Sports fans all remember the classics: “The SuperBowl Shuffle,” “The Ickey Shuffle,” “Walk Like a Tarkanian,” and the legendary “Runnin’ Rebel Fever.” All these songs created a buzz that elevated fan participation and loyalty. Starting this basketball season, you can add “The Fever’s Back” to that list.
The song is part of this season’s marketing campaign for the Runnin’ Rebels men’s basketball team. Imagine Marketing of Nevada and UNLV’s sports marketing department created the campaign.
“As a lifelong fan of UNLV basketball, I wanted to do something to help bring back the passion associated with the Runnin’ Rebels,” says D.J. Allen, an alumnus and founder of Imagine Marketing.
With the help of his team at Imagine, Allen assembled a marketing campaign, complete with a song, posters, and a revamped logo. “We put in more than 100 hours of work without knowing whether UNLV’s sports marketing department would even go for it,” he says. “When we showed them our work, they realized that we were not only fans, but we had a sound business concept that would work for UNLV basketball.”
The campaign builds on the university’s basketball traditions, says Lon Kruger, head coach. “It’s about having an enthusiasm for what happened here in the past in relation to what will happen as we move forward,” he says.
Feeling Feverish
The idea for the campaign began toward the end of last season when the Rebels were in the middle of a five-game winning streak and Allen saw the seats of the Thomas & Mack Center begin to fill.
“The players seemed to begin to understand and play within Coach Kruger’s system,” says Allen. “And that winning translated into excitement in the fans that I hadn’t seen in years.”
So, during the off-season, while Allen and his team at Imagine tried to come up with a way to embrace the new excitement surrounding Rebel basketball, one of his employees brought in George Dare’s version of “Runnin’ Rebel Fever” from 1984, the song that became the team’s anthem for more than a decade.
Allen contacted Jeff Johnson, a member of the hip-hop duo The Big Beat Battalion. The two had met as youths at a UNLV game. Johnson jumped at the opportunity to produce a song that would blend the history of Rebel basketball with the excitement surrounding this season’s team.
The song appeals to both the die-hard, old-school Rebel fans and people who are new to the community and are not as familiar with the past successes of the program, Allen says. “By celebrating our past, we are accepting our past. By accepting our past, we’re saying that we’re comfortable with who we are now and are excited about the future,” he says.
The song has been incorporated into game broadcasts, player introductions, and a highlight video.
“As good as the campaign may be, the most important sports marketing tool for a team is winning,” says Allen.
Kruger, now in his second year at the helm, and the Rebels are working to improve on last season’s 17-14 mark, which landed them in the second round of the NIT.
“This year’s team will certainly be one that people will enjoy watching,” says Kruger. “But fan support is very important, especially at UNLV where we’ve had it in the past. People here are definitely hungry to get it back.”
The team returns eight players, including talented seniors Louis Amundson and Ricky Morgan, and junior Michael Umeh, the team’s leading returning scorer. The Rebels also add six newcomers, led by freshman point guard Jo’Van Adams, who averaged 28 points per game as a senior at Houston’s Gulf Shores Academy.
Junior guard Jason Petrimoulx is hoping the fever campaign fires up homegame crowds. “When the fans are hyped up, the players are in turn more motivated,” says Petrimoulx, who grew up in Las Vegas and played for Cimarron-Memorial High School. “The fever is the exciting style of play the Rebels executed back in the day, and that’s how we want to play.”
It may not be 1990 again, but that’s not the point, according to Allen. “We don’t want people to take it too literally; we’re not trying to relive 1990. The fever is about getting excited about today’s UNLV basketball, and I think that’s happening.”
More Info: Find the Runnin’ Rebels schedule and listen to “The Fever’s Back” online at unlvrebels.collegesports.com.
