UNLV President On T-Shirt Cannon Duty To Drum Up More Students At Runnin’ Rebels-Colorado State Game; UNLV Knocks Out CSU, 72-51, Saturday
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Well, let’s face it — those UNLV basketball games have not exactly been drawing the Las Vegas masses to Thomas & Mack Center this season.
So UNLV sports marketing folks decided to break out a big man on campus — namely, university President Keith Whitfield — to operate the T-shirt cannon that fires free shirts into the stands for Saturday’s UNLV basketball game against Colorado State.
One of the shirts contained a free semester’s worth of tuition worth about $10,000, according to Dan Dolby, who handles sports sponsorships/marketing for the university. Here’s the lucky winner who caught the shirt with the fall 2022 tuition voucher that’s good for 12 free credit hours:
UNLV figures the easiest way to get people to fill seats is to appeal to the people closest to the university — the students. They were given free neon yellow and orange shirts to wear for “Neon Night” at the basketball game.
“By offering more giveaways, the school was encouraging more students to come to the games,” said Kyanna Saldana, social media coordinator for The Rebellion, the student fan organization.
The athletics department marketers were trying to lure students to the arena by offering the free tuition prize and even season tickets to other UNLV sports.
And figuring students are always hungry or just too poor to buy food, the sports marketing folks have lined up free Taco Bell grub for the first 500 students at today’s UNLV 72-51 win over a 21-win Colorado State basketball team. More than 25,000 students attend UNLV, so the campus basketball folks figure a few will be hungry for a free chicken taco.
Everyone loves freebies, right? Well, there’s another bait UNLV is casting out there, with a Nike Air Force 1 shoe giveaway up for grabs for Rebels students.
At halftime, there was the emotional jersey retirement ceremony for Robert Smith, the former great Rebels point guard who watched his number 10 jersey installed in the rafters of Thomas & Mack Center.
UNLV improved to 16-11 and 8-6 in the conference, including two decisive wins over this Colorado State team. Colorado State dropped to 21-4 and 11-4 in the Mountain West.
I just couldn’t be more proud of them. They just keep battling and keep working. They keep grinding, and they just keep getting better. We know that we have not lost a game this year when we win the rebounding battle. That was a big emphasis. We knew they were going to make shots but with a team like Colorado State you can’t give them another crack at it. We were prepared and just played so hard… and had a lot of fun. – UNLV head coach Kevin Kruger
Bryce Hamilton led the Rebs with 20 points, while Michael Nuga chipped in with 13. UNLV led CSU at the half, 35-24, and led by 25 points midway through the second half.
UNLV said attendance was more than 6,100 today.
