Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2005 | 9:21 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
At first, I thought the biggest problem with the new Harris Interactive College Football Poll was that it will have a basketball coach (Gene Bartow) and a buffoon (Terry Bradshaw) helping to decide which two money-making machines -- er, college football teams -- will play for the national championship.
That was before I learned that former UNLV athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro will also have a vote.
One can only hope that Cavagnaro's participation at the polling place will be more frequent than it was at Rebels games.
The Harris poll replaces the one conducted by the Associated Press, which withdrew this year from the complicated Bowl Championship Series formula that will determine the combatants in the so-called national championship game. It will feature 114 panelists, some with rather dubious credentials.
For instance, Kim Bokamper, one of the old Miami Dolphins' Killer B's, thought somebody was pulling a joke when he was asked if he would be interested in casting a ballot.
Instead of a Who's Who of college football, the Harris panel looks more like a Who's That? But there's a reason for it. One of the ideas behind the poll was that each of the 11 Division I-A conferences and Notre Dame would be equally represented (unlike the AP poll).
That's why Harris reached out to curious constituents such as Bokamper, who played college football at San Jose State, and Bradshaw (Louisiana Tech).
With Cavaganaro, Harris killed two birds (if not its credibility) with one stone as he also served as AD at Memphis before retiring -- I mean moving -- to Las Vegas. That means Cavagnaro has ties to both Conference USA and the Mountain West.
Tim Neverett, the former voice of the Las Vegas Thunder and UNLV football (among others) who now hosts a talk radio show for ESPN in Denver, also will serve on the Harris panel.
So at least there will be some checks and balances for Cavagnaro and any of the other Harris voters who plan to spend Saturday afternoon on the golf course instead of in front of the TV.
Mayor Goodman is so fixated on promoting downtown development that his letter of greeting in the American Legion state and regional baseball tournament official program all but invited the coaches and players to hustle tips at Sassy Sally's, or whatever they're calling the slot joint these days.
Whereas Governor Kenny Quinn and Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign extolled virtues such as hard work, commitment, sportsmanship and teamwork in their letters, Mayor Goodman encouraged the teams "to visit our downtown, where you'll find high quality office buildings, parks, plazas, streets lined with trees and arcades, restaurants catering to both business and evening activity patrons, hotels, entertainment, shopping and the phenomenal Fremont Street Experience."
And giant plastic footballs filled with mass quantities of ice cold Budweiser.
The mayor's Quixote-like quest to turn downtown into a tourist destination and not just a place to purchase mass quantities of ice cold Budweiser in giant plastic footballs is all the more reason he should check out one of the Champ Car series street parties -- er, races -- and consider a partnership with the auto racing sanctioning body to hold one here.
Champ Car, according to multiple sources within the sport, would like to move its September race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, for which it pays a track rental fee, to a temporary downtown circuit, in which case it would probably ask for a sanctioning fee, or at least for help in building a temporary racing circuit.
But even if it does put its hand out, the number of spectators a Champ Car street race would bring downtown for a three-day weekend -- and the synergy those spectators would generate for concerts and parties and other race-related events and activities -- would probably offset the financial commitment. Not to mention all those TV cameras that would be focused on Neonopolis and all things Golden, such as the Nugget and the Gate hotel-casinos.
While a downtown street race sounds like a good idea, it probably won't happen, if for no other reason than City Hall does not want to step on any toes out at LVMS.
So I guess downtown will have to settle for Paul Revere and the Raiders when it could have Paul Tracy and the Champ Car World Series.
Of course, there's always those giant plastic footballs filled with mass quantities of ice cold Budweiser.
See what new UNLV football coach Mike Sanford started by closing practice to the media?
On Monday, a Sun photographer was booted out of practice at Shadow Ridge High, and not a moment too soon: He was just finishing diagramming the Mustangs' "Everybody Go Deep" play which he planned to sell to Palo Verde for the price of a new camera bag.
Could it be the Shadow Ridge coaches are overly sensitive about all those good players from other schools around town that magically keep winding up on their doorstep?
ESPN The Magazine's odds on "How Vegas Will Improve NBA All-Star Experience:"
9-to-4: Overpriced concessions out, all-you-can-eat buffets in.
8-to-3: Elvis impersonators prove to be unusually knowledgeable hoops fans.
5-to-2: Hole-card cameras in the huddle.
OFF: There will finally be something riding on the game.
This just in: The Los Angeles Dodgers have announced that for the first time, they will not be calling up any players from Triple-A Las Vegas when the major league rosters expand Sept. 1.
That's a joke sports fans -- like the one the Dodgers pulled on the 51s by putting those players here in the first place.
It's 7:35 p.m. and Mountain West basketball is on the air. Do you know where your children are?
New Mexico coach Ritchie McKay raised a few eyebrows recently when he signed J.R. Giddens to a Lobos scholarship, roughly 15 minutes after Kansas coach Bill Self booted the former McDonald's All-American off the Jayhawks' roster for his part in a knife fight in a Lawrence tavern.
Then Monday, Colorado State's Dale Layer greeted Marquie Cooke, once rated the No. 8 point guard in the nation as a high school player, with open arms. Cooke was run off at Virginia Tech in April for "failing to abide by a set of standards we set for our basketball team," according to Hokies coach Seth Greenberg.
As transfers, Giddens and Cooke will have to sit out a year before they begin terrorizing the MWC.
Hopefully, not literally.
You can add Arnold Parker, the former Cimarron-Memorial football star, to the list of those stunned by the sudden death of Thomas Herrion, his teammate at Utah and also with the 49ers.
"It hurts every time you walk in the locker room and his locker is still up," Parker, a defensive back with the 49ers, said of Herrion, an offensive lineman who collapsed and was pronounced dead after San Francisco's preseason game at Denver on Saturday. "Every time somebody from Utah calls me, it makes you think of Big T."
Parker said Herrion also should be remembered as one who achieved his lifelong ambition.
"He dreamed of being in the NFL, and his dream came true," Parker said. "It's sad that it's over for him, but it's a testimony that dreams come true."
Call it preseason on the brink.
In this week's issue of ESPN The Magazine, Robert Walker, the race and sports book director for MGM Mirage, said there's a reason many in his profession take their vacations during August, when some football bettors are trying to get over on the books by betting meaningless NFL preseason games.
"That should tell you how we really feel about the preseason," Walker said.
I, for one, was deeply saddened to learn that Bob Huggins will no longer be coaching basketball at Cincinnati. Not because I thought he was a great coach (although the record will show he was a pretty darn good one), but because his program was to NCAA secondary violations what Heckle and Jeckle were to mischief.
In a lot of ways, Huggins' career mirrored that of Jerry Tarkanian's at UNLV, with the exceptions that the NCAA finally wound up paying off Tark instead of putting his program on double-secret probation and that Huggins never won the big one.
Despite being respected by opponents and colleagues (former Rebels coach Charlie Spoonhour is a close friend) Huggins made an easy target for a wise-cracking sports columnist. So I took aim and fired.
Every time I did, I received a batch of angry e-mail from the Talking Magpies -- Huggins' supporters -- who suggested I take my renegade program references and put them where the sun doesn't shine.
So the next time I'm in Seattle, I plan to take those columns that suggested Huggins ran an untidy ship and leave them at the Pike Place Market, where they can be used to wrap salmon.
A postscript to Huggins' imminent reassignment or firing (those are his choices) is that he couldn't be reached for comment. The Cincinnati Enquirer said it was because he was believed to be in Las Vegas.
Perhaps Mayor Goodman was showing him around downtown.
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