LAS VEGAS - UNLV will play Ohio in the Scooters Coffee Frisco Bowl on Dec. 23 at Ford Center in Frisco, Texas, sending the Rebels to a bowl game for the third consecutive season and extending a run that has fundamentally rewritten the program’s history.
UNLV enters the postseason at 10-3, already one of the best records across the program’s 48-year existence. The Rebels will play with multiple first-ever milestones still on the table: back-to-back bowl wins and back-to-back 11-win seasons, neither of which has ever been accomplished at UNLV.
The Historic Stretch For UNLV
Before this current stretch, UNLV football had zero conference championship game appearances and just four bowl trips total across more than four decades.
Now, the Rebels have:
Three straight Mountain West Championship Game appearances
Three straight bowl games
30 wins over the last three seasons
From 2015 to 2022, UNLV won 25 games total across eight seasons.
Bowl Consistentcy
Head coach Dan Mullen emphasized that this bowl trip is less about the novelty of postseason football and more about continuity.
“This is their third consecutive bowl game, which is unprecedented for UNLV,” Mullen said. “The opportunity to go to three different bowl games, three different locations, that’s what makes bowl games unique.”
For a roster that has largely come together over the past year, the trip to Texas represents both a reward and a continuation of expectations that have become annual rather than aspirational.
This Stage Still Matters
The Frisco Bowl isn’t about validation. That work was done over the last three seasons.
This game is about separation, turning a multi-year surge into a sustained standard that survives roster turnover, coaching transitions, and changing expectations.
A win would deepen the divide between what UNLV football once was and what it has clearly become.
“We’ve won 30 games now in the last three years,” Mullen said. “That’s pretty special.”
Momentum Builder
Mullen also framed UNLV’s rise as part of a broader momentum within Las Vegas itself, pointing to growth across multiple sports at the university and at the professional level.
“The excitement of sports in the city of Las Vegas is helping us grow the program,” he said. “It’s a snowball effect.”
That growth has translated directly to sustained success on the field which is something UNLV football struggled to maintain for decades.
