UNLV plays their football games in a state-of-the-art NFL stadium. Visibility for conference games is significantly higher just by playing games in Las Vegas. Southern Nevada is also a more fertile recruiting area than Fresno.
That is one thing that Yormark has brought to the Big 12—an understanding of the entertainment value of sporting events and the importance of TV markets. I still don’t think that the remaining PAC 12 teams (WSU & OSU) understand this. Perhaps they rode the coattails of everyone else for so long that they lost sight of the reality of being located in media and recruiting backwaters?