Las Vegas Football et cetera
Columnist Ron Kantowski: Recruiting Las Vegas not as new as you think
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.
•••
It wasn't that long ago that recently retired UNLV football coach John Robinson could do no wrong in this town. Now it seems he did no right.
The theme of UNLV's national signing day press conference for high school recruits was how new coach Mike Sanford had "reclaimed city recruiting" and "taken back the city of Las Vegas."
Indeed, it was nice to learn that five of the 29 members comprising Sanford's first Rebels recruiting class could have walked their letters-of-intent over to the football office. Just as it was last year, when four of the 23 members comprising Robinson's last Rebels recruiting class could have done the same thing.
Above and beyond that, do the names Jamaal Brimmer, Adam Seward and Dyante Perkins ring a bell? Brimmer and Seward were the defensive stars of Robinson's final team and played their high school football at Durango and Bonanza High, respectively. Perkins, a two-year starter in the offensive backfield, prepped at Bishop Gorman. Starting defensive end Leon Moore (Rancho) is another local product.
A UNLV spokesman said the remarks about Sanford's aggressive recruiting at home were not meant to discredit Robinson, or to suggest he didn't recruit locally, but that the Rebels reportedly beat Oregon State and other Pac-10 schools in signing Palo Verde quarterback Jarrell Harrison, Las Vegas High lineman A.J. Rodriguez and Cheyenne running back Torrie Coleman.
It was just a couple of years ago that it seemed like every local high school football player with a letterman's jacket wound up in Corvallis, Ore., for some reason that, having covered a game on a rainy night there once, still is beyond my limited comprehension.
At least Sanford gave credit to former Las Vegas High coach Kris Cinkovich, one of two holdovers he retained from Robinson's staff, for helping to facilitate the local recruiting effort.
In Friday's column on this year's UNLV Athletic Hall of Fame class I noted that Warren Schutte was the first Rebel to win an NCAA individual championship when he beat Phil Mickelson for the 1991 golf title. But as Sun readers Dave Dreibelbis and Paul Seifer pointed out, he was only the first male athlete to wear a crown.
The late Sheila Tarr was UNLV's first NCAA champ, as she won the track and field heptathlon in 1984.
"You obviously never saw Sheila Tarr in shorts," Seifer wrote in an e-mail, "or you would never forget that those amazing legs belonged to UNLV's first NCAA champion."
For the record, UNLV's second NCAA champion also was a track star, as Treina Hull won the 100 meters title in 1987 while running for longtime women's track and field coach Al McDaniel.
To nobody's great surprise, former UNLV baseball coach Fred Dallimore stole the show at the Hall of Fame gala with a 25-minute acceptance speech/ monologue in which he thanked everybody but the home plate umpire who squeezed the strike zone on the Rebels during a 1987 game against Pacific.
One of the neat things about the evening is that all three head coaches of the former Rebels who were inducted were on hand to share the evening with their stars. UNLV golf coach Dwaine Knight led the cheers for Warren Schutte while retired basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian and Wayne Nunnely did the same for Freddie Banks and Keenan McCardell.
Nunnely, who also recruited McCardell, just completed his eighth year as the San Diego Chargers defensive line coach, where he has been reunited with his former pass-catching whiz. McCardell ended a contract holdout with Tampa Bay to sign with the Chargers in mid-season.
This past weekend's PGA tour stop in Scottsdale drew an astounding 165,268 beer drinkers and other spectators on Saturday and 517,000 for its four-day weekend (although attendance dropped off to 75,947 on Super Bowl Sunday). That is probably more paying customers than our pro golf event, now known as the Michelin Championship at Las Vegas, has attracted since its inception.
The crowds are so thick in Scottsdale that a few years back when Tiger Woods' ball landed behind a giant boulder that looked like it had been imported from the Bedrock Quarry, the juiced-up gallery simply decided to get behind it and roll it out of the way. Yabba-dabba-do!
Here, the crowds have gotten so sparse in recent years that the gallery would have trouble moving those bark chips used for landscaping from the path of somebody's ball.
In defense of the local golfing community, perhaps if our tournament was played in early February, and Woods or somebody like him decided to enter, there would be a little more traffic on the fairways out in Summerlin.
Emmitt Smith, who announced his retirement on Super Bowl weekend, was a fantastic running back and a pretty good student, too, said one of his former classmates at the University of Florida.
