Three Up, Three Down

New Mexico vs. UNLV. The resistible force against the movable object. The dregs of the earth vs. the bottom of the barrel. Abe Vigoda at quarterback, throwing passes to Betty White.

Lots of snickers. The kind with the lower-case "s."

At least the Rebels had the last laugh.

As expected, UNLV eventually turned New Mexico into a chocolate-covered mess Saturday night. After spotting the Lobos a 7-0 lead, the Rebels stormed back to win 45-10 in front of a minuscule crowd/acres of empty seats at Sam Boyd Stadium.

Dregs of the earth? Bottom of the barrel?

That's not what your girlfriend says.

It was the first win of the Bobby Hauck Era.

It might be the last for a while.

The Rebels this week will host a UNR team that is more explosive than the Acme Fireworks Company in a Roadrunner cartoon. The week after that, they go to West Virginia. Then it's Colorado State, which Saturday beat an Idaho team that had turned UNLV into mashed potatoes last week. And then it's big, bad Texas Christian and then old, gray Brigham Young and then ... well, you get the idea.

There won't be any more pushovers.

There won't be any more games in which the Rebels are 10½-point favorites.

There won't be any more quarterbacks moving to safety, as far as I can tell. For most of the night, Omar Clayton looked more comfortable than Brett Favre playing pickup football against his buddies in his Wrangler jeans.

But then, how bad is New Mexico?

There's line in a Bruce Springsteen song that says "... some day we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny."

If that day comes, Hauck will have done his job, and then we'll wish him well at Washington State, or some other greener pasture.

If it doesn't, then some day we'll look back on this and give him credit for knocking Betty White flat on her keister.

THREE UP

■ KYLE BUSCH: The Las Vegas lead foot won his 11th Nationwide Series race of the season in 23 starts Saturday, breaking the record set by Sam Ard in 1983, when the NASCAR series was known as the Late Model Sportsmen Series. That was before Ard was seriously injured in a crash, ending his Cup career after just one race. And before he contracted Alzheimer's disease. And before Busch quietly donated $100,000 to help pay for Ard's medical bills.

■ PAC-10 LAS VEGAS: I'm not sure what this means to our chances of hosting the Pac-10 football championship game, but from my vantage point in the Sam Boyd Stadium press box I saw the Stanford Tree and UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel paving the parking lot Saturday night. Check that: It was Texas coach Mack Brown.

■ MIKE McDADE: The Silverado High School product has received a Toronto Blue Jays Webster Award -- every trophy in Canada is named for someone, it seems -- for being named most valuable player of the Jays' advanced Class-A team in Dunedin, Fla. McDade, a first baseman and former sixth-round draft choice, hit .267 with 21 homers and 64 RBIs for the D-Jays, which, you must admit, is a pretty cool nickname.

THREE DOWN

■ RICKY HATTON: The charming boxer from England, who was doing OK until someone thought it a good idea he fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao within the same 15-month period, had a recent night out when he drank 11 pints of Guinness, vodka and other spirits and snorted a Tony Montana helping of cocaine. He's now in rehab. Now I know how my mom felt when she learned Ricky Nelson used drugs.

■ ARENA PETITION: A clipboard-wielding guy approached me out front of Albertson's the other day, so I told him to put me down for three boxes of Thin Mints. Turns out he was collecting signatures for a petition that would show that people who live here are behind the idea of building a publicly financed NBA arena on the Strip. I told him I was holding out for a Caramel DeLite and a tall glass of milk.

■ BRYCE HARPER: The Washington Nationals' wunderkind from Las Vegas struck out twice in as many at-bats in his Instructional League debut Thursday. The Yankees, for whom Harper will wind up playing some day, didn't seem overly concerned.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352.