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Did UNLV Football Just Become America’s Toughest Sports Marketing Sell with Saturday’s Embarrassing Loss?

UNLV defenders were chasing the Howard quarterback, Caylin Newton, all night long and now the university's sports marketers will face a challenge drawing fans and advertisers after Saturday's embarrassing loss to a 45-point underdog. Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com

By ALAN SNEL

 

A half-hour before kickoff of UNLV’s football season, alum Tony Iverson held a beer in a coolie in a grassy Rebel pre-game area and scanned the fans who had gathered for the Rebels’ game against Howard.

 

“The better the team gets, the bigger this gets,” said Iverson, a teacher who is a 2002 UNLV graduate before earning a Masters at UNLV in 2007.

 

Sadly, it can also work in reverse. After Saturday night’s embarrassing loss to 45-point underdog Howard, now it will be even a more daunting challenge to sell tickets, ads and sponsorships for a football team that had bowl game aspirations this season.

Howard’s quarterback, Caylin Newton, little brother of NFL star QB Cam Newton, runs for a touchdown in the first quarter. Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com

 

Before the game, UNLV officials tried to improve the fans’ pre-game experience with live music and free student shuttles but fans were looking for shade and misters with temperatures soaring to 108 for the 6 p.m. start on the first Saturday in September.

UNLV sought shade in the 108-degree heat before Saturday’s game. Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com

 

Even though the football team took it on the chin with the 43-40 loss to Howard, the UNLV band members sweated in their black outfits but performed well before the game.

UNLV band members deserve credit for wearing these dark outfits in the intense heat before the game. Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com

 

The UNLV band even did a dance in the triple-digit temps before heading into Sam Boyd Stadium.

While coach Tony Sanchez faces the task of shoring up a weak defense, Dan Dolby — Learfield’s new UNLV sports marketing chief — also faces the daunting challenge of trying to massage sponsorship deals out of local businesses after the team’s embarrassing loss went national Saturday.

 

ESPN’s website, for example, listed this post headline as its second item under “Top Headlines”: “Howard (+45) pulls CFB’s biggest upset ever.”

 

Even Erik Pappa, who oversees Clark County’s communications, had this idea: just get rid of UNLV football. On his Twitter account, Pappa wrote, “End #Vegas suffering. End UNLV football once and for all. We get pro ball in 2020 anyway.”

 

Learfield took over for IMG College shortly before the season when IMG’s contract with UNLV expired.

 

Dolby has a young, eager staff of sponsorship sellers, but convincing businesses to buy ads and signage is a tough sell when the UNLV football team loses to a squad that had a 2-9 record in 2016 and 1-10 record in 2015.

Learfield’s Dan Dolby has one of the toughest jobs in America: marketing a football team that just lost to a 45-point underdog Saturday.

 

UNLV’s sports marketing challenges follow a disappointing season by the men’s basketball team. Dolby, in an interview with LVSportsBiz.com a month ago, acknowledged that he faces a tough uphill climb to sign up new advertisers when the basketball and football teams perform weakly.

 

Howard celebrates last night when the team upset UNLV last night. Photo credit: Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau

 

In his interview about the UNLV football team a month ago, Dolby said, We are “selling hope and pride. We’re selling a commodity that is unknown at this point. But I feel bullish we’ll improve year after year. I’m going after people’s prides. We have a blank canvas right now.”

 

Sadly, that commodity just got known after last night and the canvas is no longer blank. Hopefully, fans will have more look to forward to than just seeing the Hey Reb! mascot at games.

 

Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com

And let’s hope UNLV Athletic Director Desiree Reed-Francois doesn’t do a U-turn and head back to her old job at Virginia Tech or her old lawyer job with the Oakland Raiders after Saturday night’s painful loss.

UNLV Athletic Director Desiree Reed-Francois talks with football coach Tony Sanchez during Raising Cane’s sponsorship announcement in front of Thomas & Mack Center Wednesday. Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com

 

Alan Snel: Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.
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