Lucas Peltier

Football
9/4/2024 20:36:00

LAS VEGAS (UNLVRebels.com) – Half a century ago, the UNLV football team posted its only undefeated regular season, finished with a school-record 12 wins and played in the NCAA Division II semifinals. As the athletic department celebrates the golden anniversary of those players’ achievements during Saturday’s home game against Utah Tech, Barry Odom will equip his team with a special, never-before-seen helmet design in their honor.

While the 1974 Rebels, led by the late Ron Meyer, wore plain red helmets during that historic season at then-Las Vegas Stadium, this UNLV team will wear white helmets with red face masks and the beloved UNLV ’70s “sunburst” logo in bright red at Allegiant Stadium for kickoff at noon.

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Members of the ’74 team in attendance are honored on the field during halftime. The team, which was inducted into the UNLV Athletics Hall of Fame in its second year of existence in 1988, boasts six future NFL draft picks, including two All-Americans in lineman Joe Ingersoll and running back Mike Thomas, while quarterback Glenn Carano and wide receiver Mike “Cowboy” Haverty have also each been inducted into their school’s hall of fame as individuals.

The Rebels regularly played to sellout crowds and posted a 10-0 home record in the now-shuttered stadium built deep in the desert. An October win over previously undefeated Boise State even propelled the six-year-old program to No. 2 in the small-college rankings. The team’s dominant campaign led to its first-ever attempt at the NCAA playoffs, with UNLV defeating Alcorn State 35-22 in a first-round game in Las Vegas. A week later, the Rebels traveled to LSU’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to play in the national semifinals, where they lost to Delaware in the Grantland Rice Bowl, which also marked the school’s first televised appearance on ABC in 50 years.

Saturday marks the third retro-inspired helmet the Rebels have worn since Odom took over the program last year. In the 2023 season opener, UNLV’s helmets sported the mid-1980s REBELS font, when College Football Hall of Famer Randall Cunningham led the offense. Then, in a Game 4 win over UTEP, the team wore an all-white look with a helmet decal inspired by the ones that adorned the team’s silver helmets from 1987-89. That block-N and Las Vegas script are best remembered as being worn by another legendary UNLV player, running back Ickey Woods, when he led college football with 1,658 rushing yards in 1987 before joining the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals.