Why UNLV won’t kick off this season in Minnesota

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, Aug. 31, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Before you criticize UNLV for scheduling an opening-night football opponent whose logo resembles that of a supermarket chain, consider that the ... uh ... um ... Hornets, of Sacramento State, played Colorado State of the Mountain West tough before losing 23-20 last year.

Also bear in mind this was the week UNLV originally was scheduled to play at Minnesota.

OK, now you can go back to criticizing UNLV for not renewing that series against Baylor from years back.

I’ve heard from several UNLV fans who aren’t happy with the choice of opening-night opponent. One guy left a voice mail saying that if the Rebels wanted to play a bigger patsy than Division I-AA Sac State they’d have to exhume Lee Oswald’s corpse.

But you can’t lay blame for this one on outgoing Athletic Director Mike Hamrick (for once) or anybody else within the department.

This was supposed to be the weekend the Rebels and Golden Gophers christened TCF Bank Stadium, Minnesota’s beautiful new 50,000-seat football palace. But that was before Floyd of Rosedale reared his snout.

Floyd of Rosedale is the pig that Minnesota won for beating Iowa in football in 1935. Floyd was the brother of BlueBoy from Will Rogers’ movie “State Fair.”

Bear with me on this one.

Interim Athletic Director Jerry Koloskie, who negotiated the home-and-home series between UNLV and Minnesota roughly five years ago, said he remembers getting a call that the Rebels and Gophers couldn’t play on the weekend of Sept. 5 because, “if memory serves, there was some other big event in the city that weekend.”

The big event was the Minnesota State Fair, one of the nation’s “largest and best-attended agricultural and entertainment events,” next to a Willie Nelson concert.

So the Gophers told the Rebels, “y’all come back now, ya’ hear.”

Or something like that.

Actually, after the home-and-home series was rescheduled, it will be Minnesota that comes here first, in 2012. The Rebels will go to the Twin Cities in 2013, unless Pat Boone and Ann-Margret plan on filming “State Fair III” that weekend.

So it’ll be another Mountain West team that forces the first Minnesota fumble in the new stadium. Air Force agreed to take UNLV’s place.

“We knew how significant it would be to have a respected opponent, not only on the playing field, but also in the integrity of the program,” Gophers Athletic Director Joel Maturi said at the time.

Read into those comments what you will, but don’t forget they were made in 2007. The Rebels weren’t exactly very respected or, for that matter, full of integrity a couple of years ago.

When the Minnesota game fell through, UNLV tried to schedule another game against somebody such as Utah State, probably because Florida wasn’t available (cough). But the Aggies make their schedule in advance, too. Koloskie said Sacramento State was looking to upgrade its schedule so it became a marriage of convenience, more or less.

I sort of compare it to Julia Roberts having too much to drink and bumping into Lyle Lovett just before last call.

But you just never know about these things. For every Lyle Lovett, there lurks an Appalachian State, waiting on bended knee.