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UNLV (0-0, 0-0 MOUNTAIN WEST)
vs.
TOLEDO (0-0, 0-0 MID-AMERICAN)
DATE: Friday, Aug. 29, 2003
KICKOFF: 6:02 pm PDT
SITE: Sam Boyd Stadium (36,800/Artificial-TurfTech)
TV: ESPN (Tim Ryan, Mike Golic, Rod Gilmore & Rob Stone)
RADIO: ESPN 920 AM (Tim Neverett, Mitch Roberts & Paige Snyder)
GAME PREVIEW
UNLV will open its 36th season of football by hosting Mid-American Conference power Toledo this Friday ... The game, which is a rematch of the 1984 California Bowl, completes a home-and-home series that began last year with the Rebels heading to Toledo for the first time ever and falling 38-21 ... This will mark the earliest game in school history, besting by one day the humidity-shrouded Aug. 30, 2001, matchup with Arkansas at Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium ... UNLV has played in August only thrice before (0-3) and only once at home (Aug. 31 last year vs. Wisconsin) ... UNLV had never played in the month of August in its history until a trip to Tennessee in 1996, but now its last three openers have snuck into the Dog Days ... The date of the game was moved up one day just a month ago to accomodate a national broadcast by ESPN, marking the third consecutive UNLV opener to be nationally televised ... UNLV has previously played four times on a Friday -- all at home -- and sports a 2-1-1 record in those games ... The Rebels' next home date -- Sept. 19 vs. Hawaii -- will also be a Friday affair for national television (ESPN2) ... Counting last year's hosting of Wisconsin, this is the first time UNLV has debuted its season at home in back-to-back years since 1989-90 .. The Rebels are 22-13 (.629) in home openers overall and 13-6 (.684) when the season lid-lifters take place in Las Vegas ... UNLV has a long history vs. MAC teams, beginning with falling to Akron in the NCAA Div. II playoffs in 1976, and will try to even its all-time record vs. the conference tonight ... UNLV is 6-7 all-time vs. teams from the MAC: (1-1 vs. Toledo, 2-1 vs. Central Michigan, 1-0 vs. Marshall, 1-0 vs. Ohio, 1-1 vs. Eastern Michigan, 0-1 vs. Akron and 0-3 vs. Northern Illinois) ... Last year's game at the Glass Bowl marked John Robinson's first game coaching against a MAC team during his 15-plus years as a collegiate head coach ... The only other MWC school that has played the Rockets is CSU, which split a two-game series with UT in the 1970s ... Eight of UNLV's 2003 opponents received votes in the preseason coaches' poll: No. 20 Wisconsin, No. 25 Colorado State, Hawaii (24 points), BYU (22), New Mexico (9), Utah (7), Air Force (3) and Toledo (1).
ROCKETS vs. REBELS NOTES
Although UNLV and UT have never met in Las Vegas, the Rockets have played at Sam Boyd Stadium before as the 1995 MAC Champs downed Nevada, Reno 40-37 in Las Vegas Bowl IV in what went in the record books as the first overtime game in Div. I-A history ... While UT has no Nevadans on its roster, UNLV has one player from the Buckeye State: Ryan Heise, a redshirt freshman DL/LS from Port Clinton ... First year UNLV receivers coach Garrick McGee held the same position at Toledo in 2002.
