Columnist Ron Kantowski: Year in review: 2001: LV sports needed a mulligan

Monday, Dec. 31, 2001 | 11:01 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's New Year's resolution is to look on the bright side for 2002. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

How bad was 2001 on the local sports scene?

Bad enough that not even Rudy Giuliani could make it better.

It's a good thing that Sept. 11 showed us how irrelevant sports are in the grand scheme of things. If not, you could have labeled the 2001 local sports year an unmitigated disaster -- and felt you were understating it.

Any discussion of the worst of 2001 should begin and end with three letters:

X-F-L.

"It has to be at least a decade since I first mused out loud 'Why doesn't somebody combine mediocre high school football with a tawdry strip club?' Finally, somebody takes my idea and runs with it," said Bob Costas, who like the rest of the mainstream sports media never got close enough to wrestling magnate Vince McMahon's surgically enhanced football league to require a shower.

Most of us in Las Vegas, which for a time fielded what was termed the XFL's "model franchise," are still scrubbing, even though the league had the good sense to fold after just one abominable season.

But XFL fans weren't the only ones a little wet behind the ears. What about the masterminds who oversee the UNLV basketball program?

First, the administration overreacted in firing coach Bill "Lack of Institutional Control" Bayno in the middle of the season. Then it overreacted by removing the interim tag from replacement Max Good's title (which is all Good ever was). Then it overreacted again by thinking it could lure slick Rick Pitino to town to become the next Rebels' coach.

With all that overreaction, it's a good thing it was only basketball and not nuclear energy that was at the heart of the matter.

There was another minor league franchise meltdown in addition to the XFL Outlaws as the Las Vegas Bandits of the International Basketball League failed to make it through a second season. The team was so starved for attention that it resorted to playing doubleheaders with Bishop Gorman.

The Bandits weren't the only ones to suffer from rusty turnstile syndrome. Despite landing the coveted L.A. Dodgers as their major league affiliate, the renamed Las Vegas 51s saw their in-house attendance plummet like Winona Ryder's star. They did, however, sell a lot of T-shirts and caps with little green men on them.

In case anybody was keeping score, the only sporting event at Sam Boyd Stadium that sold out was a supercross motorcycle race. No wonder we ranked three slots behind Boise, Idaho, on The Sporting News' list of Best Sports Cities.

Or maybe it was because TSN was watching when boxer Zab Judah landed his best shots on referee Jay Nady instead of opponent Kostya Tszyu; UNLV quarterback Jason Thomas was sacked by his Heisman Trophy hype; Las Vegas played the stooge every time one of the Big 4 sports franchises needed a new stadium; state-of-the-art Las Vegas Motor Speedway went virtually unused; UNLV lame duck athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro took more vacations than the Griswold family; we lost our PGA Senior Tour event due to lack of interest; and Big League Weekend was reduced to Big League Weeknight.

But as I said, any discussion of what went wrong in local sports should begin and end with the XFL.

So if the 2001 local sports scene were to have its jersey retired, it would probably read "He Hate Me."