Columnist Ron Kantowski: Don’t throw your hat in this Arena

Thursday, Dec. 19, 2002 | 9:48 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.

Well, what do you know? The Las Vegas Bowl is still living right.

Just about the time you are convinced that ponying up $10 for an end zone seat for the Christmas Day college football game at Sam Boyd Stadium -- pitting marginally deserving New Mexico against totally disinterested UCLA -- would be a waste, along comes word that the Arena Football League is headed back to town.

And just like that, the LV Bowl seems more legit than Steve Wynn's art collection.

The Arena Football League? Well, in that the indoor hybrid has managed to survive for 16 years, perhaps it's not fair to compare it to those dogs-playing-poker velvet paintings they sell out of the back of mini-vans along Boulder Highway.

But Las Vegas is a Mona Lisa town when it comes to entertainment, and Arena Football is more like drawing the pirate inside the matchbook cover.

This isn't the first time that I've written about our indifference to minor league sports, and amazingly, it probably won't be the last. For whatever reason, these semi-rich guys who own these semi-talented teams insist on imitating J.R. Rider during his UNLV career -- they simply refuse to do their homework.

At least that guy J.R. got to ghostwrite his book report only misspelled Rider's name once. Arena football has already flunked out of two Las Vegas venues.

It debuted in 1994 at the MGM Grand Arena, with the thinking being that all those patrons working the slot machines would simply sidle over to the back of the building at kickoff time, providing the Las Vegas Sting with a prefabricated crowd.

After a couple of decent turnouts, attendance waned, as the slots proved more entertaining than slot backs, or at least football in a hockey arena with nets draped from the goal posts. So the Sting, thinking its fan base was mostly locals instead of tourists, moved to the Thomas & Mack the following season.

Even fewer people turned out, and the team moved to Anaheim the following year. I'm not sure how long it lasted there, not that it matters.

So what has happened between now and then to make anybody think football with nets will work here in its third incarnation? OK, Kurt Warner graduated from the Iowa International Harvesters (or whatever they were called) to throw a ton of TD passes for the Rams and make soup commercials.

Yeah, well Indiana State once captured lightning in a bottle when Larry Bird turned up on the Terre Haute campus, and the Sycamores haven't been heard from since.

What's really strange is that of all the minor league sports striving for acceptance, Arena Football is one that should work in a short-attention span town such as ours.

It's only 14 games, seven at home. That means if you gave up three nights at the movies and four at the video poker machines, you could become an Arena Football season-ticket holder. And probably save a bunch of money.

This town is football crazy, and until they start flipping the pigskin off those nets and crashing into the boards, Arena Football sort of looks like the real deal. And you can bet on it.

Throw in reasonably priced beers, or at least cheaper than you can get one at those overrated Irish pubs that are springing up all over town, and an average guy would tell you that Arena Football could/should work here.

But anybody who has spent any time covering local sports certainly knows by now that it can't/won't.

See you at the Las Vegas Bowl.