New coach will make debut on the road

Steve Guiremand

Wednesday, March 9, 2005 | 9:14 a.m.

Sept. 3 -- at New Mexico

Sept. 10 -- Idaho

Sept. 17 -- at Nevada-Reno

Sept. 24 -- at Utah State

Oct. 1 -- at Wyoming

Oct. 8 -- San Diego State

Oct. 15 -- at Air Force

Oct. 22 -- Utah

Oct. 29 -- Bye

Nov. 5 -- BYU

Nov. 12 -- at TCU

Nov. 19 -- Colorado State

So much for giving the new guy a break.

The Mountain West Conference finally got around to releasing its 2005 football schedule Tuesday and it certainly didn't do any favors for first-year UNLV head coach Mike Sanford.

Sanford will make his college head coaching debut not against Idaho at home on Sept. 10, as the school had hoped, but instead on the road a week earlier against one of the preseason conference favorites, New Mexico.

The Lobos finished last season second in the Mountain West Conference, going 7-4 in the regular season before losing to Navy, 34-19, in the Emerald Bowl.

New Mexico beat UNLV 24-20 last year in Las Vegas to begin a five-game win streak.

It's only the second time in school history that the Rebels have opened their season with a conference game. The other year was in 1984 in the old Pacific Coast Athletic Association against San Jose State.

That's not all. Four of the Rebels' first five games are on the road and five of the first seven.

The good news? The Rebels shouldn't have any cold-weather road games on the schedule. And if UNLV can survive until the final month of the season, three of the final four games are at Sam Boyd Stadium, including back-to-back contests against defending Mountain West champ Utah and, after a bye week, old rival BYU.

"That's a plus," Sanford said.

As for opening the season with a conference game on the road?

"The way I look at it, if you look over the last three years only one team in our conference has been to a bowl game all three of those years and that's New Mexico," Sanford said. "So it's definitely going to be a challenge to start the season at their place."

UNLV officials had talked with the Mountain West Conference about eliminating the bye week so the school wouldn't have to start the season with a conference game. But the conference stuck with its original draft in the end.

"There's some things you can control and there are some things you can't control," Sanford said. "We tried to communicate with the conference our concerns. But the conference made its decision and you just go with it."

And in the future, maybe the Rebels might want to start scheduling their nonconference games a week or two earlier.