King relives UNLV’s greatest win

Saturday, Oct. 21, 2006 | 8:05 a.m.

The architect of the greatest victory in UNLV football history was about to dive into a plate of chicken and rice in a booth at P.F. Chang's China Bistro at The District in Henderson on Wednesday afternoon, although nobody seemed to recognize Sam King.

Twenty-five years ago, that wouldn't have been possible, and not just because that was before they started putting P.F. Chang's on every other street corner.

No, the reason that couldn't have happened 25 years ago is that in 1981, Sam King couldn't go anywhere in this town without being recognized after guiding the Rebels to a 45-41 come-from-behind victory against undefeated and eighth-ranked Brigham Young in Provo, Utah.

At the time, BYU had won 17 games in a row, the nation's longest winning streak.

BYU was led by a cocky quarterback named Jim McMahon, although McMahon didn't play against the Rebels, having suffered a knee injury against Colorado two weeks earlier.

His replacement? Some rube named Steve Young, who completed 21 of 40 passes for 269 yards and a couple of touchdowns.

King is probably the least known of the five quarterbacks who were part of that game. His backups were Randall Cunningham and Kenny Mayne, the ESPN anchor who would much, much later go on to dance up a storm on national TV or, more accurately, cause one: His two left feet had the "Dancing With the Stars" panel dialing the emergency phone number to Arthur Murray's last year.

"Kenny was always saying something or doing something to bust you up," King recalled.

But when it came to busting up a defense, King was the man. Against BYU, he completed 31 of 57 passes for 473 yards. The Rebels trailed 41-24 late in the third quarter, but were just holding out for a King's ransom. Wide receiver Jim Sandusky would serve as the bag man.

King passed 55 yards to Sandusky, setting up a touchdown that made it 41-31.

King passed 19 yards to Sandusky, setting up a touchdown that made it 41-38.

Then, finally, with time running out, King passed 20 yards to Sandusky in the corner of the end zone that made it 45-41, Rebels.

King was blasted by a blitzing linebacker as he let go of his last pass to Sandusky that day. But as he lay on the ground, he sensed from the mishmash of legs and arms through his face mask that his favorite receiver, who would go on to stardom in the Canadian Football League, had somehow run under the ball.

Then the 200 or so Rebel fans who were sitting in the opposite corner of the end zone began whooping it up, as if they had just lined up three 7's on an airport slot machine. And the crowd of 39,852, minus those 200 or so, got so quiet you could hear the triangle player from the Tabernacle Choir warming up in Salt Lake City.

"That stadium just went totally quiet," King said.

There were only 19 seconds remaining.

Put that in your knee brace and smoke it, Mr. McMahon.

McMahon and King were chosen to quarterback the West team in the Hula Bowl that year. While the former shuffled into the Super Bowl with the vaunted Chicago Bears a couple of years later, an undetected separated shoulder (that he believes occurred in the second quarter of the BYU game) and a heart murmur that was detected precluded King from catching on with the USFL's Arizona Wranglers and New Orleans Breakers.

But don't feel too badly for him. He owns a State Farm Insurance business in Henderson, has a football-playing son at New Mexico State and a scrapbook of fond memories of that 1981 season that, unlike the newsprint under the cellophane, simply will not fade.

Today, the Rebels will head into Provo as four-touchdown underdogs to unranked BYU. While it's hard to imagine UNLV beating any Cougars team, much less an undefeated one led by Jim McMahon and Steve Young, that's just what happened. You can look it up.

"Coming back the way we did, being down to the eighth-ranked team on the road that was pretty powerful. That's the kind of thing that can affect you for life," King said.

Then the architect of the greatest victory in UNLV's football history smiled, perhaps recalling a time and place that today seem so very, very far away.