Nonrevenue programs at UNLV need to get creative

UNLV opens its football season tonight against a bunch of grain silos disguised as Wisconsin football players, after which the Rebels will receive a check in the neighborhood of $500,000 for getting ground into tiny bits of bratwurst sausage.

If they win, the Rebels still get to keep the check autographed by Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez. But then an investigation might commence amid rampant claims of gamesmanship, subterfuge and trickeration.

A half-million dollars will help offset the football program's deficit margin and take pressure off new basketball coach Dave Rice to maximize resources.

According to the latest U.S. Department of Education data, UNLV lost $1.3 million on football in 2009-10, whereas Wisconsin made a tidy profit of $16.5 million. (Alabama, the 2010 national champion, reaped the system for $40 million, although some might choose to drop the first "e" in that verb.)

This is the primary reason the grain silos are favored by five touchdowns tonight.

It also is the reason the UNLV men's soccer team had to raise money on its own, or face the fiscal firing squad.

Because UNLV's piece of state legislature pie has been reduced to the size of a Hostess Ding Dong, the men's soccer team raised $60,000 with car washes and bake sales in an attempt to ward off the executioner. Then the Engelstad Family Foundation wrote a big check for $850,000 in July. And now Peter Johann Memorial Field won't become a giant foosball table.

(In case one wonders, the surviving Engelstads did not insist that 2,200 Fighting Sioux logos be carved into the pitch and surrounding accoutrements, as was stipulated for the hockey palace they subsidized at North Dakota, where family patriarch Ralph Engelstad once tended goal.)

At schools such as Wisconsin, the football program essentially pays for sports such as soccer. But until Bobby Hauck can recruit some grain silos, UNLV is in no position to borrow from him to pay the nonrevenue Pauls.

So it's up to Peter -- the cash-cow Rebels basketball program -- to keep ringing the bell and for the nonrevenue sports to start generating revenue, even if it requires knocking on doors with a monkey and a tin cup.

"I think that absolutely is the model," UNLV athletic director Jim Livengood said. "I don't think you are going to see the state legislature say, 'Let's dump a ton of more money into the athletic department.' I think it's going to go the other way.

"You don't want to get in a situation each year with our Olympic sports of 'Are we going to make it?' So I do see that as the model for going forward."

It was the model for the Rebels' golf team going forward under coach Dwaine Knight. Buoyed by a $4 million endowment, UNLV won the 1998 NCAA title and has become a national power on the links, having qualified for 23 straight NCAA championships.

Knocking on doors also is becoming the model for going forward at Bowl Championship Series schools such as Arizona State and California of the Pac-12.

A couple of years ago, when wrestling was on the chopping block, ASU benefactors produced an $8 million endowment in 10 days; last year, when it was decided Cal would drop baseball, friends of the program there raised $9 million, and the team, knowing there would be a team, responded by qualifying for its first College World Series in 19 years.

Others a lot smarter than I also have pointed out that UNLV could save a bunch of money on student fees and recruiting -- and develop gobs of goodwill within the community -- by recruiting more local athletes.

You probably couldn't beat Wisconsin by starting 11 kids from Nevada, though Tim Chambers won 33 games in his first year as baseball coach by playing 15 locals. With the money he saved on recruiting and raised on his own, Chambers made Wilson Stadium a lot greener and a lot nicer.

Last year, 77 of UNLV's 459 student-athletes were from Nevada; if that percentage were higher, the cost of playing women's basketball (one Nevadan) and women's tennis (zero Americans) and the other nonrevenue sports would be lower.

Considering the difference on the bottom line would be negligible whether UNLV won all of its games in these minor sports or lost them all, filling rosters with local kids might seem a better option than having the football team serve as sausage stuffer at Wisconsin.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.