It wasn’t supposed to be a draft party. It was supposed to be just a small group of well-wishers and intimates watching to see where Jeremiah Poutasi, Samuelu and Olaka’s oldest football-playing son, would be selected in the annual pro football talent grab. And by whom.
He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and was a four-time NFL Pro Bowl selection — and he received his law degree at the same time he was quarterback for the Washington Redskins. He graduated sixth in his class from George Washington University. In the Korean War, he was a combat officer. He won two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star.
While the other specialists limbered up by kicking official Arena Football League striped footballs over fences or between narrow makeshift goal posts made of bright yellow tape, the straggler stood in the shadows cast by Las Vegas Sportspark. He smoked a cigarette and ate a glazed doughnut.
Austin Maul, who kicked field goals at Rancho High, played tuba before the Super Bowl. Then he slipped into a 14-foot palm tree costume and danced behind Katy Perry at halftime.
Kealiiholookoa Maruyama finished third in the boys’ 14-15 division in the national finals of the PP&K competition.
If Tony Sanchez, the new UNLV football coach straight out of high school, wasn’t watching all of the bowl games, one hopes he was watching some of them, or that he has a DVR with extra storage capacity.
On a 1-10 scale, I asked, with one being the guy in the Super Bowl office pool and 10 being Edward Norton in “Rounders,” where would he place himself and the group? “Eleven,” he said.
Every five years when UNLV fires its football coach there is a great whoop-de-doo and la-di-da about football. It usually lasts until the UNLV basketball team plays a quality nonconference opponent. Is there a program out there UNLV ought to be imitating?
By now you probably are familiar with Notre Dame having hired a wildly successful high school coach named Gerry Faust to wake up the echoes. But there’s an even bolder experiment that better correlates to UNLV that was conducted in North Texas.
A couple of hours after Bobby Hauck resigned as UNLV football coach on Friday, Gonzaga beat St. John’s in one of those sort-of-attractive early season college basketball matchups on TV.
