Columnist Ron Kantowksi: Rebels don’t need to apologize

Ron Kantowksi

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 | 10:21 a.m.

Two 52-yard, fourth-quarter field goals by UNLV's Sergio Aguayo with a category 4 wind behind his back were football euthanasia at Sam Boyd Stadium Saturday afternoon. They put a terrible game out of its misery.

To paraphrase Oliver Barrett in "Love Story," what can you say about a game whose most exciting play was a disputed measurement for a first down? That was decided not by tackle-shedding touchdown runs or pinpoint forward passes but by a coach's decision to "take the wind" in the fourth quarter? That featured a grand total of 381 combined yards, five intercepted passes and two lost fumbles? That saw the team that led until the final nine seconds go 0-for-15 on third-down conversions?

UNLV's 13-10 victory over San Diego State wasn't exactly the Mona Lisa. It was more like Dogs Playing Poker. On felt.

Still, winning football games, even lousy ones, means never having to say you're sorry, and Rebels coach Mike Sanford was not about to apologize for winning a game so unimpressively.

"This is a good thing, to be happy and to be smiling in the home locker room," he said in a tone that -- surprise -- sounded as if he really meant it.

But maybe he's right. No matter how you sliced it and diced it (or tried to cover it up), that the 2-4 Rebels were finally able to eke out a close win also means they still have a chance to eke out something of a successful season in Sanford's first one on the job.

Going into the game, and as late as midway through the fourth quarter Saturday, that really didn't seem possible.

Inheriting a team that went 2-9 in 2004, Sanford probably deserves a little Free Parking. But is this year too soon to expect him to put a couple of houses on Marvin Gardens?

Guys with 2-4 records in their first year on the job -- and guys who hired them -- would probably say yes. But the back pages of the nation's media guides suggest otherwise.

You can start pretty close to home at a place Sanford knows well. He was part of Urban Meyer's staff at Utah that inherited a 5-6 team from Ron McBride in 2002 and turned it into a 10-2 winner in 2003. The next year, the Utes went 12-0 and feasted on Pitt burgers in the Fiesta Bowl.

The turnaround Joe Glenn has initiated in Wyoming is almost as impressive, especially considering the Cowboys' lack of football resources -- when was the last time Charles Kuralt layed over in scenic Laramie, for instance? Yet just one season after the Pokes struggled to a 2-10 mark under Vic Koenning, Glenn doubled their win total. Then last year, his second on the job, Glenn directed Wyoming to a 7-5 record and a victory over UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Think Rebels fans would settle for 7-5 and a bowl game win over a Pac-10 heavyweight right about now?

And what about the job Mike Price is doing at UTEP? In 2003, the under-Miners were 2-11 under Gary Nord before Price convinced the football search committee that his dalliances with dancing girls were a thing of the past. In one short 8-4 season, he became the biggest thing to hit the west Texas town of El Paso since Marty Robbins' six-string guitar.

So much for the notion of new coaches needing five years to turn around a program.

Don't forget it only took NASA 11 years to put a man on the moon. Maybe the Rebels should have hired Buzz Aldrin as offensive coordinator.

While there are cases of coaches needing time to get the job done, the Quick Fix is in in college football. But unless the Rebels can find some offense during the second half of the season -- Sanford seemed to lose confidence in quarterback Jarrod Jackson during the second half Saturday, his conservative play-calling reducing the supposedly wide-open spread offense into three yards and a cloud of poly-turf pebbles -- the fix might be a little more methodical here.

"What did we do, re-hire (Robinson)?" bellowed a fed-up fan when the Rebels ran Erick Jackson into the middle of the line on 2nd-and-21 early in the fourth quarter.

But when the UNLV defense, which limited SDSU's harebrained offensive scheme to just 140 yards, continued turning the ball back to the offense to where Aguayo could reach the goalposts, Sanford looked like a genius. Or at least somebody who appeared to know what he was doing.

Maybe it wasn't two houses on Marvin Gardens. But at least the Rebels passed go and collected $200 worth of momentum for next week's game at Air Force.