This is the year that for some crazy reason, NASCAR Weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, USA Sevens rugby at Sam Boyd Stadium, UFC 196 at the MGM Grand Garden and the West Coast Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments at the Orleans Arena will be held in Las Vegas, concurrently, or at least within the same 72 hours or thereabouts.
You can almost smell the high octane, the burning rubber, the barbecue on the grill, the suntan lotion. You can almost see the questionable yellow flag that bunches up the field toward the end of the race.
There’s a special bond that develops over time between a kid and his baseball glove. Even if the kid is from Canada. So when 17-year-old Jake Polancic of British Columbia lost his glove in Henderson, he was distraught. That glove meant a lot to him. It had sentimental value.
Kyle Busch was all set to make a run on teammate Matt Kenseth on the last lap of the Daytona 500 and bring home the bacon for the Joe Gibbs Racing team. But his other teammate, Denny Hamlin, beat him to it, leaving Busch with scrambled eggs and toast.
The third-to-last time I saw Rich Abajian, the former UNLV assistant football coach and longtime Rebels uber booster whose funeral service is at 11 a.m. today at South Point Arena — he died in his sleep last week at age 62 — was at Findlay Toyota, where he was general manager and part owner.
Sweethearts exchanging chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. NBA all-stars playing matador defense. The Busch Brothers of Las Vegas racing in the Daytona 500. These are rites of February.
It’s half past 12 at the gym when the fighter strolls in from brilliant sunshine. He looks spry for 84 years old — and for a guy who fought two wars with Carmen Basilio back in the day
It had been exactly three months since terrorist bombings in Paris had left 130 people dead. On Saturday morning, the echoes from those blasts were felt in the middle of Field 2 of the Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex.
In 1864, the story goes, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman wired a military order to Gen. John M. Corse back at Union Army headquarters in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The directive was supposed to say “hold on, relief is coming.” It came out “hold the fort,” and then after that, it became “hold down the fort.”
It’s this time of year when Mike Cofer is reminded of having twice kicked a football on the game’s biggest stage, and also that people can be (expletives) sometimes.
