Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Ron Kantowski: CWS lagging way behind Madness, BCS

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.

Another College World Series has come and gone without anybody outside of Omaha, Neb., Houston or Palo Alto, Calif., having noticed.

Not that there's anything wrong with the CWS, save for those aluminum battering rams they hand to the hitters. It's just that the CWS has failed to capture the imagination of the public the way its football and basketball counterparts have.

For instance, on Monday afternoon, about an hour before the championship game between Rice and Stanford was to air on ESPN, the sports network ran its daily episodes of "The First Word" and "Pardon the Interruption" back-to-back. Both shows feature sports writers debating the day's hot topics in sports but neither so much as mentioned the CWS.

Furthermore, was anybody talking about the pitching matchups around the water cooler in your office?

Didn't think so.

UNLV coach Jim Schlossnagle is one of many coaches who would like to see the college season roughly coincide with major league baseball's, figuring that interest in college football and basketball is greater because their seasons run nearly parallel to the NFL and NBA.

Maybe that's worth exploring.

Although I'm not sure what it's going to take to make college baseball as big as its revenue-producing cousins, I am certain when we'll know it finally has arrived:

When Rick Neuheisel fills out his College World Series bracket.

That opinion is based on a wicked uppercut that Lewis landed just before the fight was stopped and a series of unanswered blows to Klitschko's kidney that may or may not have been fouls.

That said, I've seen offensive tackles who were in better shape than Lewis.

Usually a gentleman, Lewis seemed to have a chip on his shoulder after being awarded a TKO victory against Vitali Klitschko and Merchant wanted to know why. He was persistent in asking the champion if he would like to recant his lack of respect for Klitschko and grilled Lewis with other tough -- but fair -- questions.

But for the viewer at home, it was hard not to focus on Merchant and Lewis grappling for control of the microphone. They each had a closed fist around it, like the captains of sandlot baseball teams trying to settle first ups by claiming the knob of the bat.

Hideo Fukuyama and Ricky Ridd had the knobs on their shifting levels break off, making it hard to put their cars into the proper gear.

Either those guys need to lighten up on their Hulk-like grips on the stick or get one of those 8-ball shift nobs that the gearheads in my high school used in their GTOs.

"It was good, hard racing except for that chicken move under yellow," Harvick fumed.

Racing back to the yellow flag, especially when there's a wreck on the track, makes about as much sense as speeding up in the path of an emergency vehicle on city streets, and NASCAR drivers have a "gentleman's agreement" not to race each other for position when the yellow comes out.

So the sanctioning body's reluctance to follow the lead of virtually every other major racing series and put the rule into writing is more perplexing than the new math.

Which I'm sure is old by now.

Fans of really lame auto racing movies may recall that Joe Tanto, Sylvester Stallone's character in "Driven," an over-the-top flick about Indy-car racing, drove the Nextel car to a fraction-of-a-second win in the final scene.

When the movie was made a few years ago, Nextel was primary sponsor of the CART car driven by veteran Mauricio Gugelmin. Gugelmin drove for the since disbanded Pac West team, which graciously made its cars and equipment available to the movie production crew.

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