Columnist Ron Kantowski: Snug Orleans Arena shows it’s just right for sports

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 | 9:49 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

I've got no problem with new and improved, but as you will read, bigger is not always better.

The Ricardo Mayorga vs. Vernon Forrest boxing rematch was the first major sporting event at the new Orleans Arena. Based on what I saw Saturday, the HBO-televised event was a rousing success.

And although Steve Stallworth's opinion is biased, the director of the new sports and concert arena said it also passed inspection from an up close and personal vantage point.

"This was the first real one," Stallworth, a former UNLV quarterback, said of the arena's full-fledged foray into sports. "We were thrilled to death (with the evening).

"We took every sort of extra step -- and probably spent a bunch of money we shouldn't have -- to make sure we did a proper job. But if you ask Don King's people, if you ask the HBO people and most importantly, if you ask the people in the stands, I think it was a great experience for everybody."

There were at least three reasons why the paying customers probably enjoyed themselves.

For starters, it was a pretty good fight, as Mayorga showed his knockout victory against Forrest in their first fight wasn't all that shocking by pounding out a majority decision.

Second, nearly 4,000 seats, or just about half the arena's capacity, were scaled at $50 or below, with the cheap seats going for $35.

Third, the price of a 16-ounce beer was a modest $3.25, as per Orleans proprietor Michael Gaughan's edict.

Even with the Budweiser flowing at 7-Eleven prices, the place wasn't quite sold out, as the announced crowd was 6,272. But with the arena capacity listed at 8,000, it looked nearly full.

You wouldn't have been able to say that had the bout been at the spacious MGM Grand Garden or the even more cavernous Thomas & Mack Center.

In that way, the Orleans Arena is sort of like Baby Bear's porridge. Stallworth will be the first to admit that when it comes to a Tyson or De La Hoya fight or Springsteen concert, it won't be able to compete with the big arenas.

But for minor-league hockey -- the expansion Las Vegas Wranglers will drop the puck this fall -- and Gordon Lightfoot, it should prove to be a perfect fit. In fact, it should even work out well for a lot of mid-major type events that aren't Canadian.

About the only blemish on the weekend was a rowdy weigh-in -- imagine that -- in which an overflow crowd got a little rambunctious in a ballroom set up for 820 people.

"I was going to say we lost control of the weigh-in," Stallworth said. "But then we really never had control of it to begin with."

Schlossnagle apparently rubbed a lot of people in the Las Vegas baseball community the wrong way, and at least a couple of Sun readers also questioned his integrity.

They claimed that Schlossnagle misrepresented himself on his resume, that if I checked it out, I would discover that Schlossnagle never pitched at Elon College, a North Carolina school with a rich baseball history, as his media guide bio states.

Well, those readers were correct. Sort of. It turns out that Schlossnagle redshirted at Elon because of an injury and became a student manager/coach after that, and he never pitched in a game there.

But then he never claimed to.

His bio states only that he was a pitcher at Elon, which technically is true.

Even if it was only batting practice.

If the Rebels' swimming program were any lower on the radar screen, only a Chihuahua could hear the blip. But when it comes to balancing the books with the drama of athletic competition, no one has ever had to toss Jim Reitz's swimmers a life preserver.

To nobody's surprise, when the Mountain West Conference announced its all-academic team over the weekend, there were 17 Rebels on it.

For the women, it was Jessie Bradshaw, Shayna Burns, Tamee Ebert, Jessica Field, Khawinda Kuhn, Alyson Noble, Kelly Piano, Madalina Tin, Julie Unrau and Alison Zick. The men were represented by Patrick Adams, Michael Day, Bjorn Eriksson, Jonathan Hugo, Adam Martinson, Kyle Tannehill and Kevin Williams.

Keep up the good work, Jim. And, by all means, try not to get yourself fired by whoever is running the athletic department.