Tuesday, Sept. 30, 1997 | 10:40 a.m.
Take it as a sign of his competitive nature, but UNLV quarterback Jon Denton couldn't resist the lure of off-season football last summer. It turns out the All-America candidate played in a local flag-football league that ran from March to July.
But rather than call signals, Denton heard them from his position as a wide receiver.
Still, the risk of injury was there, which raises the question of whether UNLV head coach Jeff Horton would approve.
"Well," said flag-football coordinator Cris Griffith, "I'm not so sure Coach Horton knew Jon was playing."
He does now.
Incidentally, that same flag-football league had some other high-profile players -- ex-Rebels like Randy Gatewood, Rodney Mazion and, occasionally, Steve Stallworth.
Gatewood and Mazion are among 20 local players forming a team that will compete in a semi-pro arena league in Phoenix beginning in January. Ex-Rebel and current Arena Football League star Hunkie Cooper has said he will coach the team, which is actually the remnants of the semi-pro Las Vegas Knights.
"We'll pick a roster of players who can afford to pay their own way on the trips," Griffith said Monday. "Everything will be self-funded."
The Knights folded after a couple of seasons of bouncing from site to site and playing without sponsorship. A city this size always seems to have a semi-pro football team, and stepping in this year to replace the Knights has been the Las Vegas Kings. They've played three games at three sites and their upcoming schedule remains uncertain.
Speaking of uncertain schedules, the Northern Nevada community of Jackpot deserves credit for fielding a high-school football team this season despite having fewer than 20 eligible players and having the state's first-ever female head football coach. Shelly Hester took over as coach late this summer after the boys indicated they wanted to try to play despite their depleted numbers (and lack of an established coach). Jackpot, an interesting five-casino town of 1,300 on the Idaho border 480 miles from Las Vegas, plays 8-man football. The team dropped to 1-3 with a 48-0 home loss to the Spring Mountain Youth Camp over the weekend. ... Spring Mountain, incidentally, is 4-0 and has a Friday game at perennial power Indian Springs. ... Baseball superstar Greg Maddux of Las Vegas would have won 20 games this season -- instead of the 19 he finished with -- had Atlanta closer Mark Wohlers not blown four saves in games in which he relieved Maddux.
Political consultant Sig Rogich of Las Vegas may be a brilliant man but -- despite what you may have read elsewhere -- he's already 0-1 in his role of rehabilitating the image of boxer Mike Tyson. Despite advance preparations, Tyson recently failed to show for a make-amends meeting with conqueror Evander Holyfield in Louisville, Ky. Tyson used the excuse of airplane trouble to skip out of a meeting that local physician Dr. Robert Voy worked to arrange. "I thought he would be there," Voy said of Tyson's no-show act. "We had it planned for two weeks. It would have been to Mike's advantage to be there." ... This speaks for itself: The MGM Grand severed its ties with Tyson (and promoter Don King) last week and will not host any future Tyson fights. Even Rogich can't paint spots on that one. ... Back to Voy for a minute: He may be called as an expert witness in a lawsuit filed last week by U.S. middle distance runner Mary Decker Slaney. While she has since been exonerated, she's seeking unspecified damages for testing positive for a banned substance at the U.S. Olympic Trials last May. At issue is the testing criteria.
It seemed like a typo at first, but apparently it's not. Don Newman, the new head basketball coach at Arizona State University, really did go 20-114 in his most recent job, head coach at Sacramento State from 1992-97. Here's ASU with tons of money and that's the best it can do? ... UNLV's Saturday football opponent, Southern California, has built a reputation as "Tailback U" due to its many outstanding running backs throughout the years. But the Trojans went into last week's game with California ranked last in the country in rushing and had only 123 yards in their 27-17 win over Cal. LaVale Woods actually had 129 yards for USC but the rest of his backfield cohorts lost yardage. ... A Reno source says land-speed racer Craig Breedlove is obsessed -- "extremely obsessed, to the point of being fatalistic" -- with holding the world record that escaped him last week. He's also running short in the financial support department and may not have a realistic chance to reclaim the record that's now held by Andy Green of Great Britain.
Trivia: footballs aren't and never were made of pigskins. ... Local PGA Tour player Robert Gamez picked up a check for $47,450 Sunday in New York, which assured him of keeping his tour card for 1998. Perhaps he's coming back up the pro golf ladder after a slide brought on by disinterest. "I was young and having fun," he said recently. "I admit I got lazy and didn't work as hard as I could." ... As a rookie this year with the Boston Red Sox, Las Vegas resident Nomar Garciaparra showed Hall of Fame potential both in the field and at the plate. But shame on him for refusing to talk with a SUN reporter for "three minutes" about his season, as he did last week despite the fact he was already on the phone; he said "call back in 15 minutes" then didn't answer the return call or several others over the course of two days. Goes to prove it doesn't take long to get a big head. ... Same thing goes for Minnesota Twins second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who complained last week that he's too good to be wasting his time playing for a losing team. ... On this date in 1947: It's Brooklyn vs. New York in the first-ever televised World Series game. The Yankees take the opener 5-3 and, eventually, the Series, 4-3.
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