Columnist Ron Kantowski: Can you feel it? Oh, never mind

Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005 | 9:44 a.m.

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

With one eye on Andre Agassi -- and the other on Maria Sharapova -- at the National Tennis Center, let's volley a few notes across the net:

I got a kick out of this comment from UNLV punter Brian Pacheco the other day.

"We're more of a group," Pacheco said. "If you're watching and you're really a UNLV fan, you'll feel the intensity."

But if you're watching and you're really a UNLV fan, you've also been breaking one of new coach Mike Sanford's rules.

Practice, as per Sanford's policy, is closed to Rebels fans, media, boosters any anybody else who hasn't been assigned a jersey number. So you'll just have to take Pacheco at his word.

There's no cheering allowed in the press box, but I'm kind of hoping Rebels tight end Greg Estandia has a good year. He's about the only UNLV player who hasn't blamed former coach John Robinson for the team's underachieving 2-9 record last year, the fact you can't find a parking spot on campus and that gas is approaching $3 per gallon. And there probably are a couple of holdovers who are trying to pin Hurricane Katrina on the old coach.

"Last year, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong," Estandia told the Sun's Steve Guiremand recently. "It wasn't the coaches. We had bad luck. That's the truth."

You have to admire a guy who is willing to let the water flow under the bridge while so many around him have felt compelled to stir it up.

I used to think the reason UNLV would never abolish alcohol sales at Sam Boyd Stadium, despite the problems it causes, is that such a decision would alienate the majority of its season-ticket holders.

But if the statistics obtained by the Fresno Bee translate here, there's an even better argument for letting the suds flow on campus, or in UNLV's case, seven miles away from it: It's very profitable.

Fresno State, according to its official athletic department budget, gets to keep $2.24 of every $8 beer purchased at Bulldog Stadium. On an average night, that translates to $134,150 that is added to the athletic department coffers.

Maybe that's the real reason they sound that air-raid siren at Sam Boyd Stadium to halt tailgating a half-hour before kickoff. The beers in the parking lot are free. The ones inside the stadium aren't.

Three quarters and a cloud of dust. Sun reader and longtime Rebels football fan Blake Barney thinks he has a solution to the dust problem caused by the dirt parking lots at Sam Boyd Stadium.

"Why not oil and gravel the lots, or plant grass?" Barney wrote in an e-mail in response to my Tuesday column outlining the prohibitive cost of paving the stadium parking lots. "Those are very inexpensive alternatives."

Barney wrote that his wife no longer goes to Rebels games because of the parking situation.

"There's nothing more embarrassing than the dust cloud at kickoff," he wrote. "Except for maybe the dust cloud at the beginning of the fourth quarter when everybody is leaving."

Former UNLV All-American defensive back Jamaal Brimmer's downward spiral continued Monday as he was one of 14 players cut by the Seattle Seahawks.

Brimmer, who played his high school ball at Durango, was one of the most decorated players in Rebels history. So when he wasn't selected in last spring's NFL draft it was considered a bigger upset than Chaminade over Virginia in 1982.

Brimmer was trying to make the Seahawks as a free agent.

Mountain West members Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State and Utah are among 27 football-playing schools that have agreed to let Allstate put its "Good Hands" logo on their goalpost nets this season. Financial terms were not disclosed.

At least UNLV didn't take the fast buck.

Then again, I'm not sure it was asked.

See what Boise State started? I turned on the U.S. Open on Monday to find that center court had been painted blue.

After his match, Andre Agassi said in his older age he has become a bit of a traditionalist and so he wasn't all that enamored of the blue court, which, like everything else, was supposedly done for TV, or at least the televised U.S. Open Series of matches leading up to the real deal.

But if it means dispatching future opponents in 69 minutes, I'll wager that Agassi would play Roger Federer on a test pattern.

The wax likeness of Dale Earnhardt that was unveiled at Madame Tussaud's at the Venetian is so eerily realistic that I half expected it to take me by the scruff of the neck when I approached with my notebook.

The only thing that isn't done just right is the uniform. Instead of a snug driving suit, the wax Dale is outfitted in one of those Goodwrench jackets that any fan can purchase from a souvenir trailer.

I was told that Teresa Earnhardt, the Intimidator's widow, was not exactly cooperative when it came to parting with his personal belongings.

Speedway Motorsports chief Bruton Smith, who owns and operates Las Vegas Motor Speedway, among others, has offered Tennessee and Virginia Tech $20 million each to play a college football game at 160,000-seat Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.

In 1999, Tennessee turned down a $3.5 million offer from Smith to move one its home games to the racetrack. But in that this year's Rose Bowl, site of the BCS national championship game, will pay only $14-17 million to the participating teams, Smith's offer might be impossible to refuse.

In fact, maybe Smith is the answer to what ails college football. He could probably start his own playoff with that kind of money, and lord knows he already has the stadiums.

If you think Michigan Stadium is big, just imagine the Wolverines squaring off against Texas in the football Final Four at Texas Motor Speedway.

As Darrell Waltrip might say, "Boogity, boogity, boogity. Let's play some football, boys."

The last time I spoke with Thomas Hearns he sounded like Sylvester the Cat, he was slurring his words so badly. And yet the old Hit Man is still fighting.

That's why it was surprising to read that WBC president Jose Sulaiman is calling for Roy Jones Jr. to undergo intensive neurological testing before his Oct. 1 bout with Antonio Tarver.

Based on the work he does for HBO, Jones is one of the few fighters capable of putting together a complete sentence, and he does it quite eloquently for a guy who makes his living with his fists. OK, so as a boxing commentator, he's no Burt Lancaster (remember Ali-Frazier I?). But then, I ask, who is?

While there are a lot of people in boxing who need their heads examined, Roy Jones Jr. would not make my top 100.