UNLV Football: Will gambling law and NFL fix Rebels?

2. The improving high school landscape

Bishop Gorman won six NIAA 3A State Championships between 1970 and 1983. Then the Gales hit a drought until the 2007 season. From 2007 through 2017, BGHS has won 10 NIAA State Championships becoming the elite power of not only the southwest but the entire country.

With the decline of Nevada football since the retirement of Chris Ault UNLV has an open door to the recruits in the area. In the southwest UNLV should be seeing the benefit of the rise in Bishop Gorman and the Las Vegas football scene, but also the state of Arizona has improved their dedication to football as well.

California is a big recruiting hub for UNLV and with Los Angeles and San Diego relatively close to campus Sanchez’s staff can lure in the Southern California players that don’t sign with USC or UCLA. Nevada itself put out five blue-chip players in the 2018 recruiting class. With Hawaii and California being historically strong pipelines of talent and Arizona, Utah and Nevada improving their high school football recruiting prowess UNLV should be able to upgrade their roster.

While the Temple Owls and head coach Geoff Collins went to Japan to help the Japanese improve their college football system, Mexico is one of the NFL’s biggest supporters both in television marketing and in financial spending. Mexico has 20.6 million NFL fans per a Los Angeles Times piece titled “Football — the American kind — is all the rage in Mexico.”

If the Rebels have any foresight they need to tap into the Las Vegas hotel industry for boosters that can pay for a football development trip down to Mexico City.