UNLV Sand Burners? Uh, no thanks

Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

UNLV mascot Hey Reb started off as a Confederate wolf mascot, evolved and became his big-headed, moustached self.

The arena darkens, the fireworks pop and the UNLV band begins playing the school’s fight song.

And then Dick Calvert’s booming voice fills the Thomas & Mack Center with his familiar “And now ... YOUR Runnin’ Sand Burners.”

Doesn’t have quite the same cachet as Runnin’ Rebels, does it?

According to a section of UNLV’s Web site celebrating the school’s 50th anniversary, the Rebels in 1971 came close to becoming the UNLV Sand Burners. Or the A-Bombs.

The university held a special-initiative election that year in which the student body was given the option of dumping “Rebels” as the school’s nickname in favor of such alternatives as Sand Burners, Big Horn Rams, Nuggets and A-Bombs.

Apparently, Sand Burners was a nod to the atomic bomb testing of the 1950s that turned the Southern Nevada desert sand into something resembling glass.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the student body voted down Sand Burners and opted to retain the Rebels nickname. Five years later, however, it voted to replace the school’s Confederate wolf mascot with “a human Revolutionary War soldier, which eventually evolve(d) into a more geographically appropriate pioneer figure” now known as Hey Reb.