Columnist Ron Kantowski: UNLV’s football woes: Apathy is the No. 1 problem for Sanford

Friday, Oct. 7, 2005 | 7:22 a.m.

Forget about winning records and bowl berths and furniture ads on local TV. While attaining those usually is a barometer that a new football coach and his program are headed in the right direction, Mike Sanford needs to have a more modest goal at UNLV.

If you can't get a hometown bartender to even put the Rebels' game on TV, UNLV's 1-4 record and leaky secondary might be the least of Sanford's concerns.

Apathy in the program seems to be growing. And it might take more than an enthusiastic coach with an interesting offense to cure it.

Nothing against Laramie in early October, when the foliage on the cow pies usually changes color, but I decided to bypass last weekend's trip to Dick Cheney's backyard, thinking it might be enlightening to check out a sports bar and see what Rebels fans were making of Sanford's spread offense and the Rebels' inability to defend the forward pass.

Bad idea. There are 52 TV sets (that includes three in the men's restroom and one in the women's) at the Buffalo Wild Wings at the Galleria Mall in Henderson, and at 12:05 p.m. Saturday, roughly five minutes after kickoff, not-a-one of them was tuned to the UNLV-Wyoming game.

Even more alarming is that not-a-one of the patrons was asking the barkeep to switch channels from Michigan-Michigan State or Florida-Alabama or even Missouri-Texas, for cryin' out loud.

The Longhorns were beating the snot out of Mizzou on a drive-in-movie-sized screen directly in front of me and Texas was so deep into its roster that guys without names on their jerseys were running for touchdowns. So I asked the bartender if she wouldn't mind switching to the Rebels' game.

No, she said. Somebody's watching the Texas game.

I wanted to tell her that with the score seven-to-the-third-power to 3 that the Eyes of Texas -- much less the ones in the bar -- were not glued to the Longhorn game anymore. But I was stunned that I even had to ask her to change channels in the first place.

Finally, Wisconsin put Indiana out of its misery, and the bartender grabbed a remote for a set in a darkened corner of the bar and punched up the UNLV game. By then, the Rebels already were down a couple of touchdowns.

That might explain a lot of the indifference. Still, it has been 97 years since the Cubs last won the World Series, and I never recall having to ask a bartender on Rush Street to switch to WGN during baseball season.

Closer to home, if there's a more inept Mountain West football program than UNLV's, it's the one at San Diego State, Saturday's Rebels opponent. Yet 41,680 surfer dudes showed up at Qualcomm Stadium last Saturday might to watch the Aztecs upset BYU.

Yeah, San Diego has a bigger fan base from which to draw. It also has the Chargers and the Padres and Shamu. And all those sandy beaches. Like here, there's a lot of competition for the sports dollar in San Diego, yet the Aztecs somehow manage to earn their share.

So until Sanford's spread offense kicks into gear, the Rebels might have to depend on their marketing department to build a following. Unfortunately, like the team itself, the promotional staff still seems to be in the beta phase of trying to figure it all out.

If I were Perk Weisenburger, the former Illinois State athletic director whose (too) many responsibilities at UNLV include overseeing the marketing department (as well as ticketing, sports information/media relations and broadcasting), I'd call Don Logan over at the 51s office. Logan and his staff could sell bikini wax to an Arctic penguin. Bobbleheads before day games, fireworks after night games.

It doesn't have to be as complicated as quantum physics. Or even the West Coast offense.