Mark Wallington of the UNLV sports information department said he and Smith were in the same 7 a.m. class after the Cowboys' star decided to return to school and finish work on his degree.
Wallington said despite the rude hour and Smith's status as an NFL star, he never missed a class.
Well, almost never missed a class.
On the day a class project was due, Smith was a no-show, and when the professor asked if anybody knew the reason for his absence, somebody blurted out that it was "Hammer Time."
Turns out rapper M.C. Hammer was in town for a concert the night before and invited Smith to join him on tour.
As far as not doing your homework, at least it was a more original excuse than the dog ate it.
Smith eventually made up the work and went on to receive his degree. I'm not sure the same can be said for Hammer.
UNLV could have put on a heck of a game of H-O-R-S-E at halftime of Monday's game against Utah based on the number of former pro basketball greats disguised as NBA scouts and executives that were on hand to watch the Utes' Andrew Bogut. Among those I spotted were Grizzlies president of basketball operations Jerry West and Chris Mullin, now a special assistant with the Warriors.
West was seated at courtside, which might explain the curious performance of UNLV's Louis Amundson. After getting behind Bogut for a dunk and a put-back early in the game, Amundson started pretending he was West. He wound up chucking some 13 shots -- way too many for a guy who has the range of an air rifle -- including a couple of brutal-looking midrange jump shots while facing the basket.
To say Amundson's jumpers were taken out of context of the offense would be an understatement. These were shots that made one of Billy Kilmer's forward passes look pretty. Had they come close enough to invade the air space around the basket, they probably would have been shot down by anti-aircraft guns.
Amundson deserves credit for tying Bogut's kangaroo down on one of the big Aussie's rare off nights. But just the same, he probably needs to get back under the basket as soon as possible.
Absence, it has been said, makes the heart grow fonder. In the case of the Utah basketball team, it also may wind up being responsible for an NCAA tournament berth.
Were it not for the difficult-to-play-for Rick Majerus' decision to resign as Utes coach last year, chances are point guard Marc Jackson would still be working on a construction crew, which he was doing at this time last year. And future NBA lottery pick Andrew Bogut might be sitting on the end of the Clippers' bench or maybe even on a park bench back home in Melbourne, throwing the boomerang around.
Neither got along famously or otherwise with Majerus but seem to be comfortable with their go-to-guy roles under new coach Ray Giacoletti. Both Jackson and Bogut played the entire 40 minutes in a 57-53 victory against UNLV on Monday night.
Maybe Monday's game wasn't one of Bogut's best. But when was the last time you saw a 7-footer with three guys banging on him like a bass drum go from flag-to-flag without a pit stop?
Among the many things I don't understand about arena football is why it supposedly is impossible to run the football. Sure, the field is smaller, making it more difficult to stretch the defense, but then there are only eight players to block instead of 11. Shouldn't it be relative, then, to real football?
At least it is to the Grand Rapids Airbags, or whatever the unemployed auto workers call the team up there. Michael Bishop, the Grand Rapids QB and former K-State star, became the first player in arena football history to rush for 100 yards in a game when he stepped off exactly that many on just six carries in a 72-56 loss against Colorado on Sunday.
"I think he could run for a lot more if they gave him more attempts," said Mike Dailey, the Colorado coach.
That's just what I've been saying.
Major Harris, the former West Virginia quarterback, had set the previous AFL rushing record with a 95-yard effort for the Columbus Thunderbolts in 1991. Until Sunday, nobody had rushed for more than 75 yards in an arena game since 1996.
I guess it's OK for Paul McCartney to sing about Jojo leaving his home in Tucson, Ariz., for some California grass during halftime of the Super Bowl. After all, California grass -- and for that matter, every other kind -- isn't a first offense that will get you tossed out of the NFL.
But I thought somebody under the age of 50 at NFL headquarters should have been a little more sensitive to the message of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" before using it as a backdrop for the first-half highlights.
The song commemorates the lives of 13 unarmed civilian demonstrators who were slain by the British Army's 1st Parachute Regiment in Derry, Northern Ireland, on Jan. 30, 1972.
Basically, Bloody Sunday is Ireland's Kent State, and I don't think Bono had the Patriots and Eagles in mind when he sat down to write the lyrics.
Of course, there are those in the Reagan administration who still believe Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" is a patriotic tribute to America.


- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 2:39 PM