UNLV reaping Raider dividends
Stadium years away, but president says interest in Rebels already high
The UNLV football team has gotten a taste of what life could be like once it’s playing in the new Las Vegas stadium.
The athletic department got a call from the University of California, Berkeley, which said it wants to develop a home-and-home football series between the Rebels and the Golden Bears of the Pac-12 Conference.
And the Bears want to be the first opponent UNLV plays once the Rebels move into the stadium for the 2020 football season.
“They literally want to be the first game in the stadium,” university President Len Jessup said in a recent interview about the status of a joint-use agreement with the Oakland Raiders on the stadium the team is building on 63 acres at Interstate 15 and Russell Road.
“We didn’t get those kinds of
offers from Pac-12 schools for Sam Boyd Stadium,” Jessup said. “That’s a function of the new stadium.”
While most of the focus on the site, where ground was broken Nov. 13, has been on the Raiders, UNLV’S use of the $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium was one of the primary reasons the Legislature in a special session in October 2016 approved a $750 million public contribution toward construction costs.
Regional benefits
Jessup sees the potential of the stadium not only for UNLV but also for all of Southern Nevada. For UNLV, it’s the vision of someday being bumped up to a top-tier athletic conference that will bring additional notoriety to the university.
“That’s just one example where it’s not even built yet and it’s already influencing the way Pac-12 schools are viewing UNLV even without the stadium being here,” Jessup said.
But for now, those are just dreams of what could be. Right now, there’s still work to be done to bring the joint-use agreement to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority in conformance with Senate Bill 1, the legislation authorizing the public’s contribution
JESSUP
sites. Walmart.com tripled the amount of items available for sale compared with the number last year. And Amazon, which Bain & Co. expects to capture 50 percent of all online sales growth, offered similar deals on its gadgets as it did on Black Friday but offered new deals on
Lego sets and Hasbro games.
Foremployerswhocaughttheir employees shopping, Challenger has some advice: Let it go.
“Part of the world we live in today is that barriers between home life and work life have really started to dissolve. You’re expected to answer emails at 9:00 at night ; first thing youdointhemorningischeckyour phone,” he said. “So while the work lifeismovingintothehomespace, employershavetobecognizantthat more personal actives are going to take place in the work atmosphere. And that means allowing people to do some of their shopping on Amazon during the workday.”
All that shopping is good news for retailers — and for hackers.
Darrell Arms, executive director of technology solutions at Las Vegas-based Link Technologies, an information technology consulting firm,saidnowisthebesttimeof year to be a hacker.
The busiest day for shopping online also means the hardest day to catch somebody trying to steal information,armssaid.
“Thechancesofbeingdiscovered are a lot less than they’d usually be,” he said.
Contact Nicole Raz at nraz@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @Journalistnikki on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.