Being funny not in plans for Mayne

The ironic part: He wanted to report news. Serious stuff. Documentaries. World affairs. To cover the Middle East or a presidential campaign.

Come to think of it, the first Obama-Romney debate would have been far more entertaining had Kenny Mayne been asking questions and not Jim Lehrer.

Mayne might have done a better job controlling things. He has some toughness to him. He played football at UNLV.

Well, sort of.

He played two seasons with the Rebels and started one game at quarterback in 1981, completing 12 of 19 passes for 170 yards and a touchdown in a win against Long Beach State.

It would have been like beating Northern Arizona this season.

You know, had the Rebels beaten Northern Arizona.

"I've been making the joke that I am now part of an athletic Hall of Fame and it has nothing to do with football, that I have a quality of being so bad at your sport, they made a special class," Mayne said. "I'm proud of the time I spent there. I wish I had done better personally, but I made a lot of great friends. I'm flattered by the honor."

UNLV will hold its annual Hall of Fame ceremonies Friday evening and present its class at halftime of the Rebels-UNR football game Saturday at Sam Boyd Stadium. Included among the honors is the Silver Rebel Award, which is presented to a member of the athletics family whose primary accomplishments took place after departing campus but since has brought positive recognition to the university.

Mayne has done so while bringing laughs to others.

He is ESPN's prime-time answer to late-night comedy, a 53-year-old sports journalist who has discovered countless ways of telling stories with a humorous twist beyond Xs and Os and bounty suspensions.

He also was the first contestant voted off "Dancing with the Stars," in 2006 when his cha-cha went over like Tim Tebow at a convention for atheists, but Mayne has returned in subsequent seasons for a segment called "DanceCenter," a parody of "SportsCenter."

He's good at funny, and funny is hard to pull off.

"It wasn't my plan," Mayne said. "I started in local news. The television station I was at (in Seattle) added a weekend sports show, and they said, 'You played football, so you be the sports guy.' Right there, I drifted toward it. It became fun. I got to be at Seahawks games instead of city council meetings."

It's sort of like those stories you hear about Robin Williams or Will Ferrell, that despite what you see on television and movie screens, those who make a career out of comedy almost always are more serious than you would imagine.

Mayne walks through an airport and others request he says something funny on cue. It's a badge one wears when, on each Sunday during the NFL season, you provide offbeat stories on the league's players and coaches.

It's what people expect when you do things like comparing the length of Tom Brady's hair to that of Justin Bieber.

"By and large, we like to do things that are different to a player's weekly routine," Mayne said. "It never gets boring. It's fun, but it's still work. You want to do it well. You never take it for granted. The NFL is a pretty big deal."

So is good storytelling. You will find it in the feature "Kenny Mayne's Wider World of Sports," where the host travels the globe to chronicle both weighty and amusing topics, be it a somber tale about bridge diving in Bosnia or a centuries-old horse race around a town square in Italy or canal jumping in the Netherlands.

The second six-week season debuts today on ESPN.com.

He follows the Rebels from afar and admits that, if forced, couldn't stand on a table in the ESPN cafeteria and sing his school's fight song, "Win with the Rebels," a tune few UNLV football players have had the pleasure of belting out the past decade or so.

"I thought our fight song was 'My Way,' by Frank Sinatra," Mayne said. "I loved being part of the competition. I miss that part. I was the main guy on my high school and junior college teams and a backup at UNLV, but in either case, the camaraderie was a great thing to cherish. You miss just being in the mix of a team.

"I'm still hoping for football success for UNLV. They have played teams close this season. But we had plenty of good athletes go through there during my time, guys who had NFL careers. I remember my time at UNLV very fondly."

That's no joke.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.