Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
How do you score 81 points in a high school football game that lasts just 48 minutes?
Strictly by accident, says Valley High football coach Jim Massey.
A local high school football season that has seen points scored in droves witnessed its biggest number yet on Friday as Valley defeated Chaparral 81-13.
That was 81. Eight-one. As in 19 fewer than 100.
"Honestly, I don't think it's good for the game," Massey sheepishly said on Monday, adding that he has chastised other coaches for running up the score against inferior opponents.
He said that wasn't the intent against Chaparral.
"We felt we had to play three quarters but (after halftime) we gave them two series and called them off," Massey said of his first-team players. "Then the defense goes crazy and scores four touchdowns."
Actually, the Vikings' defense scored three touchdowns on fumble recoveries and the offense tacked on two more after taking possession on Chapparal's 1 and then later the 7 after errant snaps from punt formation.
One of Valley's late touchdowns was scored by a defensive lineman named Mike Williams, who is deaf.
When Williams scored, the Valley coaching staff and sideline repeatedly raised 10 fingers in the air toward the field, which Massey hoped the Chaparral sideline didn't construe as a call for even more points.
"That's what you do to signal applause (to a hearing impaired person)," he said. "I don't think the crowd knew what we were doing."
Massey said he used only one regular player in the fourth quarter, only because somebody had to tell the bench warmers how to line up. He said Valley's statistics -- 182 yards rushing and another 130 passing -- were certainly not representative of an 81-13 game.
Still, he said he was embarrassed when he went to shake hands with the Cowboys' coaches. So it wasn't exactly like John Jenkins, the coach of those prolific run-and-shoot teams at Houston, greeting his Baylor counterparts after putting about 75 points on the board, because Jenkins never apologized for what David Klingler had done.
"I told them I didn't know how to control it after it got rolling, that we didn't try to score the last four touchdowns," Massey said. "And they said they knew it."
Valley is 6-1 and Chaparral 1-7, although the gap between the haves and the have-nots on the local level seems to be widening.
"That's it. I think you said it exactly," Massey said, explaining the number of NASA-like final scores this season.
I had to laugh when the ABC announcers talked about Indy Racing League founder Tony George's vision during the open wheel racing series' anticlimactic season finale at Texas Sunday.
George's "vision" has been to steal most of the best teams, drivers, engine manufacturers and now, road course events, from the rival Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series, which is struggling to stay afloat in its new guise as the Champ Car series.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Champ Car should consider itself more flattered than the late Elvis Presley. The IRL on Sunday even stole the driver-in-the-crowd introductions that Champ Car created for its debut at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last month.
Based on the way he has dodged the bumper cars that have spinning out all around him during NASCAR's Chase for the Championship, I'm beginning to think that Las Vegas' Kurt Busch could move to Seattle, throw away his umbrella and still not get wet.
But with just five races to go and the wildly popular potty-mouth Dale Earnhardt still running a close second in points, how long will it be before the guy in the No. 20 car (Tony Stewart, Earnhardt's pal) runs into the side of Busch or the 15 (Michael Waltrip, Earnhardt's teammate) decides to test his brakes directly in front of the 97?
The closet thing to a swear word you'll hear out of Busch is "darn," so chances are he'll remain in the championship hunt until the finish. But I'd like his chances a lot better if an interloper from Wisconsin (Matt Kenseth) didn't win the Cup just last year.
It's curious that UNLV fawns over its basketball tradition, even though very few of its past stars have shown interest in supporting the program with their presence. But when past Rebels football stars show up to hang out on the sideline on their own accord, they are all but ignored.
The greatest Rebels footballer of them all, Randall Cunningham, was spotted in the UNLV dressing room following Saturday's 24-20 defeat to New Mexico at Sam Boyd Stadium, while Larry Croom, the star of last year's team who made the Arizona Cardinals roster despite not being drafted, made the rounds in the press box.
Why neither man was introduced to the crowd is an oversight that should be corrected before Ickey Woods shuffles back to town.
If Sammy Sosa can injure himself while sneezing, I guess there's no guarantee that UNLV women's basketball standout Sherry McCracklin wouldn't have got hurt even if she hadn't taken part in an optional preseason workout, which is what they call non-supervised pickup games these days.
But the timing couldn't have been worse for the Lady Rebels, who have been making some noise in the preseason polls, but now will be without their best inside player and spiritual leader until December. That means McCracklin will miss UNLV's marquee matchup against Minnesota, a Final Four team last year, in the season opener Nov. 14.
To use one of his favorite expressions, "full marks" to former Las Vegas Thunder coach Butch Goring for finding a job while everybody else seems to be sitting out the hockey season.
Goring, 53, has been named coach of Germany's DEG Metro Stars, a professional team in the country's Elite League.
During his playing career with the Kings and Islanders which saw him win four Stanley Cup championships, Goring was one of hockey's best penalty killers. He coached the Islanders and Bruins for parts of three seasons, compiling a 66-87-22 record as an NHL head coach.
The defunct Thunder in its debut 1993-94 season posted the best record in the equally defunct IHL with Goring behind the bench.
I received several e-mails from ballpark buffs who disputed Las Vegas 51s president Don Logan's claim in this space last week that a purpose-built triple-A stadium has never been built with the idea of one day hosting a major league team.
While facilities such as Seals Stadium in San Francisco, Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, Sicks Stadium in Seattle, Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Minneapolis and Mile High Stadium in Denver have supported both triple-A and major league clubs, none, as far as I know, were planned as triple-A stadiums with major league expansion part of the original blueprint.
The closest thing to an exception might be Pilot Field in Buffalo, which is still home to the triple-A Buffalo Bisons but opened in 1988 with the idea that an upper deck would be added when Buffalo received a major league franchise. Those went to Denver and Tampa so Pilot Field, now called Dunn Tire Park, had to settle for being the model for Camden Yards, the first of the retro ballparks that have become status quo over the past decade.
Around the horn
I must be getting old, because I'm fighting the temptation to start cheering for those millionaires known as the Yankees, just because they look like ballplayers, while the unshaven and disheveled Red Sox, led by Unfrozen Cave Man Center Fielder Johnny Damon, look more like a motorcycle gang. ... Is it just me, or did Jill Arrington become a more insightful sideline reporter after leaving her tank top behind at CBS and putting on a blouse that buttons to the top at ESPN? ... How Swede it is: After being waived by the Redskins last week, Ola Kimrin left Boston for Sweden, with a five-hour layover in Iceland. But within a half hour of arriving at his father's home in Malmo via train from Copenhagen, Joe Gibbs called and told him to get right back in those planes, trains and automobiles. With regular kicker John Hall out with a groin injury, the globe-trottin g Kimrin booted two field goals (barely) in Washington's 13-10 victory against the Bears, which, I suppose, beats laying computer cables for his father's company. ... I don't profess to having Grown Up Gotti, but the best reality TV programming I've seen in a long time was Monday's dueling League Championship Series games. Baseball will never be voted off the island amid that kind of drama.
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