Three Up, Three Down

They put John Robinson on a pedestal Saturday, which is the last place he would want to be. This is a man who would not play a triangle if it called attention to himself, much less blow his own trumpet.

He should have gone into the College Football Hall of Fame not on a pedestal but in a golf cart, because that's how he liked to scoot around the practice field at UNLV from 1999 to 2004 -- the "back" part of traveling to the mountain and back as a college football coach.

Sometimes, if you got there early, he'd let you ride shotgun and regale you with a story about the glory days at Southern California, where he walked around the sidelines dressed like a hot dog stand -- red jacket, bright yellow pants -- as John McKay's right-hand man before guiding the Trojans to four Rose Bowl victories and one national championship himself. But only if you asked to be regaled.

A lot of people said he spent too much time in that golf cart instead of teaching the Rebels how to run the power sweep. But a lot of people don't know that's how it is done by older guys who have been to the mountain and back in college football.

You hire a guy like John Robinson, you get name recognition. You get recruits and transfers, new and improved facilities, butts in the seats. You get 8-5 and a bowl game victory over Arkansas in his second year after getting six wins, total, in the four years before he arrived.

You give him a golf cart with his name on it, and hope it continues.

It didn't continue, and I doubt Jason Thomas' long touchdown pass to Troy Mason in the 2000 Las Vegas Bowl came up during the cocktail reception honoring Robinson and the others back in Indiana, in the shadow of the Notre Dame campus.

But if you were there that night, you remember the sound.

THREE UP

■ STEVEN JACKSON: The All-Pro running back from Las Vegas spent the past month in Africa, where he was accosted by a giant shark off the coast of Capetown, encountered an enraged elephant on safari in Botswana and, even more frightening, watched three World Cup soccer games from start to finish. Jackson said the elephant flapped his ears and stomped his feet before flattening a tree. Sounds like Chad Ochocinco on "Dancing with the Stars."

■ SLOTS O' FUN: Speaking of Ochocinco, he wrote on Twitter that he was walking around the MGM Grand lobby last week clad only in briefs and socks because it was so hot outside -- and later posted a photo of himself playing slots clad only in briefs and socks to prove it. His followers on the social networking site marveled at Ochocinco's audacity, oblivious to the fact that had it been Fitzgeralds downtown, he would have been considered overdressed.

■ REBEL PARK: A TV report called recently renovated Bill "Wildcat" Morris Rebel Park on the UNLV campus the largest college football practice facility in the nation. This is what happens when you've had just three winning seasons in the past 23. You put in a real big practice field.

THREE DOWN

■ SUMMERTIME REBELS: In the summertime, when the weather is high, you can stretch right up, and touch the sky with the NBA Summer League at Cox Pavilion. You can also watch UNLV get Mungo Jerried 4-1 by rival UNR as far as players on Summer League rosters, which R-J blogger Adam Hill points out. (And the one is Romel Beck, who is like 55.) The Rebels are 4-0 against the Wolf Pack since 2006, so this only proves UNLV's Lon Kruger is a great coach. And a not-so-great recruiter.

■ NBA SKEPTICISM: One of the developers of the four or five new arenas supposedly going up in Las Vegas (hey, Penn and Teller, I have an idea for your next "Showtime" series) says he has a "contract" with an NBA team. He won't say which one. My guess is the Syracuse Nationals.

■ BOXING ULTIMATUMS: The clock on the Top Rank Inc. website showing how much time Floyd Mayweather Jr. has to commit to fighting Top Rank cash cow Manny Pacquiao on Nov. 13 has run down to zero. It has been replaced by a time and temperature application, a TwitterBar, a link to the latest Megan Fox photos and a new clock indicating Floyd still has 10 days to commit to a fight against Blinky, Pinky, Inky or Clyde, the Pac-Man ghosts.

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