Letter: McCain succeeds with blackmail

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001 | 9:15 a.m.

Well I see that the NCAA and Sen. John McCain blackmailed the participating tournament schools into moving the tournaments out of the Paris hotel-casino. Aren't we glad that Arizona is running so well that McCain can spend his time telling Nevada what it can and can't do. Gaming is legal in Nevada. How long are we going to be blackmailed? Is the next step outlawing all Nevada sports teams from the NCAA and league play?

Wasn't it Arizona that would not be told what to do when it came to declaring a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday?

Perhaps McCain and the NCAA should be much more concerned with the bleeding going on with the student athletes leaving college early or not even going to college, but going straight to the pro teams. But the toothlessness of the NCAA will never allow it to deal with a problem that difficult. It is more into punishment than solving its many problems.

With the hundreds of millions of dollars that the NCAA makes off the backs of these student athletes, it should be able to come up with a plan to keep these young people in college.

Nevada has always been very independent. It will be interesting to see how far we'll be pushed. We are good enough to have the "honor" of storing nuclear waste, but not to host basketball tournaments. Go figure!

PAULINE KENNEDY