UNLV’s Sanchez smartly continues youth clinic, chicken fingers and all
Other than going 2-10 or 2-11 most seasons, and having spectators depart Sam Boyd Stadium in mass-exodus-style after the third quarter, the UNLV football program mostly is bereft of tradition.
For instance: When Jim Weaver, a former Rebels athletic director, died July 2, it came to mind how he tried to begin a tradition of UNLV fans flying little flags from their car windows on football game days.
And how it didn’t take.
And how when Weaver ultimately wound up firmly on his feet at Virginia Tech, there probably were thousands of little boxed-up UNLV flags gathering dust and cobwebs in a darkened storage shed on campus.
So when new Rebels coach Tony Sanchez decided to continue kicking off fall practice with a free instructional clinic for youngsters, and a box lunch consisting of Raising Cane’s chicken and fixings started by the Las Vegas Bowl and his predecessors (Mike Sanford, Bobby Hauck), I thought it was pretty cool.
Pretty cool for the kids, and pretty cool for the program, too, because when you go 2-10 or 2-11 most seasons, you build on tradition wherever you might find some.
The bowl people and sponsor Terrible Herbst even brought in a speaker to chat with the football kids before the Raising Cane’s was served Friday at Bill “Wildcat” Morris Rebel Park.
I was told it would be a former California quarterback.
Sports writer intuition indicated it wouldn’t be Aaron Rodgers, who is getting ready for NFL training camp and probably has another Discount Double Check commercial to film.
I was hoping for Steve Bartkowski or Craig Morton or even Joe Kapp, who made the cover of Sports Illustrated after leaving the Canadian Football League for the Minnesota Vikings — and also played for the prison guards against the Mean Machine in the original “The Longest Yard.” (The good one; the one without Adam Sandler.)
Alas, it turned out to be former Cal quarterback — and local businessman and Royal Purple LV Bowl committee member — Kerry McGonigal.
When I Googled him, the first thing that came up was a film clip of McGonigal getting sacked by Oregon and turning royal purple, and a Seattle Times story from 1994.
“Just when it appeared the University of California’s beleaguered football team would have someone to rally around,” the story began, “the Golden Bears were dealt another blow yesterday …”
The clipping said Pat Barnes had suffered an injury in a 61-0 defeat to Southern California and would not play against Washington State. It said Kerry McGonigal would play.
The writer, a guy named Dick Rockne — Rockne? Are you serious? — went on to say: “According to those who have watched both quarterbacks play, there is little doubt that Barnes, who was highly recruited out of Mission Viejo, Calif., has better skills than McGonigal, a former walk-on from Hood River, Ore.”
“It’s a frustrating blow for us, but we’ll go with Kerry McGonigal this week and rally behind him,” Keith Gilbertson, the Cal coach, was quoted.
If the Bears did rally around McGonigal, they still lost to Wazzu, 26-23.
But say this for Kerry McGonigal: He was a walk-on from a small town in Oregon known mostly for apple orchards and windsurfing, and he went on to become a starting quarterback in the Pac-12. That’s a lot more than most of us sports writers can say.
Plus, he also made the Cal baseball team as a walk-on, and he seems like a great guy, and he tells a funny story about pitching to Troy Glaus when Glaus was at UCLA.
So McGonigal knows about overachieving, which is what the Rebels have been trying to do on the football field for, oh, the past 25 years or so. A lot of people also have referred to the UNLV program as beleaguered, just as Dick Rockne did.
Anyway, it was so hot Friday morning you could smell the field turf burning. So they would let a wave of football kids go into an auditorium, where it was cool, and Kerry McGonigal would speak about accountability.
He said that if the left tackle (or another player) wasn’t accountable on the field or in the classroom, then a backup might have to play — and then the quarterback might get sacked and fumble, and the team would lose, and the quarterback would be blamed. And then the quarterback’s girlfriend probably would break up with him.
The football kids seemed to get a kick out of that last part.
It wasn’t long before an air horn was blown.
It was time to stop running pass patterns on the flaming turf, and time for 614 football kids to start eating Raising Cane’s chicken with ice cream sandwiches.
None of this goodwill will help UNLV cover against UCLA or Michigan or beat Idaho State. But as tradition goes around here, it’s still more admirable than getting all liquored up before the UNR game and getting into a fight in the stands.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.
