Columnist Ron Kantowski: NIAA made wrong call on physicals

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2001 | 9:50 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088. Regular columnist Dean Juipe is on vacation.

It appears the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association picked the wrong year to make athletic physical examinations optional.

Under a new rule designed to ease the financial burden on parents, Nevada high school athletes are required to undergo a physical only once, at the start of their careers.

This is not to say that a routine physical exam would have revealed the failing kidneys of Durango High basketball star Martrel Johnson, who learned last week he will require a kidney transplant. But if nothing else, it would have given Johnson an opportunity to tell the examining physician that he was felling sluggish, etc., and it could have led to a follow-up exam that might have diagnosed his situation before now.

Nobody is saying the NIAA wasn't trying to do a good thing by trimming the costs of competing in sports. But I think virtually all will agree that the health of a student-athlete is one area not to be compromised. ...

This just in -- former Georgia Tech/Notre Dame coach George O'Leary is not married to actress Morgan Fairchild.

That was the catch phrase in an old Saturday Night Live skit featuring Jon Lovitz as a pathological liar -- and perhaps the only accomplishment that O'Leary hasn't taken credit for. He resigned under pressure last week when Notre Dame officials learned he fibbed about playing football at New Hampshire and receiving a master's degree from New York University.

Apparently, UNLV is a little more accepting of B.S. than Notre Dame. Several years ago, when the Sun learned former Rebel football coach Jeff Horton had not played wide receiver for Arkansas in the Orange Bowl, as his media guide bio had claimed, UNLV did not reprimand the coach. Horton simply admitted the information wasn't true and had it removed from his bio the following year.

That seemed to work for everybody, although UNLV is not quite the bastion of integrity Notre Dame purports to be.

If nothing else, the O'Leary scam confirms what I wrote in a column several months back: Get a few guys together over beers, and it won't be long before they start exaggerating about how many touchdowns they scored or cheerleaders they dated. ...

Local college football guru Alex Shelton of Las Vegas will be in his element during the next couple of weeks as he has drawn play-by-play duties for five bowl game radio broadcasts. Shelton will be mikeside for tonight's New Orleans Bowl featuring North Texas and Colorado State, as well as for the Music City, Insight.com, Liberty and Gator bowls. ... Another hockey rumor making the rounds is that former Kings enforcer Marty McSorley and his brother Chris, former coach of the defunct Las Vegas Thunder, are principals in an effort that would have the Ottawa Senators moving their AHL affiliate to Las Vegas. But former IHL commissioner Doug Moss, who is trying to relocate the Senators' dormant Prince Edward Island franchise, says Las Vegas is not at the top of his list. ...

Not to be morbid or to make light of departing this earth, but I always thought the ideal way to die would be in a speeding racecar. Being killed by pirates, which was former America's Cup skipper Sir Peter Blake's fate in the Amazon, might be a close second.