"The Rebels' fade from the national scene these past dozen years has taken place concurrently with tremendous demographic change in the Valley, with much of the Rebels' longtime fan base moving from more central locations—Paradise, Winchester, Spring Valley—to Henderson and Summerlin. Those who moved to the Valley's far northwest suddenly found themselves with a very convincing case not to go to the Rebels' games. The case went something like this: 'It's 6:30 p.m. Should I take Summerlin Parkway to the 95 to the 15 to Tropicana? Or not.' To fans in, say, LA, who spent years getting from Glendale to Inglewood to watch the Lakers, this doesn't sound like much of an excuse. But combine lousy commutes with the incredible shrinking national basketball powerhouse, and certain fans begin to ask—understandably, I suppose—why they should bother. Meanwhile, as old-time fans moved to the outskirts, the city's population swelled with people who had their own loyalties to their own teams in their own towns. They were willing to become Rebel fans, just as the old-timers were willing to remain Rebel fans. But first the Rebels had to give them a reason."
Time ticking down, 18,032 anxious eyes in the Thomas and Mack Center glued to him, the hoopster decides it's Kobe Bryant (read: ball hog) time. On successive possessions, he hits a layup, swishes a free throw and rainbows a three-pointer through the twine, the last shot causing fans to erupt in a giddy scrum.
He's got the ball again with 10 seconds left on the clock. Fans play timekeeper.
"Eight, seven, six ..."
Nearing half court, he accelerates.
"... five ..."
He picks up his dribble and, in mid-run, leaps, bringing the basketball into his chest, and then heaving it.
"Four ..."
The ball hits the backboard.
"Three ..."
And drops.
"Two ..."
Through the net.
Pandemonium. Probably the loudest it's been all night. And it's only halftime.
The man on the court during the Rebels January 17 game against Colorado State wasn't a Rebel player. He was a fan—smallish, middle-aged with the salt-and-pepper hair and marathoner's build. Picked from the crowd, he had 30 seconds to make a layup, free throw, three-pointer and half-court shot to win a new Saturn car for a year. His feat wasn't quite as newsworthy as Kobe's vaunted 81 points, Wilt Chamberlain's indomitable 100, or Michael Jordan's between-the-legs-dribbling, Larry Bird-flummoxing, Boston Garden-silencing 63, but it was thrilling.
Thrilling for a game that was only mildly exciting—the Rebels pounded out a 68-57 victory. Thrilling in the way the Rebels, once college hoops' most feared program, used to be—capable of blowing out the best teams (Hey Arkansas, remember in 1991 when the Rebels were ranked No. 1 and you were No. 2 and they spanked that ass?). Official attendance for this game was 9,016, which is less than half of the stadium's 19,000-seat capacity, below the 10,131 attendance average through the first 12 home games and smaller than the crowd that filled the arena to see a big-screen simulcast—simulcast!—of the Rebels 103-73 national title-game thrashing of Duke in 1990. 1990.
The early '90s, those were the years. I left the T&M after the Rebels demolition of Duke happier than a pimp on Fremont Street, sure I'd witnessed the birth of a basketball dynasty. UNLV romped through the regular season undefeated and made it to its second consecutive Final Four. Off the strength of those two years, UNLV became one of the nation's most popular teams. Everybody and their mamma wanted to play here. Jason Kidd, who'd go on to become a smaller, lighter-skinned version of Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Speedy point guard Shon Tarver. The lanky but prolific O'Bannon brothers (Charles and Ed). The trio chose UCLA, leading the Bruins to the 1994 national title. If such blue-chip talent came Vegas way, UNLV might've won two or three national championships.
We know how that pipe dream turned out: players photographed in a hot tub with convicted sports fixer Richard Perry, Final Four loss to Duke, coach Jerry Tarkanian's resignation, loss of scholarships and television exposure, a succession of talented coaches (Rollie Massimino won the 1985 national title at Villanova) that haven't restored the glory. Once the hottest ticket in town, people now give away Rebel tickets. The football program has done even worse. Only 16,543 showed up for the November 19 season finale, a 31-27 loss to Colorado State—capacity is 40,000.
