Santoro: Pack, Rebels swap roles. Now, it’s UNLV with the swagger

Sports Fodder:

The UNLV Rebels will come to Mackay Stadium on Saturday to take on the Nevada Wolf Pack in an unfamiliar, certainly un-UNLV-like role. The Rebels will be the best football team on the field at kickoff, they will have a red Fremont Cannon on their sideline, and they will be the unquestioned favorite (9.5 points, according to the sports books). Talk about a corny Hollywood body-swap movie plot along the lines of Freaky Friday. The Rebels as the confident, cocky keepers of the cannon with the Wolf Pack playing the role of the downtrodden, ill-prepared, overwhelmed, bumbling underdog. It will be Supernatural Senseless Silly Saturday at Mackay this weekend. It just doesn’t feel right. This can’t be happening. The Wolf Pack as the underdog to the high-flying Rebels at Mackay Stadium? The University of Notta Lotta Victories strutting around Mackay like they own the place? When did UNLV start to care about football? When did the Pack start to care more about building a new arena for its men’s basketball team than it does about building a winning coaching staff and roster for its football team? Maybe the Pack and Rebels have indeed switched bodies.

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The Rebels will have four more victories than the Wolf Pack this season at kickoff on Saturday. That has only happened once before in this 54-year-old rivalry. The 1974 Rebels were 9-0 when they faced the 5-5 Wolf Pack and went home a 28-7 winner. This will also be the first time UNLV will be favored at Mackay Stadium since it was a 2-point favorite in 2005 (the Pack won, 22-14). This will also be the worst record (0-5) the Wolf Pack has ever taken into a game against the Rebels. The previous worst was 0-4 in 1999 (the Pack won, 26-12). The 2009 Pack was 0-3 and also beat the Rebels, 63-28. The only other times a winless Pack team (other than in a season opener) faced UNLV, it also won the Fremont Cannon. The 1997 and 2005 teams both were 0-1 and beat UNLV. So, yes, the Pack has UNLV right where it wants them this Saturday.

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Take the 9.5 points on Saturday. UNLV, after all, hasn’t beaten the Pack by more than nine points since 2004 (48-13). The final episode of Friends and Frasier were aired. Lance Armstrong won his sixth Tour de France in a row. The Boston Red Sox ended their 86-year-old World Series drought. Twitter wasn’t even invented yet, let alone renamed X. What do the Rebels know about being a 9.5-point favorite? Here’s betting that the Rebels, like Tom Hanks in Big, will revert back to being a little boy by the end of Saturday’s game. The Wolf Pack might not upset the Rebels, but they should cover that Freaky Friday point spread, reminding UNLV that it is still UNLV. This is just a hunch, but it seems like the Pack is ready to actually win a game. It has played fairly well the last three weeks in losses to Kansas, Texas State and Fresno State, three teams that are all better than UNLV. The Pack just needs a little push to get over the hump and end its 15-game, 13-month nightmare. UNLV, a home crowd at Mackay and a whole lot of disrespect from the Las Vegas oddsmakers can finally be that push the Pack has been looking for. Just watching the Rebels walk onto the field with their heads held high as big favorites and pulling a red cannon onto the Mackay turf should be all the push the Pack needs.

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This is the Wolf Pack’s bowl game. The whole season comes down to Saturday night. None of the other six remaining games on the Pack schedule will have as much meaning as this weekend’s game against UNLV. Wins over Hawaii and New Mexico? That would be nice, but the cannon will still be red. Beating Jay Norvell in Fort Collins, Colo.? Again, nice, but beating Jay Norvell doesn’t get you a cannon and state bragging rights. A win over UNLV might turn this entire Pack season around faster than boy Tom Hanks can turn into adult Tom Hanks. That’s how college football works. It’s not so much about the X’s and O’s as it is about teenage boys believing they can turn into grown men overnight. It happened in 2009, when an 0-3 Pack team whipped UNLV 63-28 and won eight in a row. It happened in 2011, when a 1-3 Pack team obliterated UNLV 37-0 and won five in a row. In even happened in 2017, when a 2-9 Pack team beat UNLV 23-16 in the season finale and started a stretch of 31 wins in 48 games. The 2009, 2011 and 2017 games, by the way, were all at Mackay Stadium, the place where UNLV dreams go to die. Sometimes a college football team, even one that hasn’t won a game in 13-plus months, simply needs a reason to believe. Beating UNLV has almost always served as the best reason for a Pack team to believe.

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We might, however, be witnessing the first stage of what Wolf Pack fans have feared for over five decades, that UNLV will finally realize it has more resources than its big brother up north, has the best city in America in which to recruit college athletes and will dominate this rivalry for the rest of time. The rest of time might have already started last year with UNLV’s 27-22 win over the Pack at Allegiant Stadium. And now UNLV is 4-1 and the Pack is 0-5. How can Reno compete with Las Vegas? Well, it can’t. Certainly not anymore in a college sports world where deep-pocketed boosters can simply go out and buy the best football roster in America. Who has deeper pockets than Las Vegas? Certainly not Reno. If the Rebels win on Saturday the next time the Pack sees the Fremont Cannon it might be covered in Las Vegas showroom red carpet, with neon on the barrel and pulled onto the field by four showgirls and guarded by a pair of white Siegfried and Roy tigers. College sports with its new everybody-gets-paid mentality has finally sold its soul to the Las Vegas mentality. This new era was made for the Rebels. You can now, after all, cheat right out in the open for everybody to see. Somewhere Jerry Tarkanian is smiling. It’s the Rebels’ world now and the rest of us just happen to live in the same state.

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UNLV, of course, is still not a very good football team. Even deep-pocketed boosters need a reason to part with their money. The Rebels have only started to dip their toe into the never-ending ocean of casino money available to them. It will, however, start to flow the Rebels’ way if this 4-1 start doesn’t prove to be just another Steve Wynn mirage. That’s why this game is just as important to UNLV as it is to the Pack. UNLV also started 4-1 last year but proceeded to lose six games in a row before beating the Pack in the final game of the year. This year, though, the Rebels have a new coach (Barry Odom), a new offense (the Go-Go Offense) and a new swagger. Yes, of course, they haven’t beaten anybody of note yet (Bryant, Vanderbilt, UTEP and Hawaii) and won’t even if they beat the Pack and Colorado State the next two weeks. But losing to the Wolf Pack is simply not an option for these new Rebels if they want to be taken seriously by the deep-pocketed booster. The Rebels absolutely have to get to a bowl game this year now that they’ve won four of their first five games. That goal should be realized no later than Week 9 with a win at New Mexico. It might take place next week at home against Colorado State. That’s what a real college football team would do. It would beat Nevada and Colorado State and secure a bowl berth and then focus on shocking the Mountain West by getting to the league title game. But, odds are, there is still a little mirage left in these Rebels. We’ll probably see that mirage fade in and out on Saturday at Mackay. Take the points.