Columnist Ron Kantowski: What happened in Vegas should have stayed

Thursday, March 10, 2005 | 9:07 a.m.

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

DENVER -- I don't think the Mountain West tournament is what the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon had in mind when he wryly penned "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead."

But if you believe in reincarnation, it wouldn't be too difficult to imagine ol' Warren and a couple of werewolves from Longmont dropping by today's Utah-Colorado State quarterfinal at the Pepsi Center to liven things up a bit.

It has been well documented that attendance at what used to be the MWC's marquee event, at least for the four years it was held in Las Vegas, is significantly down, as is tournament atmosphere. Maybe it was all those $1.05 beers consumed by all those Wyoming fans at Moose McGillycuddy's that gave our tournament a frat-party vibe, in which case I would suggest that MWC commissioner Craig Thompson make a beer run over to the Coors plant in Golden before this event goes totally flat due to lack of carbonation.

In the second year of its three-year run in Denver, I didn't expect the future of the tournament would become an issue until next year, when the MWC will burp for the last time at the Pepsi Center, at least under the current agreement.

But speculation where the tournament will land already has begun, and the consensus is that the Thomas & Mack Center would be a perfect place to revisit. As if we didn't already know that.

"Let's go back to Vegas," said Mike Bohn, the new athletic director at San Diego State, as he breezed through the media center Wednesday. "I can't get our fans to drive anywhere. They'll drive to Las Vegas."

Since the first errant bounce pass rattled around all those empty seats last year, most of the press-room types figured it would only be a matter of time until the MWC returned to its Las Vegas stamping grounds. But it might not be the deadbolt cinch that everybody thinks, thanks to those magificent men in their driving machines.

With NASCAR having awarded California Speedway a second race, to be run in the spring immediatley following the Daytona 500, the UAW DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las vegas Motor Speedway has been shuffled back a week, from the first weekend in March to the second weekend in March. This coming one. Where it would trade paint with the MWC tournament, were it to return.

Still, the conflicting dates might not monkey-wrench the idea of these two major sporting events co-exisiting on the same weekend. Maybe Allen-wrench is more like it.

"It wouldn't make it easy," said Las Vegas Events chief Pat Christenson, noting that hotel rooms would become even more scarce and less affordable. But he thinks Las Vegas could handle the demand.

In fact, it already has. A schedule quirk in 1998 resulted in the NASCAR race and the basketball tournament being held on the same weekend, and nobody had to ask Rick Majerus to bunk with Tony Stewart and become even stranger bedfellows.

Christenson said with NASCAR essentially having taken the MWC's spot on the local sports calendar and its demand for hotel rooms having lapped the basketball tournament's -- about 10 times over -- it's not as if the hotel-casinos are hurting for business this weekend.

"I won't say it's going to be easy, but we can get the rooms," he said "If we were asked to support it, I expect we would do whatever we could to bring the Mountain West tournament back to Las Vegas. There's not a better destination for the tournament and we'd find some way to do it."

But Christenson, who attended last year's Mile Low snoozefest in Denver, said he has heard rumblings that if the MWC returns to Las Vegas, it would promote the tournament itself, which Thompson basically confirmed.

UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick has blocked out this weekend on the Thomas & Mack calendar and said he will keep the dates open until the MWC decides it wants them. Then Thompson would hand Hamrick a check for the rent and most likely produce and promote the event itself.

In 2003, when the bombastic Majerus insisted the tournament be moved to a neutral site to negate the Rebels' perceived home court advantage (although UNLV won it only once), the MWC tournament averaged 13,483 per session and 13,942 watched the championship game. Compare that to 8,322 and 6,526 here in 2004.

"After seven years -- four Mountain West and three WAC before that -- it was gangbusters. Period," Thompson said of the tournament's box office appeal in Las Vegas.

One MWC coach I spoke with Wednesday said he wished Las Vegas would buy out the final year of the contract in Denver, but Thompson said the MWC plans to stay the course. He wouldn't say if Denver was in the mix as a future site and said there really isn't a magic number as far as attendance goes, especially since the conference's bazillion dollar contract with College Sports TV is now paying a lot of the bills.

"Like I say, it's the price of neutrality," Thompson said of flagging attendance here.

Likewise, Thompson wouldn't confirm a rumor that has the Delta Center in Salt Lake City becoming a bidder and wouldn't take the bait about returning to the T &M, other than to say the turnover in coaches and athletic directors in the Mountain West has resulted in a new attitude toward Las vegas.

"It's not as hard-line as it was," he said.

I guess that's a good thing is you prefer fastbreaks to fast cars. All I know is that unlike this place, there are a lot of things for basketball fans to do in Las Vegas when they are still alive.