Q&A with UNLV Athletic Director Mike Hamrick |
No, but everywhere I've been, if you don't win, fans don't come. If UNLV athletics is successful, we will fill our football stadium and we will fill the Thomas & Mack. People in Las Vegas have a lot of options to spend their money. We were 2-9 in football and got 20,000 to 22,000 people in the stadium. Just imagine if we were 9-2. There are a lot of people from the Midwest, from all over really, that love college athletics.
A combination of both. People ask me, "How do you put people in your stadium?" I tell them there's three ways: W.I.N. Where do you know that people support teams that don't win?
You'll have a certain amount of people who will come just to see those teams. But you have to win. Wisconsin is an example. In the 1970s and 1980s, they didn't win; they got 30,000 people at a game. Barry Alvarez came and they started winning. Now they get 80,000. Northwestern, too. At one time you could fire a cannon in that stadium and not hit anybody. Now the stadium is full.
We do a lot of promotional things and marketing things. I'm big at getting our athletes out in the community not only to help the community but to help develop our student-athletes. Our program is constantly under a microscope because you're judged on last night's performance. But our program is clean, we've significantly increased graduation rates and our student-athletes, knock on wood—when's the last time you've read in the paper that a student-athlete has embarrassed the university? It's been awhile.
Last year, we won six Mountain West Conference championships, 11 of our teams were in NCAA or NIT postseason tournaments. We fund those programs, but in order to fund those programs the way they need to be funded, the money has to come from the main two. Winning would help. When we have 40,000 people in that football stadium paying $25 a ticket, or we have 15,000 or 16,000 in this arena (Thomas & Mack) paying $25 a ticket, that makes it better for golf, baseball, softball, tennis, all those other sports that rely on that revenue to operate. We get very little money from the university and very little state money to run our program.
When I arrived here 2 1/2 years ago, we were facing a $2.1 million or $2.2 million deficit. At this point, we have paid back some of that deficit. We are paying it back on an annual basis and we have well over $1 million in reserves, so we are healthy financially. We are raising significantly more dollars with this Rebel Athletic Fund, our annual fundraiser. There was really no centralized fundraising for athletics. There are components of the major [$500 million capital campaign] that people can donate to help athletics.
If we had losing programs, it wouldn't help. I'm a college sports fan and there are lots of people like that—not to be negative toward pro sports because I'm going to be in front of the television watching the Super Bowl just like you. But am I going to pay $100 or $125 to come watch a guy making $50 million a year play hard for eight minutes? Probably not. But it can work. Let me give you an example. Memphis. There's the University of Memphis [men's hoops team], who is winning, selling out their arena, and the [NBA's] Memphis Grizzlies, who play in the same building, have great crowds, so they can coexist. I would welcome a professional sports franchise, preferably baseball.
In general, the president is critical to athletics. If the president doesn't want to have a good athletic program, you're not going to have one. In my 2 1/2 years here, Dr. Harter was very good to athletics. |
Dwindling support for UNLV's big-ticket sports—football and men's basketball—has coincided with the Valley's increasing import. The Valley continues to amass the cultural offerings that define the world's great cities—hot clubs, haute nightlife, snooty restaurants, livable communities, huge public parks, highbrow entertainment and so on. On the academic side, UNLV is trudging toward respectability (top-100 law school, world-class hotel administration program, halfway through a $500 million fundraising push, the Midtown renaissance project).
Then there's Rebel athletics. (It isn't all bad: successful golf teams, particularly the men's —top 10 in three polls in 2005); consecutive Mountain West Conference championships and NCAA postseason appearances for the women's soccer team; men's and women's swim teams swept a handful of competitions last season; men's and women's tennis had winning records last year, 16-8 and 14-9, respectively; Christine Spence made the national championships in the 400-meter hurdles and high jump; men's baseball has made consecutive trips to the NCAA Regionals).
