Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
The time has come for Kurt Nantkes and the UNLV football team to produce a defining moment. Good, bad or otherwise, he and the Rebels need to clear up the confusion that exists about them during Saturday's game with BYU.
This is a quarterback and a team not so much still in search of an identity, but one without a thread of consistency through the season's first seven games. Oh sure, the defense has been relatively predictable in a positive sense, yet all other aspects of UNLV's game have been subject to change on a week-by-week basis.
Is this a running team? A team that relies on its nifty receivers? A team with a strong defensive backbone? Or is it one that is at the mercy of its secondary making key plays to set up an offense that rarely travels anything resembling the length of the field?
After weeks of analysis and study, we still don't know.
Remember, the Rebels appeared to be among the worst teams in the country after a Week 2 loss to Kansas. And remember as well that only three weeks later they were 4-1 and were receiving scattered votes in the top-25 polls.
Since those optimistic days, a pair of losses have followed and UNLV has regressed to where it is, once again, seemingly back to its long-standing, middle-of-the-pack reputation.
Nantkes is as much to blame as anybody.
Everyone who has ever met him comes away feeling this is a nice guy with a wonderful home life and a diversified athletic background. He's 24, has a supportive wife and a young child, and sufficient experience to handle and lead a college football team.
He's also somewhat immobile, somewhat limited and somewhat stiff for a team that -- when it was clicking and all was going well -- showed signs of running the table on the strength of its opportunistic defensive backs and its more explosive offensive players. But maybe Nantkes is exactly what he appears to be: A decent if unspectacular player, occasionally blessed with a good game amid a series of ordinary ones on a largely mediocre team that happens to have a few athletic components.
Yet he's also in a position where expectations naturally come into play and where criticism is unavoidable when there are losses to account for. As a result, while there hasn't been a clamor to see what UNLV has behind Nantkes, there will be if the offense remains as passive as it has been during recent games with Nevada-Reno, Air Force and Utah.
The trouble for UNLV, its fans and its immediate future is that there doesn't appear to be anyone even remotely ready to succeed Nantkes at quarterback. Coach John Robinson slighted that area in recent recruiting efforts, settling for a rail-thin kid and the son of a coaching friend as the team's QB subs.
In essence, Nantkes has job security by virtue of default. His reputation -- "He may not help you but he shouldn't do anything to hurt you" -- is there for him to upgrade or correct in the season's final five games, because there's no one behind him who's even remotely ready to step in and play.
And here's a game where the picture figures to become a little clearer for both Nantkes and the Rebels. While BYU drags into Las Vegas a very uncustomary 3-5 and coming off a puzzling loss to Wyoming, it is, as always, a veteran team with a strong football heritage.
As tough as this season has been on them, the Cougars have pride, have a coach under fire and will have some obvious support among the attendees at Sam Boyd Stadium. It's inconceivable that they would go down without a fight.
That makes them the perfect opponent for a UNLV team that needs to measure itself and find its own pulse after being outscored 52-17 the past two weeks. It isn't quite Halloween yet, but if the Rebels can't respond with a good game this week they may as well go into disguise.
Of course they've been showing up at the door and baffling onlookers for several weeks. Sometimes they exhibit a cheerful countenance and sometimes it's a horror, leaving observers and fans alike wondering if tricks or treats are in store.
It's time to commit, to go one way or another. Either this UNLV football team is worth studying and following closely, or it's not -- and this game right here looks to be the one that will decide just that for many of us.
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