A Turd in the Hawaii Punch Bowl

Nothing was gonna get in my way of watchin’ Nevada play the SMU on Christmas Eve. Not the smell of gingerbread wafting from next door…not the sound of carolers in the front yard…not even the beginning of “A Christmas Story” marathon…nothing was gonna get in the way of this game. So I settled in front of my television with 24 of my closest friends and waited for kickoff. Too bad there wasn’t a power outage or a meteor strike because the ensuing three hours were more painful than any Barry Manilow concert could ever be.

What a fustication. What an embarrassment. 45-10…WTF is up with that? From the start Nevada looked listless. It was a flashback to the old “One Yard and a Cloud of Dust” offense that Chris Ault so readily rolls out at Bowl time. SHEESH!

The game was such a blowout that I started in with drinking games. Nevada three and out? Drink. SMU touchdown? Consumo. Nevada turnover? Pound one. And on…and on…and on. By the time the fourth quarter had started, the beer was all gone and I had to switch to my celebratory, high falutin’ tequila that brother Sal brought back from Mexico. YIKES!

My head was buzzing like a hive of angry bees by the time the game was over. Questions punctuated with alcohol burps. How could this happen? Burp. WTF was the coaching staff thinking? Burp. How can a team not be geared up for a bowl game in friggin’ Hawaii? BURPFFFT. Aye caramba!

The whole thing left me with a headache and a spastic colon for the next few days. But between throbs and burbles, one question kept popping up…WTH do we do now? Two straight years the Wolf Pack has gone to a bowl game only to be beaten like a rented mule. It’s starting to border on the absurd.

Last week the RGJ asked the question: “What would it take for Nevada to be like Boise State in football? My answer…nothing. For the last decade or so, Boise State has been a monster of a program. They play the big boys whenever they can and usually end up beating them. They play in big-time bowl games against top-notch opponents. Nevada? We play schools like Grambling State and the University of Northeastern Canada and we squeak by. Play a big school like Notre dame or Missouri? We get stomped like Michael Flately’s dance floor.

No, Nevada’s glory days are long gone and it doesn’t look like they’re gonna get better anytime soon. But there is good news Wolf Pack fans…if you have the creativity, there is no end to the drinking games you could play while Nevada is on the field. Just be careful. That’s a lot of alcohol for a three hour game. True dat.

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Losing to Ron Mexico State

Nothin’ puts a skidmark on a party quicker than an “L”. All night Friday we were dipping nachos of hope into the salsa of naïveté. Talkin’ trash. Downin’ shots of hubris with chasers of audacity. Pimped out in our silver and blue, we thought we would win. We were wrong.


But after a few days of denial, anger, bargaining, depression then, finally, acceptance, we had an epiphany. Remember when Wolf Pack basketball sucked? Remember when making the conference tournament was a big deal? We’ve come a long way from those days baby. Now, when we don’t make the Big Dance, it hurts. It hurts more than we could have ever imagined and that’s good. We’re not wannabe’s anymore. We’re a full-fledged basketball school. That’s why missing the tourney makes us wanna sneeze in agony and blow the snot of remorse into the hankie of sorrow.


Got that “Little General?” Nevada is no longer a football school. Posting a mediocre record and losing a “Who Cares” bowl to the East Westchester Northstars (champions of the Southern Conference) just doesn’t cut it anymore. We’re all about the hoops now, baby. We wanna dance with the stars. Alas, not this year.


We did think we’d get into the N.I.T (Not Invited to the Tournament). Nope. Fate is cruel to hoops schools. No…we got the invite to the C.B.I. (Coulda Been In) Tournament. “Houston…Hello!” That’s cool with us. ‘Cause we remember when…and it ain’t gonna be like that no mo’. Nevada is all about the hoops now.


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Bowling For Dollars

In the heady days of yester-yore, Nevada football was king. Saturday afternoons filled with beer and girls and W’s. Late autumn cornucopias filled with conference championships, playoff intensity and more beer. The “Biggest Little City” boasted the bestest little football team in the country and kicked some 1-AA buttocks.





Then the “Little General” got a swollen ego and decided to play with the big boys. Gone were the championships, gone were the playoffs, gone were the W’s…replaced only by a budget that resembles the GDP of a medium-sized South American country and bottom-of-the-barrel bowl games. The Las Vegas Bowl? The Hawaii Bowl? The MPC Bowl? The New Mexico Bowl? SHEESH!





With all that money spent improving athletic facilities, you’d think the Wolf Pack could replicate the successes of rivals like Fresno State, Hawaii and Boise State. Not so. While the big three of the WACked Conference regularly party at upper-tier bowls, Nevada's Wolf Pack brings new meaning to the term "mediocrity." We'd rather be big fishes in a small pond rather than sleeping with the fishes in the big one.





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