Columnist Ron Kantowski: Dirt bike races soup up Sam Boyd attendance

Tuesday, May 8, 2001 | 10:09 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

So UNLV is going to move a pair of its Saturday football games to Friday night to bring a little more exposure to its rejuvenated football program.

But if it's a full stadium the Rebels yearn for, then they should just play Northwestern and Colorado State on dirt bikes.

Saturday night's EA Sports AMA Supercross season finale attracted a capacity crowd of 39,403 to Sam Boyd Stadium for an anticlimactic race, given the points championship had been determined prior to the event.

Last December, the Rebels turned Arkansas into pork rinds in front of only 25,868 in the same stadium at Las Vegas Bowl IX -- despite the fact UNLV was playing its first bowl game (and against a name opponent at that) in six years.

There are some things -- Scot Pollard's Samarai power forward hairstyle, why today's starting pitchers can throw only every fifth day while turn-of-the-century hurlers would receive the ball every third day (at minimum) -- that defy an explanation.

Brisk football weather aside, you can add the one above to the list.

TCU has joined UNLV as one of the schools that has switched a Saturday game to Friday, and the prep coaches down there are more riled up than when it was revealed that the entire 1985-86 season of "Dallas" was only a figment of Bobby Ewing's imagination.

"I was shocked when I heard about it," THSCA executive director Eddie Joseph told the Dallas Morning News. "I wouldn't think you would want to bite the hands that feed you, but I guess that's the case."

But don't blame ESPN, which has agreed to televise five Friday night NCAA games (so far) for this little misunderstanding.

"We're not forcing any conference to schedule games on Friday night," ESPN communications manager Josh Krulewitz said in the Dallas Morning News report.

But don't think that ESPN can't be bought.

"If the Big Ten conference wanted to broadcast games on Friday night, we would explore that," Krulewitz admitted.

The Black Diamonds this season will open on the road, close on the road and play all of their 126 games on the road because their new home stadium remains unfinished. Historians are calling it the longest road trip in baseball history.

But Chad Gambill of Clearwater, Fla., a sixth-round Colorado Rockies draft pick in 1993, put the situation in perspective.

"I'd rather play on the road every day than not play at all," he said.

First, Michael Imperioli, a casual railbird who plays "Christopher" on the hit HBO series "The Sopranos," gave out semi-long shot Monarchos as the winner.

On second thought, Imperioli does not play Christopher on TV. He is Christopher.

But then NBC happened upon actress Sean Young (whose credits include "Officer and a Gentleman" and "Blade Runner") and asked who she liked.

Young, wearing one of Lesley Visser's wide-brimmed hats, said she was going to put her $2 on so-and-so until she looked in her racing form and discovered that so-and-so "had never run on grass."

The NBC reporter neglected to nudge Young in the ribs or whisper in her ear that they run the Derby on dirt.

Finally, the actress came clean and admitted that the only criteria she uses to handicap the Derby field are the horse's names.