Columnist Dean Juipe: Year in review: 2001: Take pride as we look back on year

Dean Juipe

Monday, Dec. 31, 2001 | 11 a.m.

Dean Juipe doesn't always see the glass as half full but he's happy to write about it when he does. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

My colleague on the other side of the page is of the belief that we in Las Vegas just suffered through a lousy, miserable year when it comes to local sports and that we should be happy to see the calendar flipping over to 2002.

He cites the rise and fall of the XFL's Las Vegas Outlaws as a definitive example, as if we were heartbroken to see the well-financed team and league come and go.

But his perspective is skewered.

I say Las Vegas deserves credit for giving the XFL a chance but that the world is a far better place without it, as we now all know.

The XFL was junk. It was stocked with unemployed players and cheerleaders plucked from local strip clubs. It was run by a pro wrestling magnate who employed a former pro wrestler as his top TV analyst, and in quick order the games proved to be meaningless.

There was an essence of hooliganism in the stands at XFL games and the mind-set of the players -- who can forget He Hate Me? -- wasn't much better. It was all so much worthless tripe, and the fact that not only Las Vegas but all of America drove the league out of business after a single season is enough to make it a banner year by my standards.

I say hooray for 2001, in part because we also got rid of another league that was blighting our landscape, the IBL.

Give us a worthwhile basketball league and maybe we'll support it. But the IBL was boring beyond belief and its failure is a feather in Las Vegas' cap, if for no other reason than it proved we have the ability to discern between quality entertainment and a money-making scheme that was of no aesthetic value.

We had an abundance of good things to herald on the Las Vegas sportscape in 2001, not the least of which was the hiring of Charlie Spoonhour as men's basketball coach at UNLV. As he has already shown, he's a step up from the ousted Bill Bayno.

Likewise, UNLV has a new baseball coach (Jim Schlossnagle) who may turn around that moribund program, and a new athletic director in football coach John Robinson. Supplanting Charlie Cavagnaro with Robinson puts the year in the plus column, no matter what else may have happened.

We also had no fewer than four professional golfers excel on the PGA Tour, with Chris Riley finishing No. 45 on the money list with almost $1.2 million and Edward Fryatt (No. 90, with $572,820), Bob May (No. 94, with $534,936) and Craig Barlow (No. 122, with $414,139) making us proud.

Boxing fans can also boast of seeing Lennox Lewis right an earlier wrong and make quick work of Hasim Rahman in a November fight for the heavyweight championship that exposed the imposter at Mandalay Bay. In a related item, Nevada remains the only place in the world where a referee will stop a fight without seeing the loser pummeled into delirium -- as Jay Nady proved with Zab Judah at the MGM.

Need more? Well, how about Las Vegas High winning the state football championship after a long drought? Or our minor-league baseball franchise hooking up with the prestigious Los Angeles Dodgers? Or UNLV building a sleek new softball stadium that has to help that program? Or the hugely successful Las Vegas Bowl that was held last week? Or the likelihood of minor-league hockey returning here soon after recent and serious discussions?

Beyond the Rebels winning the NCAA Tournament or Robinson's team having a place in a BCS bowl, what more could a local sports fan have wanted? It was good year, maybe even one of our best.