen to the Lions, and the Lions won. Actually, he might have had a chance for success against Penn State, but this was Wisconsin. A hell-bent-on-revenge Wisconsin.
Steichen's youth and inexperience notwithstanding, any pocket passer who is lucky enough to elude the Wisconsin pass rush in the back of the end zone, with his team still in the game mind you, should know better than to try to do it again on the same play.
That Steichen didn't throw the ball to the brass section in the Wisconsin marching band that kept blowing its horns as Robinson was trying to send in plays is beyond me. And so it was safety first, safety second for UNLV.
But now that the Rebels have discovered that the fullback is an eligible receiver, I suspect they'll start matriculating down the field, or whatever it was that Hank Stram said, once they are allowed onto the level playing field.
Once again, it's as if Robinson has created a monster. The last time the Rebels went to Tennessee, just a couple of seasons before he got here, the funny-talking guys in the orange shirts won 62-3. Rest assured that UNLV did not move the ball so well in that game that Phil Fulmer decided to revamp his entire secondary, which is what he did after this year's opener.
At Wisconsin, had Sergio Aguayo not started his chip-shot field goal attempt somewhere below sea level (although after watching the replay, I don't think his kick was a low as Robinson made it out to be), the Rebels most likely would have led the Badgers 3-2 at halftime. They didn't have Mariano Rivera warming up in the bullpen, just Norv Turner's son, Scott. But with football being such an emotional game, had Jim Leonhard not returned Aguayo's 2-iron shot some 86 yards in the other direction it's not that farfetched to envision a different outcome.
Which would have been the second consecutive year that a lowfat team from a 2-percent league would have milked an upset victory against one of the Big Ten's big cheeses.
As for all those penalties, well, as analyst Bob Davie almost said after the Rebels were flagged when Adam Seward breathed on one of the Wisconsin wideouts, it was obvious the officials were from the Big Ten. Davie caught himself in mid-sentence, segueing into another thought, but some of those penalties looked a little suspect.
So my biggest complaint after this season-opening safari left the Rebels holding an empty bag was that they didn't save one of the scholarships they used on junior college players for a quarterback who can get outside the pocket. Other than that, my glass is still half-full rather than half-empty, based on the reasons listed above and a recent conversation I had with UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick.
When I asked Hamrick about UNLV competing on a national level, he said it was possible in every sport with the exception of one.
"Probably the only sport at this point it would be difficult is football," Hamrick said. "In all honesty, our goal in football is to win a championship within our conference."
Of course, and unlike the Rebels' offense, there's an option for those not willing to be realistic and/or patient.
Fresno's only a six-hour drive.
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