What they’re saying at UNLV about the Raiders coming to Las Vegas

UNLV officials react to the news that the Oakland Raiders will be relocating to Las Vegas after NFL owners voted 31-1 Monday in favor of the move.

UNLV president Len Jessup

“UNLV and the entire Rebel family welcome the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas. We look forward to a long-term partnership with the Raiders and the Stadium Authority Board to give UNLV football access to a world-class stadium and accompanying game-day experience that will rival the best in college football. We also recognize and thank the numerous stakeholders – including the Adelson family – who invested their time and energy toward this vision. This is an historic day for Nevada and another example of how Las Vegas continues to reinvent itself.”

UNLV athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy

“We are very excited to welcome the Raiders to our great city of Las Vegas. Our community is on the rise, and that has clearly been recognized by the NFL owners with today’s vote. We can’t wait for the day our UNLV football program has a new home, sharing the new world-class stadium with the Las Vegas Raiders. What a great day for the NFL, our city and our university.”

UNLV football coach Tony Sanchez

“A lot of people, especially starting with Sheldon Adelson, put a lot of hard work into helping this come to fruition for the entire city, and what it would do for UNLV athletics, and what it will do for UNLV football is absolutely amazing. It’s a world-class city with The Smith Center and the NHL team, obviously the entertainment capital of the world, and you add an NFL team to it to show the kind of growth and just vibrancy of the city. For UNLV football, it’s going to help us recruit at a high level. It really adds to the facilities we needed to address, with that and the football building, and all those things happening, they have really given us a chance to do something special here. The coaches are all ecstatic. We all came up here and turned the TVs on and saw Mark Davis talk about it. Like I said, it’s really, really exciting. It’s such a great day for the entire city of Las Vegas and UNLV.”

UNLV men’s basketball coach Marvin Menzies

“The NFL coming to Las Vegas is huge for our university, and adding a team with the history and tradition that the Raiders have makes it even more valuable. Raiders fans are some of the most passionate in the NFL, and having all those additional eyes on our great city will provide UNLV with many benefits.”

Regent Cedric Crear

“I think it’s awesome. I think it’s exciting. I’d like to think that our small Campus Improvement Authority Board kind of got the conversation going. The next you know we’re going to end up with an NFL team, a stadium, and UNLV’s going to have a new home. Combine that with our new Ferttita football building, and I think the program is on the rise. When we started with our CIAB board (July 2013), we were talking about building a stadium on campus or in proximity to campus to house UNLV football and other 60,000-plus seat conventions, international sporting events to come to town. The conversation of a football stadium for an NFL team was pretty far fetched at that time. It was, wouldn’t it be great to host ‘Monday Night Football,’ or wouldn’t it be great to host ‘Thursday Night Football’ or maybe wouldn’t it be great to host an all-star game? But I don’t think anyone in their minds were thinking, ‘Let’s actually have our own NFL team.’”

Former regent James Dean Leavitt

“I think it’s fantastic certainly for the economy in the short term, but hopefully for the economy in the long term. You’ve got to give Sheldon Adelson and Andy Abboud a lot of credit for getting it to the point that they did. As a citizen and former member of the board, I’m very, very excited, mostly for UNLV, of course.”