But numbers underscore the problem: Since 1999, hoops game attendance has gone up and down, mostly down. Fan attendance dropped from 1999 to 2001—11,829, 11,029 and 10,511, respectively. Attendance surged in 2002 to 11,764, but has fallen since—11,598 and 11,384 last year. Don't' read too much into the season-high 13,365 fans that showed up for Saturday night's win over New Mexico State: It was "Pack the Mack Night" and tickets were discounted from $12 to $5.
Football also struggles to pack them in. After a steep rise in attendance—from 20,698 to 24,503 to 27,582 from 2000 to 2002—came precipitous drops from 2003 to 2005: 25,805 to 21,870 to 19,914 last year.
In a city that lives by stats—consider the considerable hubbub over empty balcony and floor seats at Avenue Q—these numbers might be cause for alarm. Here's another stat for your book: Rebel paraphernalia sales topped $1 million during the early '90s, but have averaged about one-tenth of that since.
Peter Roby says there's no need to hit the panic button, that these are down times and not doom times for UNLV. Roby directs Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, which works to increase awareness of sport and its relation to society. He sees the thousands of people moving here each as a potential fan base. Sure, they may have allegiances to their alma maters or the universities in their hometowns, but they're in Vegas now. Among them are bound to be families who want affordable, family-friendly entertainment, "something that is fun, wholesome and inspirational."
Not necessarily the type of entertainment Vegas traffics in. Roby begins with a history lesson: "Intercollegiate athletics was meant as a place for student-athletes to ply their trade, to improve their skills and to entertain students, programs weren't built to compete with other entertainment options, that thinking has to change."
We'll wait on that to happen.
Fact is, Vegas loves a winner and the football and men's basketball programs—which are often inextricably tied to campus and community pride—aren't winning. If they don't win, people won't come.
"The questions you need to really ask are, who is the consumer and who do you want at the games?" Roby says. "We must get away from the idea that we are around for purely entertainment. UNLV shouldn't feel the need to have to compete with the casinos, gambling and shows in town. We've evolved into thinking that college athletics is in trouble because of all the things it has to do to compete with the entertainment. We must stop seeing athletics as being a separate entity from the university. What can end up happening, as happened at UNLV, is that people bend the rules to succeed. People might have to temper expectations around UNLV athletics with regard to how much the department is going to make a splash nationally."
Temper expectations? Okay.
Maybe it's wise to not view Rebel sports as entertainment. Wise, but hardly practical. If the choice becomes A) Rebel game B) Jerry Seinfeld or C) Something else, "C" will probably win if the Rebels aren't lighting it up. Nineteen-thousand people aren't going to Pack the Mack to see a mediocre team. As the Valley grows, so do the options—movies, bowling, rock climbing, Laser Tag, fishing at Lake Mead, hiking Red Rock Canyon, visiting an art gallery.
"There was a time when UNLV had it rolling in basketball and all the high rollers went to the games," Roby says. "Those days are over. Now it's been a challenge to maintain relevancy," Roby says. "There is something to be said for putting competitive teams on the field, not from the standpoint of competing against the MGM Grand or Venetian, but for putting a good product out there. Ultimately, it's a matter of, what is your expectation for college sports? If it's to bring Mom and Dad to the game so they can enjoy it, then you don't have to win national championships, you don't have to go 18-1. You can go 10-8 and be competitive. If your university has other things to offer aside from basketball, you will always get your share of good players."
Had UNLV been contending all these years, fan support would be a nonissue. Lawrence, Kansas, is home to the University of Kansas and the mighty Jayhawk basketball team. Only they're not so mighty this year. Unranked for the first time in memory, one of the winningest college basketball programs in history is struggling through an injury-filled season. The losing has unnerved some fans.
