Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004 | 10:16 a.m.
UNLV senior linebacker Adam Seward knows there's a very good chance that he'll break the Mountain West Conference career tackling record on Saturday night against Air Force at Sam Boyd Stadium.
Seward, a Bonanza High graduate, needs just nine tackles to surpass Wyoming's Tyler Gottschalk, who had 334 tackles from 2000-03, for the No. 1 spot. And it figures Seward will get plenty of chances to make tackles against Fisher DeBerry's option-oriented Falcons.
But Seward said there's something else he'd much rather own after Saturday night's key MWC opener.
"I want to win the game more than anything," Seward said. "I figure if I have a good game we have a better chance of winning. If the middle backer plays well, generally the defense plays pretty well, too."
It would be only fitting if Seward were to break the tackle mark against Air Force.
It was late in his freshman year that Seward had his coming out party against the Falcons in a 34-10 upset in Colorado Springs. Seward finished with 14 tackles, two sacks and forced a key fumble by Air Force quarterback Keith Boyea to help spark the win.
"I had started a few games before that one, but that was the first game where I really got to play every snap," Seward recalled. "That was the game I started to get a lot of confidence in myself and realized I could play. Before I had kind of rotated in and out. But in that Air Force game they gave me a shot and thank goodness I performed."
Seward would finish with 60 tackles that first year. The following season he led the MWC in tackles with 133 en route to first-team all-MWC honors. Last year, despite playing most the season with a painful stress fracture in his left foot, he still finished second in the MWC with 119 tackles and once again earned first-team all-conference honors.
Seward, who underwent surgery to repair a stress fracture in his right foot just before the start of fall camp, played only about half of UNLV's opening 42-17 loss at Tennessee and a little more than that in last week's 18-3 loss at Wisconsin. Despite the limited playing time he is tied for third on the squad with 14 tackles.
"I feel I'll probably be about 90 percent by game time on Saturday," Seward said. "Right now I'm still about 80 percent. It's still sore. It's more of a mental thing. It's hard out here at practice because you're not out in front of a crowd and you don't have that adrenaline flowing."
Playing the Falcons and their wishbone attack is something that Seward says will get his juices flowing.
"I enjoy playing the Air Force Academy," he said. "They're a real disciplined football team and Fisher DeBerry is a great coach. He always has got his guys prepared. When you play them it's like old-school football where you line up and run the ball. I really like to play smash-mouth football where a team lines up runs the ball 60 or 70 times. ... It's just a test of who's tougher."
Seward says breaking the record "is not that big of a deal.
"Hopefully I'll make enough tackles where I can hold it for a while," he said. "It's a six-year-old conference. Anybody to break it has had to been playing for four years. Not that many people have played for four straight years in this conference. So it's not that big of a deal now but hopefully someone will have to work really hard to break it."
Seward says he'll be focusing all his attention on trying to help UNLV (0-2) get its first win of the season, not the record, on Saturday night.
"I don't know if they'll even announce it at the game," he said. "I'd probably wouldn't even notice it if they did. I'll just be out there making tackles. I'm just going to go out there and make plays and help my team win."
Successful candidates must be involved in working for charity and/or service. Brimmer has volunteered his time to Rebel Football Plays Santa, taken phone pledges at the annual Children's Miracle Network telethon, worked as a guest activities director at Camp Cartwheel, a summer program for the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation, and made numerous visits to area schools.
Brimmer was one of three players from the Mountain West Conference to make the team. The others were Utah senior safety Morgan Scalley and New Mexico linebacker Nick Speegle.
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