UNLV fans were left reeling on March 28, 1987.
After finishing the regular season ranked No. 1 for the first time, the Rebels were bounced out of their second ever Final Four, 97-93, by eventual champion Indiana.
Their suffering wasn’t over for the day.
In honor of the ongoing celebrations for “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th season, here’s a look back at the sketch that came out of nowhere, just hours after that defeat, to slap UNLV and the city of Las Vegas upside the head. It’s been all but erased from history.
“Every course at UNLV is a killer,” Kevin Nealon says, seated inside a classroom.
“Well, if you don’t like to study,” Dana Carvey says, before he’s joined by Victoria Jackson, “don’t come to UNLV.”
Then guest host Charlton Heston, portraying a distinguished UNLV professor, enters and welcomes the students to “Principles of Blackjack One.” The sketch, “The New Paper Chase,” spoofed the 1973 movie and 1981 TV series about a group of law students at a prestigious university and their demanding professor.
Later, in the school library, Carvey quizzes Phil Hartman for an upcoming test.
Carvey: “Two cherries and a gold bar.”
Hartman: “You … would lose.”
Carvey: “A cherry, a lemon and a gold bar.”
Hartman: “That’s … you’d win. No! You’d lose on that one, too.”
When Jackson asks if anyone saw the game, Carvey responds, “Do you know anyone who has time for basketball at UNLV?”
After a long, awkward 4½ minutes, Jon Lovitz appears as Jerry Tarkanian while looking and sounding exactly like Jon Lovitz holding a white towel. He confronts Heston’s professor for having flunked one of his players, despite that student-athlete having “correctly identified five of the six chip colors.” With that player, Tarkanian says, the team could have beaten Indiana — or at least beaten the point spread.
“While I have anything to say about it,” the professor tells him, “the University of Nevada, Las Vegas will continue to maintain academic standards second to none.”
“There’s that phrase again, academic standards,” Tarkanian bemoans. “Seems like that’s all we ever hear about at UNLV. That’s what brings the students here, even my players. Ah, hell, I know they don’t care about basketball. To them, basketball is just a ticket to a UNLV education.”
Nearly 38 years later, the sketch isn’t part of “Saturday Night Live’s” YouTube channel, and it’s missing from the stripped-down 25-minute version of that episode that’s available on Peacock. The only public record of it seems to be a grainy recording uploaded to YouTube seven years ago.
Curiously, the follow-up sketch from later that night is readily available.
In it, Nealon addresses the audience as himself from that classroom set.
“Even though the show isn’t over yet,” he says, “we’ve already gotten a number of phone calls about that scene.”
These callers, Nealon says, were trying to figure out why the show would air such a sketch.
“Well, I guess the point we’re trying to make is, and maybe we didn’t make it very clearly, is that UNLV isn’t really a very good school,” Nealon says. “Also, that the admission standard for basketball players is, well, it’s kind of a joke.”
After a few more digs, Nealon concludes: “So, to sum up, not a very good school. Most of the basketball players are not very good students. It’s easy. Also, it’s in Las Vegas, which is kind of a tawdry and sleazy place.”
Here’s that sketch:
