Columnist Ron Kantowski: In-season sponsors put bowls in soup

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004 | 10:11 a.m.

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

That big whooshing sound you heard over the weekend wasn't George Bush and John Kerry emptying their hot air bags at the end of the campaign trail, but a collective sigh of relief from the executive directors of college football's minor bowl games when a corporate sponsorship of the Michigan-Ohio State game fell through.

SBC Communications Inc., the No. 2 local telephone provider in the U.S. which already sponsors the annual Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma, thought it had a deal whereby its logo would be placed on the field at the Michigan and Ohio stadiums for the next two years. But when Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman got wind of the idea she stuffed it behind the line of scrimmage.

Administrators and boosters on both sides opposed the idea because they felt it might detract from the tradition of one of college football's great rivalries.

Upon first hearing that SBC had reached an agreement to sponsor the game, I thought it might only be a matter of time before companies such as AXA and Continental Tire and Chick-Fil-A reconsidered their commitments to the smaller bowl games if a regular-season television bonanza, such as a big rivalry game, were an option on which to spend advertising dollars.

"I see where you're going, and you're right, you'd have trouble competing with those big games," said Las Vegas Bowl executive director Tina Kunzer-Murphy, which at long last has landed a corporate sponsor in Pioneer Electronics for this year's game.

"But those games have so much meaning, so much tradition, that I think you'll find that (the participating schools) don't want or need sponsors."

Kunzer-Murphy said a better idea, one that she even looked into with state rivals UNLV and UNR in mind, is securing a sponsor for an all-sports championship between two schools.

She said awarding a trophy to the winning side would create interest in all the games, not just football and basketball.

As far as ideas go, that one certainly beats playing a college football game on Christmas Eve, which is what New Mexico and Oregon State did here last year in Las Vegas Bowl XII.

This year's game, featuring bowl eligible teams from the Mountain West and Pac-10 (provided there are enough), will be played Dec. 23 at Sam Boyd Stadium and will be televised in high definition by ESPN.

Help may be on the way for any UNLV sports teams that have trouble beating Northern Arizona -- such as the Rebels men's basketball team, for instance.

The Rebels may soon have another regional small school to consider as schedule fodder as the Dixie State College Board of Trustees has decided to pursue jumping from the junior college ranks into NCAA Division II.

Dixie, which won the National Junior College Athletic Association championship in basketball in 2002, hopes to begin competing as a four-year school in the fall of 2006.

Former UNLV basketball star Marcus Banks played JC ball at Dixie, as did Maurice Baker and Vincent Grier, now at Oklahoma State and Minnesota, respectively. Four of the 13 players on this year's Dixie roster -- Robert Porter, Devan Evans, Stanley Copeland and Jason Petrimoulx -- are Las Vegans.

Located in St. George, Utah, about 135 miles north of Las Vegas on I-15 North, Dixie would become the closest four-year school to UNLV, usurping Southern Utah University in Cedar City.

Any Rebels fans hoping to give departing head coach John Robinson a proper sendoff will probably wind up doing it from their living room sofas on Saturday instead.

If you thought the crowd for the New Mexico game two weeks ago was minuscule, just wait until Wyoming comes to town. Whereas the New Mexico game kicked off at noon, this week's game won't begin until 4 p.m. as it will be televised both in Las Vegas and back to Laramie as part of the Mountain West's crazy TV agreement with SportsWest Productions.

That means there will be roughly 30 minutes of daylight before Sam Boyd Stadium turns as brisk as a Lipton Iced Tea on an Anchorage street corner.

If Robinson is lucky, perhaps he'll receive a parka at halftime among his lovely parting gifts.

If that tight end from Oregon disguised as an E-lec-tric-al Banana looked familiar on ESPN's "Plays of the Day" Saturday, there was a reason.

Former Western Warrior Tim Day, dressed as a Screaming Yellow Zonker in honor of Halloween weekend, didn't let Oregon's not-so-mellow yellow uniforms prevent him from turning in the No. 8 Play of the Day, a tackle-shredding catch and run during the Ducks' 31-6 victory against Washington.

Day, a 6-foot-4, 267-pound junior, has caught 21 passes for 354 yards and four touchdowns this fall.

In keeping with a recent trend, the Dodgers' 2004 first-year player draft was ranked the best in the National League and second in the majors overall, behind only Minnesota.

In 2002, the Dodgers had the fourth-best draft in baseball and the following year were No. 1, according to the Baseball America Draft Report Card issue, which begs the question:

If the Dodgers are drafting so well then why do the 51s, their top farm club, usually go 67-76 and finish 11 1/2 games out of first place in the PCL Southern Division?

Last week in a column on auto racing personalities killed in private plane crashes I wrote that Tom Pryce perished in the same tragedy that claimed the life of F-1 great Graham Hill. Actually, it was his countryman Tony Brise.

Pryce and Brise were friends and contemporaries who were projected to follow in Hill's tire tracks before each lost his life.

Pryce was killed during the 1977 South African Grand Prix in a bizarre accident in which a course marshal, who was crossing the circuit, ran into the path of Pryce's car. Pryce was mortally injured when the marshal's fire extinguisher struck him in the head.

Brise also was a promising English racing star who was tabbed to lead Hill's fledgling F-1 team in 1975. He ran only a few races before being killed along with his legendary boss when the small plane in which they were traveling crashed in dense fog upon approach to Elstree aerodrome in north London.

Around the horn

Executive director Tina Kunzer-Murphy said the Las Vegas Bowl has received a letter from Navy, confirming its interest in the Las Vegas Bowl. The feeling is mutual, and provided BCS-bound Southern Cal and Cal don't stub their toes between now and the end of the regular season, the Pac-10 may not have a bowl eligible team to send to Las Vegas, which would open a slot for a team such as 7-1 Navy. If Wyoming (5-3) becomes bowl eligible and BYU doesn't, there's about a 99.9-percent chance the LV Bowl would pick the Cowboys as their Mountain West rep. Provided, of course, Utah is spoken for. ... In that I believe everybody deserves a Mulligan, hats off to Mike Price for the job he has done in guiding UTEP to its first national ranking (AP No. 25) in 16 years. At 6-2, the Miners' program, like Price told that stripper that cost him his job at Alabama, is rollin' baby. ... That tremor felt in Columbus, Ohio, Saturday was not the precursor of an earthquake, but Woody Hayes rolling over in his grave after Tom Lensch, a quarterback at Dana College in Nebraska, threw a college football record 101 passes (he completed 56 for 507 yards) in a 60-35 loss to Hastings College in an NAIA game.