Ed Graney is a sports columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, covering a variety of topics and the Las Vegas sports scene.
egraney@reviewjournal.com … @edgraney on Twitter. 702-383-4618
Here’s what many thought might happen: When a whopping 37 days separate the best offense in college football taking snaps against someone other than itself, the timing and rhythm and accuracy that allowed it to shred others for an entire season might take at least a quarter to appear.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Consider this: You are a star junior college football recruit about to make one of the most important decisions of your life, one that will shape your future and potentially determine whether you enjoy a professional career defined by fame and fortune.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — They have given up trying to figure out those wacky play-calling cards. The ones with pictures of TV personalities and maps and moose and bizarre logos and symbols. The ones that could mean anything from formation to protection to run to pass to someone get Phil Knight a cup of coffee in his luxury suite.
I suppose this is what it felt like to be a great actor in the 1930s not named Spencer Tracy. Or how it feels to be a track star running the same events as Usain Bolt. Or to land your first professional singing gig down the street from where Andrea Bocelli is holding a concert.
The journey to college football’s Bowl Championship Series final takes different twists and turns for most. It’s not all yards and tackles. It is not shaped merely by brilliant plays and dramatic wins. Sometimes, it’s not even about football.
It’s not guaranteed a new year will bring change. The Yankees still will win in 2011. The Pirates won’t. LeBron James still will speak in the third person. Clay Guida will have long hair and fight as if intravenously fed with sugar. Rex Ryan will prefer feet.
When you know it’s time for league play to begin: At one point in your final nonconference game, your opponent has 12 turnovers, zero assists, nine shots in 12 minutes and its coach has screamed out at least eight set plays his team can’t execute or really has no idea what they mean.
They played a men’s college basketball game at South Point Arena on Tuesday and there wasn’t one dunk over the 40 minutes. There was half a dunk.
What was UNLV thinking, hiring Cindy Fredrick — the mother of Ali Farokhmanesh, the Northern Iowa sharpshooter who sank the Rebels basketball team last March in the NCAA Tournament — to be its new volleyball coach?
10. Jim Livengood is no Mike Hamrick: Thank goodness. UNLV athletics might have a chance. In his first year as the university’s athletic director, Livengood hired coaches in football (Bobby Hauck) and baseball (Tim Chambers) who could change the fortunes of both programs, announced a new, state-of-the-art basketball practice facility, restructured the department, reorganized fundraising and facility upgrade efforts, and had one more sit-down with local media to discuss the program’s vision than Hamrick had in six years.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The resume today will show a win against the nation’s No. 11 basketball team on a neutral court that was anything but neutral. It will not mention the names Jacob Pullen or Curtis Kelly or impermissible benefits or how any of it affected Kansas State on Tuesday evening.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This is a different kind of rust. This has nothing to do with a series of iron oxides or corrosion, unless you count a lack of defensive readiness.
