Columnist Jeff Haney: Broadcaster Lee Pete: The show will go on

Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2001 | 11:14 a.m.

Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Wednesday. Reach him at 259-4041 or haney@lasvegassun.com

Lee Pete, the city's most storied sports radio personality, is not ready to call it quits just yet.

Listeners feared the worst when Pete's afternoon sports gambling show abruptly left the airwaves last week, replaced by national syndicated programming on KRLV 1340-AM.

Considering Pete is probably thinking about retirement in his mid-70s and that the station had recently undergone some changes in management, it looked as if his legacy had come to an unceremonious end.

Not so, according to Pete. The show is only on hiatus -- albeit an unscheduled one.

"I'm taking a couple of weeks off," Pete said. "We'll be back on the air Monday ... same time (3 p.m.), same station."

Pete's show, which also features co-hosts Peter Ruchman, general manager of the Gambler's Book Shop, and local handicapper Andy Iskoe, has been running in its current incarnation for more than three years.

Las Vegas is fortunate to have several outstanding sports-betting radio shows, though none is quite like Pete's.

Free-form and unstructured -- but at times insightful, even brilliant -- Pete's program appeals not only to hardcore gamblers, but also to newer Las Vegas residents who crave a link to the city's colorful past.

One moment, Pete & Co. might be kicking around the day's college basketball point spreads; the next moment Pete will be recounting stories about life on the Strip in the early '70s, or about some long-forgotten football scandal from the '50s.

"He spins yarns that make you feel good," Ruchman said. "He makes you remember there was another time in this town, when it wasn't all corporate."

Best known in Las Vegas for a long run on KDWN, when he and co-host Jim Brown (yes, that Jim Brown) would talk sports betting on a show heard throughout the West, Pete is also credited with creating the concept of a sports talk show, back in the early 1950s in Toledo, Ohio.

In a way, that makes him at least partly responsible for modern-day sports talk radio and all that it embodies -- the good, the bad and the Mad Dog.

It would be a shame if such an influential figure disappeared from the radio dial without so much as a farewell show.

Pete is not thinking in such cosmic terms, though; he's just eager to get back in action.

"I'll tell you, I'm looking forward to a great, wide-open college basketball tournament," Pete said. "It looks like any team can whip any other team this year. We'll go through the basketball tournament, the beginning of baseball, and stay on at least through the end of the NBA season.

"Then, we'll see where it goes from there."

(Jeff Haney appears as a weekly guest on the Lee Pete show.)

Under fire from the Saturday Night Live honcho, who was irate because XFL games were running into SNL's time slot, the league instituted several rule changes designed to speed up its games last week.

Gamblers who figured the faster pace would lead to fewer points had the opportunity to bet into totals that were already posted.

Their thinking proved correct when all four games went "under" the total: San Francisco beat Memphis 13-6 (total was 38), L.A. beat the Outlaws 12-9 (36), Birmingham beat Chicago 14-3 (46) and Orlando beat N.Y./N.J. 18-12 (34 1/2).

Three of the four totals were bet down only a point or so, although the Orlando game was bet down from an opening number of 37.

This weekend's totals opened a bit lower: Outlaws-San Francisco at 31 1/2 points, N.Y./N.J.-Chicago at 32 1/2, Birmingham-Orlando at 36, and Memphis-L.A. at 33 1/2.

The symposium will also feature a representative from the NCAA and a member of Congress -- both likely to argue in favor of a bill outlawing college betting.

Sandoval and Root, of course, are against such a ban.

"Why persecute sports bettors?" Root said. "The problem, I believe, is the seedy image of sports bettors and sports gambling. I'm hoping to change all that at Harvard.

"My guess is they've never met a clean-cut, articulate, Ivy League-educated, family-oriented, nice Jewish boy who happens to be a successful CEO in the sports gaming industry. Well I'm going to introduce them to the new face of sports betting -- me." ...

Offshore bookmaker Jay Cohen is slated to speak at the World Internet Gaming Summit in Miami March 15-16.

Cohen, who was profiled on a recent segment of "60 Minutes," was sentenced to 21 months in prison for accepting American wagers at his Antigua-based World Sports Exchange. Cohen, who is appealing the verdict, is expected to address what he calls the "hypocrisy" of the U.S. government as well as the state of the offshore bookmaking industry.