Columnist Ron Kantowski: Prof: ‘Going for it’ isn’t such a gamble

Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2002 | 10:41 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Usually, I'm not one to blow my own horn. But this time, pass that trombone.

I'm not sure I was onto something last Nov. 8 when I wrote that conservative football coaches usually were giving away a down when they elected to punt on fourth down.

But now there's research to back me up.

David Romer, a professor at the University of California, recently released a paper that concludes NFL teams go for it only 10 percent of the time with the odds in their favor.

According to Romer, statistics indicate coaches should "gamble" on 4th-and-4 from just about anywhere, 4th-and-9 from the opponent's 33 and even 4th-and-2 from a team's own 10.

Romer concludes that if teams were more aggressive on fourth down, they might win another game in three of four seasons.

You can access Romer's report on the Internet at http://emlab.Berkeley.edu/users/dromer/papers/nber9024.pdf.

Until then, keep screaming at your favorite (or not so favorite) coach to go for it on fourth down.

After all, it's not only the fun thing to do, a lot of time it's also the smart thing to do.

A look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the week of sports:

The Good ...

C-M AMERICAN LEGION: Congrats to the Cimarron-Memorial American Legion team, which bowed out of the World Series in Virginia with a 1-2 record. C-M can take another bow for posting a 45-11 summer record and bouncing back from defeat in the state tournament to win the regional as host team and become just the fifth Las Vegas team to qualify for the World Series.

BRIAN DALLIMORE: Maybe the former Clark High and Stanford star is to baseball what Bonnie Raitt was to the music industry -- a late bloomer. The fiery 29-year-old son of former UNLV coaching icon Fred Dallimore is hitting .298 for the Tucson Sidewinders, and when the major league rosters are expanded to 40 he might be in line to get his first big league cup of coffee with the parent Diamondbacks next week -- provided there is a next week.

STUBBY CLAPP: The Memphis Redbirds' beloved second baseman and this writer's favorite minor league ballplayer has his own bobblehead doll. Stubby is in the final year of his contract with the parent Cardinals, meaning he'll either become a free agent or (with a name like his) a TV game show host next year.

CHRIS RILEY: The former UNLV golfer ended this city's long drought atop the PGA leaderboard with a victory in the Reno-Tahoe Open last weekend. The life of Reilly was made easier by Tiger and the rest of the good players chasing the little white ball around in Washington state, but let's not forget that Riley played Woods straight up -- and eye to eye -- in the final round of the PGA the week before.

The Bad ...

BECKHAM GROUPIES: Some Japanese women can't get enough of English soccer star David Beckham, even though the World Cup left the Land of the Rising Sun a couple of months ago. Travel agents are making serious yen on Japanese women booking tour packages to England to watch Mr. Posh Spice get his kicks.

"My dream is to go to England, have an English baby and raise the child like Beckham," said a Japanese office worker named Kaori. "Actually, I planned to marry my boyfriend in June. However, I broke off the engagement because I couldn't have followed Beckham around during the World Cup if I had married him."

Mikiko, a housewife in Setagaya, has changed her 6-year-old son's hairstyle to resemble Beckham's and has begun an affair with the man teaching her English.

"My teacher thinks he resembles Beckham and loves it when I call him Beckham during sex," she said.

Kind of makes collecting baseball cards seem passe, doesn't it?

PROMOTIONAL DEATH: A woman running across the diamond in search of one at an Orlando Rays-Jacksonville Suns minor league baseball game collapsed and died. Victoria Lange, 28, was one of about 250 women and girls who ran from the outfield wall to the infield dirt in search of a small box containing a diamond.

LITTLE LEAGUE ON ESPN: After spending last week watching 11- and 12-year-old sluggers mug for the ESPN cameras, here's one vote to limit Little League World Series television coverage to a single game on Wide World of Sports, like when I was a kid.

The Ugly ...

NEBRASKA'S UNIFORMS: The Cornhuskers' won't join Oregon and Oscar Madison on Mr. Blackwell's worst dressed list, but I still like their old jerseys better.

OAKLAND RAIDERS: The Rose Bowl badly wants to host an NFL franchise but has drawn a line in silver and black. Speaking of the possibility of the Oakland Raiders re-relocating to the Los Angeles-area, Bill Thomson, chairman of the Rose Bowl tenant search committee, said: I don't think we want to embark on something that will tarnish the image of the Rose Bowl."

I guess all those underachieving Ohio State teams coached by Woody Hayes don't count.