LAS VEGAS >> These days the University of Nevada-Las Vegas football team is being held up as the poster child for the practice of patience among downtrodden mid-majors.
After three consecutive two-win seasons and a 6-32 mark under Bobby Hauck, the Rebels are 3-2 (1-0 in the Mountain West), hope is rising and folks here are daring to use the word “bowl” as something other than a punchline.
As UNLV bids for what would be its first four-game winning streak in 29 years, some will even tell you there is a lesson in all this for today’s opponent, Hawaii.
Winning, they counsel, takes time. And patience.
Unfortunately, those are two things UH has precious little of, at least not in the four-year timetable that it has taken Hauck to get the Rebels to this point.
These ’Bows are 0-5 (0-3 Mountain West) and they need a victory.
Fact is, they need one here and now at Sam Boyd Stadium in the eastern reaches of the desert today.
They need to crash the Rebels’ revival to begin one of their own.
UNLV has been able to exist for decades with an underperforming football team because it has had a marquee basketball program, complete with arena-filling fans, some well-heeled boosters and NCAA Tournament money, to help pay the bills.
That’s a luxury coach Norm Chow didn’t inherit at UH, where the necessity has been to win sooner rather than later and four-year plans are but a pipe dream. Just how much sooner we were reminded this week when athletic director Ben Jay sent out an urgent email to 85,000 sports supporters beseeching them for donations.
A sixth UH loss in succession — and 15th in 18 games over two seasons — is not likely to lure fans back to Aloha Stadium ticket windows. Inviting further comparisons with the 0-12 disaster of 1998 is unlikely to inspire benevolence with many checkbooks.
A couple of wins, strung together here and back at home in two weeks against Colorado State, however, would go a long way toward soothing the rising unrest of UH followers, buying Chow some time and paying a few bills around the athletic department.
And, really, would that be too much to ask?
Consider that 11 months ago — in the penultimate game of Chow’s rookie season — the ’Bows laid waste to largely the same UNLV team, 48-10, at Aloha Stadium. It is a victory that stands as the most impressive of Chow’s stay and one that was responsible for much of the hope UH carried into this season.
On closer examination, the Rebels have, to be sure made strides. But let’s also recognize that they have done it against Central Michigan, Western Illinois and New Mexico, too.
Surely the ’Bows are a cut above that crowd. Or, should be.
Win this week at season’s midpoint and the ‘Bows buy themselves a week to heal up and reenergize for the second half of the season.
Lose, and patience gets stretched even thinner as the opportunities lessen.
———
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
