LAS VEGAS -- UNLV's football team has made some grand strides toward respectability already this season under new coach John Robinson. Yes, that's THE John Robinson, the one who coached Southern Cal's Tailback U. twice, and the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL.
The University of Utah's football team begins its Mountain West Conference era Saturday at 8 p.m. MDT at UNLV. It's the MWC opener for Robinson and UNLV, too.The Vegas school is paying Robinson, 64, some $350,000 a year, three times what it paid previous coach Jeff Horton, to resurrect a program that had lost 16 straight games and hadn't won on the road since 1994.
To make Robinson more comfortable, they're overhauling Sam Boyd Stadium to make it 40,000 seats with a grass field and three-tier skybox/pressbox tower. Most of the work is finished, but for last week's home opener, there was no electricity for visiting-coaches' headphones and no light or for the pressbox.
Robinson's Rebel career started with a Texas Two-Step, two wins in games in Texas. First was 26-3 victory at North Texas -- home of the Sinbad movie "Necessary Roughness." They followed with a 27-24 win on a last-second 100-yard fumble recovery return for score at Baylor. Outside linebacker Tyler Brickell stripped the ball and cornerback Kevin Thomas took it end zone to end zone for the shocking win.
(It was only the third time in NCAA history that there's been a 100-yard fumble return because fumble advancement wasn't allowed until 1992. It was the second involving UNLV in four games. Rice did it Nov. 14 against the Rebels, who lost 38-16.)
The Rebs have been a Texas Two-Step of their own. They've been two different teams. In the wins, they were conservative and played within themselves.
When they had their home opener in the new stadium with the new coach and their biggest crowd in years (26,167) last Saturday against Iowa State, they let out a Rebel yell, got away from conservatism and got more flustered as the Cyclones rambled on. Iowa State shut out the Rebs 24-0 to ruin the home festivities.
About 20,000 are expected Saturday, Utah fans having bought more than 1,000 tickets.
After the loss, Robinson said UNLV must get back to its previous ways. "As coaches, you get seduced by the first two games about what you could do, and you didn't do anything beyond the (team's) stress level," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "This game, we got away from that a little bit."
In the two Texas games, they ran 82 total times and quarterback Jason Vaughan threw 46 total passes, most on the short side. At home, they passed 23 times, ran 22, and tried some long-distance throws. Vaughan, a junior college transfer, had shown growing maturity in the conservative games but admitted he pressed more as UNLV got further behind. Robinson said, "A quarterback has to stay in the context of what he can do."
UNLV's consistency has been an inability to stop runners. It gave up 100-plus yards to two Texas runners and 208 to Iowa State's Darren Davis. Next up: Utah's Mike Anderson, the MWC leader averaging 102.5 a game, and Omar Bacon, averaging 34.5.