Columnist Ron Kantowski: On rivalries, Agassi and Spuds MacKenzie

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005 | 9:40 a.m.

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

In honor of this week's UNR-UNLV football game, a few notes to load into your cannon:

Saturday's annual name-calling battle between the Wolf Pack and Rebels will be televised on DirecTV channel 609, which is where the three local subscribers to ESPNU can dial in.

Channel 609? Boy, it just doesn't get any bigger than that.

All I know is that when Oklahoma plays Texas, Notre Dame plays USC or Michigan plays Ohio State, you don't have to go to triple digits on your remote control to find the game.

Of course, triple digits is better than no digits at all, which is the situation in which Cox Cable subscribers hoping to watch the UNR-UNLV game find themselves. The game will not be available on Cox, because ESPN holds the rights and would not release it to be shown locally.

You can blame the Mountain West's $82 million cash grab with rival network College Sports TV and, to a lesser extent, the WAC's loyalty to ESPN for that. A UNLV spokesman said the university contacted ESPN about showing the game here with its own broadcast and production crew but were basically told to take a hike.

If you wonder why the UNR-UNLV game isn't part of Rivalry Week on ESPN, consider that the first game between the Silver State rivals wasn't played until 1969.

While that seems like a long time ago, that was also the year the teams put decals with the number 100 on their helmets, commemorating college football's 100-year anniversary.

And flashed peace signs.

Perhaps it's a good thing UNR and UNLV weren't teeing it up on the same weekend as Rutgers and Princeton in 1869. I don't think four-letter words were even invented by then.

When Bill Doba wears out his welcome as football coach at Washington State, he'll be able to fall back on a career as a political spin doctor.

Commenting on Wazzu's 55-21 blowout of UNR that wasn't even that close, Doba corrected reporters who suggested the Cougars had totally dominated.

"I don't think we totally dominated," he said. "I think it was a pretty tough ballgame until the second quarter."

Beware, Karl Rove. Somebody has an eye on your job.

Based on his first game as a starter against UNLV, quarterback Steven Wichman may become the biggest thing to come out of Idaho since Spuds MacKenzie.

Only, he could have been a Rebel.

UNLV coach Mike Sanford said Wichman was one of the junior college passers the Rebels strongly considered when they went looking for a mid-year transfer during the off-season. Instead, UNLV signed Jarrod Jackson, who is currently holding a clipboard while Shane Steichen directs the Rebels' offense.

Wichman completed 19 of 30 passes for 390 yards against the Rebels and was more accurate than Roger Federer's watch, especially on his deep throws.

If you're a college football fan, you've got to love the Little Brown Jug (Michigan vs. Minnesota), Old Oaken Bucket (Purdue vs. Indiana) and even Floyd of Rosedale, the bronze pig that Iowa and Minnesota play for every year.

But given that TCU and SMU battled tooth and nail for the Iron Skillet last weekend, I'm beginning to think these rivalry games are running out of spoils.

It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for the Horned Frogs. Five days after being stunned by the rival Mustangs, TCU will host Utah on Thursday in a nationally televised game that may go a long way to determining this year's Mountain West championship.

Funny, but just about the time Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg opined after Sunday's U.S. Open final that some people were calling Andre Agassi the greatest player ever to string up a tennis racket, I was beginning to think the same exact thing about Roger Federer, who already has six Grand Slam victories at age 24.

As John L. Sullivan wistfully said to fellow turn-of-the-century pugilist Jim Corbett in "Gentleman Jim," maybe if the two had met during Andre's prime, "It might have turned out differently, I don't know." But as Bobby Jones said about Jack Nicklaus, Federer on Sunday was playing a game with which Agassi (eight grand slam wins) -- and for that matter, anybody else -- is not familiar.

And Mr. Enberg should not forget that Sampras guy was pretty good, too.

Still, anybody who was at the Feritta Tennis Complex at UNLV in 1997 and watched Agassi lose to somebody named Christian Vinck in the finals of a lowly Challenger Series event while ranked No. 141 in the world has to be impressed by what he has accomplished in the golden years of a truly fabulous career.

He was the first to cover the Masters on TV, the first to call a college football game coast to coast and the first to anchor the Olympics, which he did from Mexico City in 1968. He also called the 1958 NFL Championship game between the Colts and Giants that launched pro football into the public consciouosness and described Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10 at the Montreal Games in 1976.

Yet, I will always most remember broadcast pioneer Chris Schenkel, who died Sunday, for the 1971 Indy 500 when the pace car in which he, astronaut John Glenn and speedway owner Tony Hulman were riding inexplicably crashed into a photographers stand injuring 22 people, including himself.

I will also remember that he returned phone calls, including one from this writer when the Pro Bowlers Tour on ABC, a Saturday afternoon ritual in my house growing up, at long last went off the air.

I don't know how long we talked, but it seemed like hours. By the end of our conversation, I even brought up an old TV ad that Schenkel had done for "beer in a bottle." He laughed that I had remembered that and I closed by telling him that should we ever meet face to face, I'd buy him a cold one -- in a bottle, of course.

He closed by mentioning the view from the office of his farm overlooking a lake near Lafayette, Ind. It was one of those crisp autumn days that I remembered from my youth, and the way Schenkel described it, I could almost see the brilliant colors of the leaves as they fell from the sycamores.

We were just a couple of guys from Indiana having a chat, and he made me homesick.