Columnist Dean Juipe: Wolves howl as mouthy visitors win

Dean Juipe

Monday, Nov. 8, 1999 | 10:40 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

The tenor of the game was set more than an hour before kickoff when the visitors took the field not just talking trash, but issuing threats.

With a very real tension in the air, fingers were pointed and numbers were called. This was more than intimidation, it was a pure hostility not usually seen or heard at an organized sporting event and it came complete with street-bred exchanges and fearsome innuendo.

It was no place for the lethargic. The mood was set and it was easily discernible: This would be a fierce football game.

And it was, as the hard hitting -- and its companion conversation, direct and often racially driven -- never ceased.

It was not unlike two polar-opposite neighborhoods meeting to settle their differences, except Sunday at Mojave High School in North Las Vegas the combatants represented semi-pro football teams and, fortunately, they limited their warfare to the confines of the field. Yet the atmosphere was so dynamic, so brutally real, that nothing -- including weapons being drawn -- would have come as a surprise.

Semi-pro football, c 1999: No police or security but plenty of blood and guts. And it takes guts just to play when the stakes are limited to pride.

Maybe 50 spectators watched a game that was quickly a rout, the outcome determined early. The visitors from California's San Francisco-Oakland area, the Bay City Falcons, were mean and nasty villains who dressed only 21 players and didn't have a coach, but their athletes had the better skills and they defeated the Las Vegas Wolves by the embarrassingly easy score of 54-7.

The loss was only the second in nine games for the Wolves, and both have come at the hands of the 8-0 Falcons. Las Vegas will complete its season next Sunday at the same site.

In the event you feel you've seen it all and can't be taken aback by anything in sports, you may want to take in the finale even if the opposition isn't nearly as demonstrative as the haughty Falcons. These guys were vivid and pointed in their verbal imagery and they had the ability and character to back it up.

They definitely walked the walk after talking the talk.

Bay City was scoring at will while the players and coaches on the Las Vegas sideline slid into a dreary dissension. Never had a team looked so discontent, as a spunky pregame morale deteriorated into a complete lack of support that pitted coaches vs. players and players vs. players.

There was talk of quitting and of incompetence, and with the stands virtually empty it was easy to pity the players who were voluntarily subjecting themselves to this abuse. But that's the nature of semi-pro football: Those who participate do so in spite of common sense and despite a risk/reward proposition that is heavily stilted to the risk side.

The game is primitive yet endearing at this level, and it is never played without a few hassles. The Wolves -- who can trace their Las Vegas origins through semi-pro predecessors the Knights, the Kings, the Gamblers and the Aces -- are typically underfinanced and unappreciated. They exist for their own amusement.

They didn't notice or care that the clock ran more or less without interruption in the fourth quarter. The game was over, the battle lost.

The only satisfaction was in having survived.