Columnist Ron Kantowski: Sports in a brown-paper wrapper

Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.

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

Well, it's official. After spending most of Sunday watching sports on TV, I can confirm that Violence has taken a half-game lead over Sex in the standings.

For starters, Jill Arrington, CBS' college football sideline reporter, hasn't worn a tank top since Steve Spurrier left The Swamp for the NFL. But given the way sports now glorifies violence, it won't be long before she's interviewing Bobby Bowden at halftime in a pants suit made of armor or carbon fiber.

On Sunday afternoon, watching the baseball playoffs or the ESPN SportsCenter almost required parental guidance.

For starters, Thom Brenneman, Fox's lead announcer at the Cubs-Marlins game, told viewers that given Saturday's bean-ball war, bench-clearing shenanigans and fights in the bullpen, they would "not want to miss" Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.

Of course, that was before Mother Nature served the Yankees and Red Sox with a restraining order.

As the Cubs were making a pitching change, I switched to ESPN, to catch the closing laps of the Indy Racing League season. But they were pre-empted by a terrible crash in which the car of former Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack was launched into the air, tore a 20-foot hole in the fence and disintegrated, save for the chuck of carbon fiber in which Brack was sitting.

After a replay confirmed the devastating nature of the crash, ESPN refrained from showing another one -- usually a telltale sign that the driver has suffered fatal or catastrophic injuries.

Of course, once it was determined that Brack had survived, albeit with more broken bones than Humpty Dumpty, ESPN began showing the replay from every conceiveable angle, including some that Pythogaras probably didn't know existed.

Part of auto racing's allure is that it's dangerous. If it weren't, you and I could do it. But I think that was understood long before ESPN showed Brack's crash for the 12th or 13th time.

Later, they were still showing the crash replays on ESPN News when they went to a commercial break. It was a spot for one of the professional bull riders tours, in which an ornery bull was trying to settle the score with an even ornier cowboy who was trying to ride him.

"It's not a matter of if somebody's going to get hurt," a graphic warned ominously, "but when and how bad."

Then the announcer came on to tell me where I could get tickets for the upcoming show in Las Vegas or when I could watch this mayhem on TV.

Figuring it was just a matter of time before the Las Vegas Wranglers appeared on the screen to vandalize a bunch of ceramic garden gnomes, I switched over to the Cartoon Network -- just in time to see the Roadrunner drop an anvil on Wile E. Coyote's noggin.

Of course, that's not exactly the same thing as using the threat of bodily harm to sell rodeo or hockey tickets. While I did try to put my kid brother's head in a vise once, when it didn't make the same noise that Curly's did when Moe turned the crank, I lost interest. I guess the Stooges were my generation's Backyard Wrestling.

But even as a kid, I knew that when you punched somebody in the stomach, it didn't really sound like a bass drum.

However, as an adult, I do know a lot of guys who tune into the Indy 500 just to see the wrecks, and this is the mentality that I find a little disturbing.

Maybe the head's not dead yet, as Don Henley asked rhetorically when he aired his "Dirty Laundry" a few years back. But when it happens, the one breaking the news might not be the bubble-headed bleach blonde who comes on at 5.

It might be Dan Patrick or Stuart Scott instead.