Columnist Ron Kantowski: Don’t bet on UNLV hosting an NCAA regional

Monday, March 24, 2003 | 10:01 a.m.

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

As the Mountain West basketball tournament proved by annually setting attendance records, there's no place basketball fans would rather meet in the postseason than Las Vegas.

So now that the MWC has kowtowed to Rick Majerus and his coaching brethren and moved one of the best conference tournaments out of the city that made it such, what are the chances that Las Vegas one day could host a bigger basketball bash, such as an NCAA West regional?

Let me put it to you in Pontiac Fuel for the Soul terms. Remember that miracle shot Christian Laettner made against Kentucky in 1992?

Well, odds that the Road to the Final Four will ever pass through Las Vegas aren't that good.

Not that the Thomas & Mack Center -- or even the MGM Grand -- wouldn't make an ideal setting for power conference heavyweights and mid-major bracket busters to strut their stuffs.

As former director of the Thomas & Mack Center, Pat Christenson was instrumental in bringing the Mountain West tournament to town. As current chief of Las Vegas Events, he said an NCAA regional would be a slam dunk here.

"I've been saying that ever since they opened the doors to the Thomas & Mack," Christenson said. "Unfortunately, the NCAA established a by-law that closed the door."

That by-law is numbered 30.10.1.4 in the NCAA administrative regulations manual. But unless you could fit a basketball court and about 15,000 seats onto a riverboat, they might as well have called it the Las Vegas rule. It reads:

"A certified event shall not be conducted in a venue where sports wagering on intercollegiate athletics is permitted or on property sponsored by an establishment that permits sports wagering on intercollegiate athletics or branded with signage for such an establishment."

The rule apparently is so crucial to the livelihood of the NCAA that it's highlighted by a gray box.

I know I've said this before, but give me a fresh shot clock. What a bunch of hypocrites!

Were it not for gambling -- the illegal kind, I might add -- March Madness would be running a distant second in the Neilsen ratings to whatever reality series that FOX could throw together at short notice.

The FBI estimates that $2.5 billion is wagered annually on the NCAA tournament. About $80 million of that is bet legally in Nevada. The other $2.4 billion is bet illegally in office pools and with bookies.

When it comes to office pools, the NCAA does a no-look pass that would dazzle Magic Johnson. Yet, by seeding the teams, the selection committee is actually booking the tournament. Do you think the average secretary would know the difference between Kentucky and Weber State if the NCAA didn't handicap the bracket for her? And what message is the NCAA sending by allowing Mountain West teams to play here while the field of 65 is not? Are the players at Colorado State or Wyoming or New Mexico any less susceptible to the "evils" of legal sports wagering than those at Duke or Indiana or Syracuse?

Or course not.

But give the NCAA credit. At least one member of its staff stopped counting CBS' money long enough to respond to the apparent double standard.

"It's pretty simple," said Bill Saum, the NCAA's director of agent and gambling services. "The NCAA Tournament Committee put into place a rule that that said (student-athletes) could not participate in an NCAA basketball tournament where there are open, legal sports books. But it's up to each conference to make its own procedural policy ... and the Mountain West decided to have their conference tournament there."

It should be noted that Las Vegas is doing just fine without the live tournament. Many fans would rather watch the games on TV here than in the upper deck of some domed football stadium, which has helped make the NCAA tournament the second-most popular betting extravaganza of the sports year behind the Super Bowl.

But as the Mountain West proved again and again and again, there's nothing quite like live basketball in a packed arena during the month of March.

So until the Mountain West returns from the frozen hardwood of Denver, we'll have to settle for those memories. Because when I phrased a question to Saum by suggesting that the NCAA policy regarding Las Vegas seemed set in stone, he limited his response to one word:

"Right."