Columnist Ron Kantowski: These scholar-athletes are good people

Tuesday, May 29, 2001 | 10:20 a.m.

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

Where's the best place in Las Vegas to learn how to shoot baskets, make good grades and be a good citizen?

Ten years ago, the answer might have been the end of Jerry Tarkanian's bench. But according to the NIAA-State Farm Award of Excellence standings, it's The Meadows and Green Valley High School. The Meadows finished first in Class 2A and Green Valley second in 4A in the yearly competition that combines athletics, academics and citizenship, each weighted equally.

Other Las Vegas schools that finished among the top 10 in 4A were Silverado (fifth), Durango (sixth), Cimarron-Memorial (seventh) and Bonanza (ninth). Reno High won the title as the most well-rounded 4A school.

They probably won't hang a championship banner from the gymnasium rafters at the winning schools, but perhaps they should. Wins and losses are important (at least until the next year), but it's also nice to see the schools recognized for how they play outside the lines.

CREAM RISES FAST: The Indy Racing League took a big hit Sunday in credibility (at least among hard-core racing fans) at its marquee event, the Indianapolis 500. There were seven cars representing the rival CART series on the 33-car grid and they finished 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 29th.

The CART guys were content to jockey for position during the first half of the race but led virtually every lap after the halfway point. At the end, the only six cars on the lead lap were CART entries.

But the animosity that has kept CART away en masse from Indianapolis since 1995 when Speedway president Tony George founded the IRL to promote young American drivers in a cost-effective series seems to be dissipating. If anybody from the CART side was crowing about Sunday's rape and pillaging of the IRL's showcase event, it was done in private back in Gasoline Alley.

ABC HITS THE WALL: The only performance worse than the collective IRL drivers and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler (who sounded like an Oldsmobile engine hitting on only seven cylinders during the singing -- er, screeching -- of the national anthem) at the Indy 500 was that of ABC, which apparently believes the "500" after Indianapolis stands for commercials instead of miles.

Things are totally back to normal at Indy as far as the TV coverage goes -- if your name isn't Unser or Andretti (or in the case of this year's race, Tony Stewart) it's hard to get on TV when ABC is manning the cameras.

And imagine the fallout were the networks to miss the big basket, key play or big hit because they were away on a station break. But that's what happened again at Indy, when ABC broke away just as the leaders were making a crucial late-race pit stop.

Apparently, the guys in the truck don't believe the announcers when they say that the race is won and lost in the pits. Because about the time the front-running cars of Helio Castoneves, Gil de Ferran, Michael Andretti and Tony Stewart were playing bumper cars exiting the pits in the race's key moment, ABC was pimping new SUVs or worse, one of its own programs "immediately following today's race."

And will somebody please give Al Michaels the day off. He may be a Hall of Fame sportscaster, but he adds nothing to the Indy 500 coverage as studio host.

BULLPEN HELP: For the first time in history, a major league baseball game was delayed to film a movie in Texas last week. During the seventh-inning stretch at the Ballpark in Arlington, the Indians-Rangers game was interrupted so that "relief pitcher" Dennis Quaid could make his entrance from the bullpen. Quaid plays real-life pitcher Jim Morris, a school teacher who made it to the majors in 1999 with Tampa Bay, in an upcoming movie called "The Rookie."

As USA Today cracked, too bad it was only a movie. The Rangers need all the help they can get.

BELL LAP: Given the games themselves only attract a few dozen specators, the UNLV baseball head coaching vacancy sure is creating a buzz around town. I still make CCSN's Tim Chambers a heavy favorite for the job. ... The Boys from Brazil are doing better at the speedway than they are on the soccer pitch. While five of the first 10 finishers at Sunday's Indy 500 hail from Brazil, their country's tradition-laden national soccer team is struggling and may even be in jeopardy of failing to qualify for the World Cup. That's a startling development which would make Brazil (totally) nuts.