Columnist Ron Kantowski: Stadium’s park place is no Boardwalk

Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005 | 9:36 a.m.

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

My calendar must be missing a page. I thought this was opening week of the college football season but you wouldn't have known it by the lack of activity at UNLV on Monday.

With the Rebels not scheduled to open until Labor Day at New Mexico, new coach Mike Sanford has two extra days to prepare for his UNLV debut. So he gave the Rebels the day off. Besides, Monday was also the first day of school. Orientation is mind-numbing enough without having to worry about Rocky Long's blitz package.

So with the practice fields dark, it seemed like a good day to ride out to Sam Boyd Stadium to check out all the improvements. After all, the last time UNLV got a new football coach, it put in luxury suites, a press box tower, a grass field and even new goalposts for John Robinson.

But unless you count the graffiti on what used to be a stadium message board at the entrance to the stadium complex at Boulder Highway and Russell Road, and a small river running from the locker rooms to a culvert at the far northeast end of the property, nothing much has changed.

In other words, the general parking areas still aren't paved.

"Obviously, it's not going to happen this year," UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick said.

And in that it would almost take a BCS bowl guarantee to pay for the project, it may never happen.

The last time I wrote about the Sam Boyd parking situation was two years ago, when a longtime Rebels fan told me one of the reasons he was not renewing his season tickets was that he was tired of cleaning dust off his bratwurst during pregame tailgating.

At that time, stadium director Daren Libonati told me it would take roughly $3-5 million to pave the general parking areas. To put that in perspective, it only cost $3.5 million to build the stadium in 1971.

Maybe if Sam Boyd was closer to campus, it would be brought up to par with UNLV's other state-of-the-art athletic facilities, such as modern strength and conditioning and practice complexes for football.

But seven miles away, it's more like out of sight, out of mind, out of money. UNLV president Dr. Carol Harter indicated recently there will be no more frivolous spending within the athletic department.

While the desert landscaping at the major entrances to the stadium is inviting and the George Costanza parking spaces, the ones up close to the stadium where the luxury suite donors park their Range Rovers, have freshly painted lines, the east parking lots are still a mess.

Even the paved areas are littered with crates and scaffolding, and there are several trailers, without their tractors, parked inside the gate at the northeast corner. There are Supercross motorcycle schedules on the trailers but in that the race was May 7, let's hope those trucks weren't rentals.

With season tickets starting as low as $60, UNLV football is still a bargain. But if the road between Boulder Highway and the stadium gets any rougher, you'll need a lunar module to get there.

Unfortunately, Hamrick said he's not aware of any plan to pave the parking lots and access roads that would provide the stadium with a little more curb appeal.

"You know what would make the ride out there a little more comfortable?" he said. "Some wins."

He's right, of course. But with the Rebels picked for last place in the Mountain West, that's another project that will probably have to wait.