ESPN will televise WSU’s game with UNLV

College football: Washington State’s 2012 football schedule will include a prime-time national television broadcast from Las Vegas.

According to a release from the Mountain West on Thursday, WSU’s game at UNLV will be played at 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 14, and broadcast nationally by ESPN.

The Cougars are scheduled to play two Friday games this season. The Apple Cup is scheduled for the Friday after Thanksgiving.

ESPN hasn’t broadcast a WSU game since 2006, when ESPN2 carried the Cougars’ 40-14 loss at Auburn. WSU beat Nevada on ESPN in 2005.

Christian Caple

Bob Robertson returns to Indians

Baseball: Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Robertson will return to the Spokane Indians’ pressbox for another year as a guest announcer, the Indians announced Thursday.

Robertson retired as the full-time announcer of the Indians at the end of the 2010 season but teamed up with Mike Boyle to call 20 games last year. Robertson will again join Boyle in 2012, starting on opening day, June 15, for a five-game homestand against the Vancouver Canadians. Robertson will also call the majority of road games against Salem-Keizer, Eugene, Everett and Vancouver.

Robertson is calling Monday home games for the Tacoma Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, and will return to Pullman in the fall for his 46th season of Washington State Cougars football.

Hockey: Former Spokane Chiefs coach Hardy Sauter has been fired by the Idaho Steelheads of the East Coast Hockey League after two seasons.

 Sauter’s team went 63-59-22 and reached the conference semifinal in both of his seasons.

 In his two seasons in Spokane, the Chiefs won 95 games, part of a franchise-record four straight seasons with 45 wins, but his contract wasn’t renewed after two disappointing playoff runs.