Columnist Ron Kantowski: LV’s list for millennium short, sweet

Thursday, Dec. 2, 1999 | 12:32 p.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

It used to be that the only lists that mattered were laundry, grocery and The Dean's.

But this is a Millennium Year, baby. And everybody's got a list. Best 100 this, worst 50 that. Top 10 this, bottom five that.

With all due respect to David Letterman and his nightly top 10 lists (the granddaddy of all top 10 lists), every hundred years is a pretty good interval between these projects, don't you think?

Some in the media have gone to great lengths to research their lists, as if anybody really cares about in what order the best clutch-hitting second basemen during Tuesday night games in Cleveland during an odd calendar year are arranged.

Personally, I don't lie awake at nights, perplexed that ESPN ranked a horse (Secretariat) ahead of a horse's ass (O.J. Simpson) on its list of the century's greatest athletes.

But if it's another list you want, I'll give you one. Mine on the best of Las Vegas sports over the years follows. It took all of five minutes to research, because that's about the time it takes to travel from the top of my head to this space. Besides, we live in Nevada. We specialize in bighorn sheep, not big-time athletes.

(But we'd still be a minus 7 favorite against Montana, pick your sport.)

Any list of top Las Vegas athletes would include the following: Andre Agassi, Greg Maddux, Larry Johnson, Randall Cunningham, Reggie Theus, Matt Williams. My list is limited to those six. I doubt that the guy standing on a street corner in Cedar Rapids has heard of anybody else from these parts.

We're a little light in the mover and shaker department as well. Put me down for Jerry Tarkanian, Bob Arum and Agassi. They're the guys who put Las Vegas sports on the the map, and in the case of Agassi and Arum, the globe.

As for big events, given our largest stadium seats only 34,000 spectators, how many of those can we have held?

My sheet would include UNLV's 1990 NCAA basketball championship, Tark being run out of town, the first Winston Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that attracted a bazillion NASCAR fans and any prizefight featuring two of the following: Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler.

And that's all, folks.

To those athletes whose feats didn't make it onto my lists, I apologize. To everybody else, who were just spared yet another month of sports retrospectives, you're welcome.

* NO RESPECT: While the UNLV basketball program seems to be headed in the right direction under Bill Bayno (although probably not at the pace he or you would prefer), it's not all the way back yet, at least in the eyes of some in the national media.

To wit, this is what Vincent Bonsignore of the Los Angeles Daily News wrote this week on the recruiting of UCLA's Jason Kapono:

"Utah was in the picture, as was Rhode Island, Missouri, even UNLV."

Even UNLV?

Ten years ago, Utah, Rhode Island and Missouri would have been happy to have been mentioned in the same sentence as UNLV.

* BOWLED UNDER: Scene I'd like to see, but probably never will: Well-to-do car salesman -- er, bowl committee member -- dressed in ill-fitting, pastel-colored blazer addressing the media:

"Well guys, I've gotta be honest. The Salad Bowl committee is a little disappointed in our Disco Tech vs. Whoer U matchup. Sure, Tech won its league championship, but who outside of Beano Cook has heard of the Insignificant Athletic Conference?

"And while I'm fully aware that Whoer won its last four games to become bowl eligible, they haven't been really good since Joe College got kicked out of school for accepting a Range Rover from that booster.

"All things considered, we were hoping the NCAA would look the other way so we could take 6-6 Ohio State."

* WALTZ RIGHT IN: A few years ago, Rich Waltz was a sidekick to Ken Korach on Las Vegas Stars baseball broadcasts. Although he did a good job in that role, the Stars fired him because he supposedly "had no future" as a big-league broadcaster.

But Waltz has proved Stars management wrong, as he has carved a nice little niche as an ESPN college football play-by-play man.

Waltz draws most of the Thursday and Saturday night assignments on ESPN2, which means a lot of Mountain West and North Carolina State games. But that hasn't curtailed his enthusiasm, and his knowledge of those teams is evident.

His play-by-play skills are surpassed only by his dead-on impression of Jackie Stewart, the former Formula One race car champion.

* TALKING HEADS: A longtime acquaintance in the electronic media was feeling frustrated the other day when he said the primary function of TV news has become protecting viewers from potential harm. Actually, that rings pretty true.

If a household appliance blows up in Dubuque and injures four, rest assured the the TV guys that evening will tell us to make sure the kitchen blender is U.L.-approved before plugging it in.

Maybe that's why it was cool to see ESPN's Dan Patrick squirm a little bit Monday night, when David Letterman asked if it was kosher for the SportsCenter anchor to pimp for Coors in those TV spots.

With a wan smile, Patrick told the host that his producers didn't broach that topic during the pre-segment interview. When Letterman pursued his line of questioning, Patrick relented and answered (sort of). But he didn't appear comfortable doing it.

Sometimes when the shoe is on the other foot it feels a little snug.

* GRIFFEY'S LAMENT: So Ken Griffey Jr. wants to play closer to his adopted home of Florida. Well, given that he is currently employed in Seattle, I'd say that unless the Twins relocate to Anchorage this winter that's pretty much a given.

* QUICK FIXES: Like Georgetown shooting free throws, I was off the mark in this space Tuesday.

A couple of past and present UNLV officials insist the Rebels started using black trim on the Thomas & Mack Center floorboards prior to the 1996 or 1997 season, and not just this year. And lost in the confusion of the plug being pulled on last Saturday's Silver Bandits-San Diego Stingrays telecast was the fact Las Vegas lost the IBL game in double overtime.

* AROUND THE HORN: Two quintessential names for major college athletic directors: DeLoss Dodds (Texas) and Duff Tittle (BYU assistant). ... Former Las Vegas Thunder coach Chris McSorley is coaching pro hockey in England and is trying to convince brother Marty, the former LA Kings enforcer, to join him on the other side of the frozen pond. ... It's too bad former Cheyenne High star Edgerton Hartwell, who made the 1999 all-Gateway Football Conference team as a first-team linebacker for the Western Illinois Leathernecks, didn't attend prep school in London. Because then he would be an English Leatherneck. ... With the exception of Bert Parks singing the Miss America song, nothing beats an Army-Navy football game for pageantry. ... His Phoenix Suns coaches and teammates have taken to calling former UNLV star Shawn Marion "Manny" -- not in deference to one of t he Pep Boys, but a praying mantis. ... He probably expects it, but every time the Silver Bandits fail to cover the Imperial Palace spread in an IBL game, f ans are going to wonder whether Issac Burton tanked a free throw. Burton was one of two former Arizona State Sun Devils convicted in a 1994 point-shaving scheme.

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