This is a Christmas story that has nothing to do with the one that will be shown on TBS on a continuous loop Friday. This one is about UNLV coaches with soft spots in their hearts, and a Rebels basketball player who is much better beyond the 3-point stripe than he is with a Mexican yo-yo, and sick kids in the hospital, and the local sports radio host who brings them all together each year.
The last time I saw Ken Johann, UNLV’s uber soccer booster, was at Johann Field — named for his son, Peter — on Oct. 18. The Rebels were playing Incarnate Word from Texas. Fellow humongous soccer supporter Tim McGarry, a former Rebels player who in recent years has continued what Johann started as a benefactor, asked if I had wandered over to say hello.
When I was a senior in high school, the Golden State Warriors were NBA champs. They had Rick Barry and Jamaal Wilkes, with the funky shooting stroke, and Clifford Ray. They also had Al Attles’ leisure suits, and his pointed collars and pants, which often were loud or plaid.
These college basketball lid-lifters and early-season games against teams supposedly easily vanquished have not always gone well for Dave Rice’s UNLV teams. The words “gasoline” and “fire” immediately come to mind.
The elbow caught Diamond Major square. It was as if someone had painted a target on the middle of her forehead and fired a bazooka. It was friendly fire — it was at a Lady Rebels practice a couple of weeks ago.
When it comes to UNLV’s nonrevenue sports, men’s soccer just might be my favorite. Like most of the so-called Olympic sports, the soccer team operates on a shoestring budget. It also operates with local kids — of the 25 players on the roster, 13 are from the Las Vegas area and 15 are Nevadans.
If you’re one who remembers obscure scenes from classic movies, you may recall the one in “American Graffiti” in which Toad tries to buy booze at a liquor store.
This is how the foundation founded by former UNLV soccer star Simon Keith describes its annual golf tournament, held Friday under idyllic conditions and scenic backdrops at Revere Golf Course in Henderson:
They were lining up the NASCAR trucks for Saturday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when a guy wearing a Route 66 shirt in the media center noticed one of the TVs had been switched. Instead of the race broadcast, it was showing the Arizona State-UCLA football game.
UNLV played its annual game against a Football Championship Subdivision opponent at Sam Boyd Stadium on Saturday night. The official stat sheet said only 16,717 were on hand to watch the Rebels tally a school-record 80 points — Idaho State had 8 — and do chest bumps on the sideline.
Marquel Martin went from playing college football, to becoming a reality TV star (for five weeks) on ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” to baking cookies for the media and freeloaders from the hospitality suites during halftime of Saturday night’s UCLA-UNLV game at Sam Boyd Stadium.
When UNLV opened the college football season Sept. 5 in a cornfield outside of Chicago, the Rebels covered the spread against Northern Illinois in a resounding fashion. They were driving toward more respectability — and perhaps even a touchdown and an attempt at a game-tying 2-point conversion — when Blake Decker threw a fourth-down pass to Devonte Boyd.
If there’s anything most Las Vegas sports fans can agree upon, it’s that Sam Boyd Stadium and Cashman Field stink, and that hopefully there will be places to park at the new hockey arena.
When you’ve been down for as long as UNLV has in football, you’re going to have to take an occasional risk on the recruiting trail — you might have to accept an Alabama reject or two, or maybe go for a quick fix via the junior colleges. Longtime observers of the local football scene are aware of this.
He still gets up at 5:30 a.m., only now there’s not much to do. It’ll probably take a couple more weeks to remove all the stuff from his office, because one accumulates a lot of office stuff over 35 years as coach.
