Being protected means you have a reservation but not a ticket on the other flight. You should have had a seat reserved for you, but it's likely they would have gone in an oversell situation at that point since they had already booked it to capacity with folks they knew were present. Poorly handled by the RNO folks, most likely. I would've called the 1K desk again just to see if they could do anything (but would've assumed its in the airport's hands and I'd be SOL and quite unhappy)