Ron Kantowski settles for hearing a quality broadcast, since he can’t see the Rebels play the Wolf Pack on TV

Monday, Oct. 1, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

Oh, I was so surprised and shocked, and I wondered too

If by chance you heard it for yourself

I never told a soul just how I've been feeling about you

But they said it really loud

They said it on the air

On the radio

Whoa oh oh



"On the Radio"

Donna Summer

It was midway through the second quarter, when Dave McCann, the play-by-play voice of the UNLV football team, glanced up toward his monitor at Mackay Stadium in Reno and made a startling discovery.

He didn't have one.

"The game's not on television, so we don't have a replay monitor," McCann told Rebels fans - and a lot of Wolf Pack ones, too - who were listening in Southern Nevada.

He didn't say whoa oh oh. It wasn't a complaint, just an observation, spoken with little or no emotion. Using that tone, McCann could have said "My shoes are too tight" and you probably wouldn't have noticed.

But I wrote it down.

While it's doubtful that somebody will ever write much of anything down - like say, a book - about Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson or the guys who sign his paycheck, the conference presidents, Dave McCann had unwittingly just come up with the title.

He said it really loud. He said it on the air. On the radio.

"The Game's Not on Television So We Don't Have a Replay Monitor. The Life and Times of Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson. (As told to MWC football fans.) Paperback. Big Bag of Cash Publishing. 2 new and used on Amazon.com, starting at $0.02."

Whoa oh oh.

The Mountain West's dubious decision to leave ESPN to start its own television network in large part explains why Dave McCann didn't have a replay monitor Saturday afternoon at Mackay Stadium. And why I was listening to the biggest game of the year on a portable radio that looked as if it came from Venus.

"Hey honey," I called downstairs. "Do we still have an AM radio?"

When I was a kid, there was an AM radio in every room in the house and two in the garage. My dad didn't fix a lot of stuff, but he had two radios in the garage, just in case. And a little refrigerator that held exactly six cans of Old Style beer. This was sanctuary. This was where my dad went when my mom's relatives showed up unannounced.

Sometimes after my dad had mown the lawn, he would turn up one of the radios in the garage really loud. Then he'd pull out the hammock, the kelly green one with the little white fringes, and plop down on it for the next 2 1/2 hours or nine innings, whichever came first. He'd soak up the sun with a cold beer in his hand and listen to Bob Gibson and Fergie Jenkins hang zeroes on the scoreboard at Wrigley Field.

My dad would do this even when the game was on TV. Listening to a ballgame and falling asleep with a cold beer in your hand on a warm summer day, it seemed, was one of life's simple pleasures. It was to my dad.

I was still thinking about that, how maybe I would try it myself one of these days, when my wife trudged up the stairs, holding this dusty cream colored space-aged plastic box with circular orange thingies on the ends. It sort of looked like The Flying Sub encased in Madonna's bra. It had more bells and whistles than a Chicago Transit Authority "L" train. And almost as many spider webs.

It was our AM radio from Venus.

After I removed Peter Parker's DNA from the speakers, I plugged it in, hoping for an exciting game. And that I wouldn't be abducted by aliens at halftime.

People in our business tend to toss around compliments like manhole covers. Although I am sure I have said that Dave McCann does a nice job as voice of the Rebels, I am just as sure that it has been a long time since I said it.

This is no affront to McCann. It's just that it has been ages since the wife sent me to the store for milk during a ballgame which, let's face it, is the only time you could possibly want to listen to a game on the radio when you've got a TV in every room in the house. And two in the garage.

But Dave McCann does do a nice job. Maybe deep down he wants the Rebels to win, because, if nothing else, that would make interviewing Mike Sanford for the coach's show a little easier. But he doesn't let on.

Yes, he gets excited when the Rebels score a touchdown. But he also gets agitated, or at least asks why the Rebels can't cover anybody on third-and-long; why they ditch the running game; why they call crucial timeouts when the clock isn't running.

Sometimes his partner in the booth, former Rancho High Ram, Colorado Buffalo and Atlanta Falcon Mike Pritchard, knows the answer. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he adds insight of his own.

It was the middle of the second quarter when I wondered why McCann hadn't been calling the name of Beau Bell, the Rebels' linebacker who usually tackles everything that moves. On cue, Pritchard said the Wolf Pack were running almost every play to the short side of the field while Bell was lined up on the tall side.

Works for me.

Maybe McCann doesn't paint word pictures with his descriptions and accounts of the game. Maybe Pritchard doesn't say "boom" and grunt a lot, like John Madden with indigestion. But they do a solid job. While I haven't received the expressed, written consent of Major League Baseball to say so, the UNLV broadcast team sounds professional.

At least until they break for a commercial and an almost familiar voice comes crackling through the speakers of the AM radio from Venus.

"This is UNLV football coach Mike Sanford for Leslie's Pool Supply."

Eat your heart out, Urban Meyer.

Well, you don't have to be The Shadow to know how this one comes out. John Robinson's gone and so is the Fremont Cannon. It has been blue ever since he left.

UNR won, 27-20.

"And so the Rebels will walk off the field without the Fremont Cannon for the third year in a row," Dave McCann said with just a touch of melancholy. He sounded sad that Travis Dixon's last pass of the game had sailed over everybody's head in the end zone.

Or maybe his shoes were too tight.

Anyway, that's the way he said it on the air. On the radio.

Whoa, oh oh.

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