Saturdays at Mackay: The Wolf Pack's Home Stretch

Mackay Stadium sits in a bowl at the University of Nevada's north edge, 5,500 feet above sea level, where the November air is thin and cold and the home-field advantage is measurable in the visiting team's fourth-quarter breath. The Wolf Pack's football season reaches its decisive stretch this month, with the Mountain West race, bowl eligibility and the program's standing all on the table in the final home dates.

Nevada football carries a distinctive tradition: the program of Chris Ault, the Hall of Fame coach who built the Pack into a Division I-A program and invented the Pistol offense that spread across the sport; of the 2010 team that beat Boise State in an overtime classic Reno still talks about like weather; of a fan base that treats the Fremont Cannon — the heaviest trophy in college football, painted blue by the winner of the UNLV rivalry — as civic property.

The rivalry is November's other fixture when the calendar aligns: Nevada versus UNLV, the Battle for Nevada, a game that divides the state's two cities with feeling. Whether home or away in a given year, it is the date around which the state's football season organizes itself, and the cannon's color is a matter of genuine public concern in both ends of the state.

The wider Pack program fills the winter alongside football's finish: men's and women's basketball opening their seasons at Lawlor Events Center, where Nevada's tournament ambitions have made November and December nonconference games a Reno ritual, and the Olympic sports that the university fields in a conference of mountain schools.

Our sports desk will cover the Pack as Reno's team in all of it: game coverage, recruiting, the athletic department's business, and the cannon's color reported with the gravity it deserves. The home stretch is here. Pack the bowl, dress for 5,500 feet, and bring the noise.