"Morale is down, but attendance has not been affected yet. We still have sellouts," says Ryan Colaianni, who wrote a story in the Daily Kansan about coach Bill Self's concern about fans' confidence in the team. "People are posting things on message boards and they are talking [the losing], but it's only a small percent of fans. If they don't make the NCAA tournament, I see no way that Self is fired. This is a very young team. The student body is simply frustrated and in shock. We had a seven-game winning streak and it seemed like the team was on the way."
All programs have down years. Kansas' happen to date to 30 years: "There was a time in the '70s, until Larry Brown came on, where there were mediocre seasons back to back to back and attendance was down. With the type of history of Kansas basketball, even if we had bad years again, attendance wouldn't go down. [Despite the struggles] demand for season tickets are at an all-time high."
Las Vegas Sun sports columnist Ron Kantowski says Vegas' culture is partly to blame: "My take is that this is a jump-on-the bandwagon type of town. I was at the game Saturday night [against New Mexico, UNLV won 67-56] and there was great atmosphere and great enthusiasm. Of course, they had to discount some tickets to fill the nosebleed section, but it was fun. I think it will take one really nice year to get people behind basketball. The same with football, but they'll have to follow that success with success."
Why haven't the Rebels been able to do that? They've had proven coaches, Massimino in basketball and John Robinson in football?
"This is a town that reacts to names on the marquee, so that generated interest," Kantowski says. "The perception is that those guys were probably on their way down in their careers and that this was a step back for them. It's the plight of the mid-major conferences, that you get these proven guys who are generally a couple seasons away from the golf course. But UNLV has tried both, the hotshot assistant (Bill Bayno) and the guy who has won (Massimino). There is no easy fix. Until there is success that continues over a period of time, support will be lukewarm. We're only talking about football and basketball because they are the two things that you have to have to be viewed as successful. Very few schools are both a football school and basketball school anymore. Maybe you have to focus on one thing. Basketball may be it. Football, some people think that it will never happen for the Rebels."
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Joe Hawk argues that the town's overall interest in sports is atrophying because of—what else?—all the entertainment options.
"Look at the 51s," he says, referring to the Triple A baseball team.
Some fans will support Rebel football and basketball through thick and thin, he says, but if the football and basketball teams continue to lose, they'll become increasingly unable to land the recruit that can turn a program around.
"The last time UNLV was relevant in hoops in 1992, kids that were recruitable then were 2 and 3 years old," Hawk says. "UNLV is a laughingstock, especially up north. Football has never really had it. You have to go back to the Tony Knapp era. Reno is doing well in football and basketball. They're in the top 25 in hoops. Reno got a star player out of Ely that turned things around, but Rebel hoops hasn't gotten that one player. We had Marcus Banks a few years ago, but that's it. And the Reno community cares more about football, it's a tremendous source of pride. Down here, football is only played to get to basketball season. Coach Robinson told me once that it was hard to sell people on UNLV football and hoops. So many people are down on it. But I have a philosophy: I don't care whether they win or lose as long as they give me a good lead."
The man responsible for those boom times in Rebel basketball, Jerry Tarkanian, says it's only a matter of time before UNLV gets back on track. Tarkanian took the Rebels to three Final Fours and won the 1990 national title. Forced out over squabbles with then-UNLV president Robert Maxson, he coached, then retired from Fresno State University. The droopy-eyed, towel-munching coach became as much an icon as his basketball team, which popularized aggressive, take-no-prisoners, man-to-man defense and adopted a Showtime L.A. Lakers, run-you-into-the-gun style of fast-break hoops. Tark the Shark, as he was known, says UNLV has the facilities and population base to return to the big time.
"When we were coaching, it was Sin City. There was always great local support, but people didn't think much of the town," he says.
The Rebels will always get some support because of hometown pride, Tark says. The key to getting the fans to return in droves is winning.
"When you win and you're on TV," he says, "people turn on the tube and people watch."
And when you don't, they stay away and do something else.