Rant

At what point, I want to know, did UNLV decide it was a college football powerhouse? What compelled this moderately sized university with no identifiable football tradition to start its 2004 season with games at 15th-ranked Tennessee and 22nd-ranked Wisconsin? Stupid. Sure, coach John Robinson has big-school cred, but he can't will his middling talent into a legitimate foe for the likes of Tennessee. This was painfully evident over the weekend when the Volunteers toyed with the Rebels, eventually winning 42-17 before a national television audience and an unfathomable 108,000 fans. This year's Rebel squad might very well be good, for its conference, but we may never know after their demoralizing 0-2 start. Thanks to this ill-advised scheduling move, the piddling local fan base also will be bummed out, making it unlikely that the Rebels will see more than 30,000 fans for any home game. UNLV ought to pick on somebody its own size or a little smaller.--Geoff Schumacher