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Decades before the Super Bowl arrived, Jerry Tarkanian and his UNLV team turned Las Vegas into a sports town

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LAS VEGAS — The Super Bowl will be played here Sunday, some 51 years after Jerry Tarkanian drove his wife Lois into what was then an old military outpost turned mobbed-up Sin City oasis.

Tark was, at the time, a 43-year-old basketball coach who had just led Long Beach State to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.