Former Navy, Raiders star Napoleon McCallum will get people running

To say things have been on an uptick for Napoleon McCallum is putting it more mildly than a Palm Springs winter.

His college team, the U.S. Naval Academy, dropped its collective anchor on everybody except Notre Dame and Houston and nearly made it to a New Year's Day bowl game in 2015. Did the Midshipmen beat Army? Of course Navy beat Army. Navy always beats Army, it seems, although it was closer this time.

His pro team, the Los Angeles Raiders, is letting it be known it would be interested in moving from Oakland to Las Vegas, to play in a $1 billion domed stadium on the edge of the UNLV campus should it be built.

As of Friday, it hadn't rained for a while, so his left knee — the one that was injured in such gruesome fashion on Monday Night Football, ending his career — hasn't been bothering him much.

To top it off, on Super Bowl Sunday he will preside over the annual Big Game Road Race Festival downtown, although he'll have to get up kind of early.

"They're honoring me," he said when asked how he got involved with the football-themed foot race. "Plus, Goodie Two Shoes (a charity that provides socks and shoes for disadvantaged children) is a good cause."

McCallum, 52, set an NCAA record with 7,172 all-purpose yards and also held the Mids' career rushing record of 4,179 yards until Keenan Reynolds, Navy's slick option quarterback, broke it in 2015. McCallum still holds Navy's single-season rushing record of 1,687 yards; he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.

The affable native of Jefferson City, Missouri, has lived in Henderson since 1996. He is director of community development for Las Vegas Sands Corp., which is heading up the domed stadium effort.

He chuckled when I said that sort of made us teammates, as Las Vegas Sands Corp. and the Las Vegas Review-Journal are owned by Sheldon Adelson. Our future opponents need not worry, however, because McCallum's knees are shot and I was never much of a blocker.

Although McCallum mostly played for the Raiders between military commitments over parts of five seasons, he quickly became and remains to this day a popular sibling in maverick owner Al Davis' extended family.

When Davis' son, Mark, who has succeeded his late father as Raiders' patriarch, toured the 42-acre stadium site on Friday, McCallum went along for the ride.

"I think they're looking at it as an option," he said of the Raiders, adding that UNLV may ultimately benefit most from such an undertaking. "We need a stadium like this. It's important the community supports it."

You can call him Al

Al Davis actually said that to me a few years back.

The phone in the newspaper office rang, and a woman with a matronly voice asked if I would hold the line for Mr. Davis — Mr. Al Davis. I thought one of my buddies was pulling my leg.

There was a click, and then the matronly voice was replaced by a familiar voice that sounded like loose gravel. It was that Al Davis, and I called him Mr. Davis, and he said I could call him Al, like in that Paul Simon video with Chevy Chase.

The Raiders owner said he heard that I was the guy in Las Vegas who gets stuff done. I didn't have the guts to tell him he should check his sources.

What he wanted done was a story to be written about his longtime pal and former employee Bob Blum, the former Las Vegas 51s executive and voice of the Lady Rebels, who was turning 80 years old, or 85, or one of the other milestones, because Bob Blum lived to be 91.

It was a legit story idea — Blum was the guy who helped create fantasy football when he worked for the Raiders.

I wrote the story. Al Davis must have liked it, because the time Bob Blum and I went to a Raiders' game, he sent a car to the airport for us.

It was long and black, and the chauffeur was totally attractive, and in the back of the limo were decanters filled to the brim with rich caramel-colored liquor.

Before the game against the Texans, I was sent to Davis' box for a meet-and-greet. He told Las Vegas anecdotes for 10 minutes. When my 10 minutes were up, Fred Biletnikoff came in for his 10 minutes.

Al Davis could make a guy feel pretty important, and I don't care what Pete Rozelle might have said.

Boys of Winter

College of Southern Nevada, which always puts a competitive baseball team on the field, opened its season Friday with a 4-2 victory over No. 6 Yavapai College of Arizona. (CSN is ranked eighth in the junior college preseason poll.)

Coach Nick Garritano's Coyotes went 46-18 last season, but will have to replace pitching star and free spirit Phil Bickford, who was drafted in the first round, 18th overall, by the San Francisco Giants.

Bickford was CSN's best player since Bryce Harper. He had a long, blond mane and a tight slider. He tossed a no-hitter, and he offered to paint the backstop at Morse Field, and then at the end of the season, he tested positive for marijuana. Which didn't preclude the Giants from drafting him in the first round.

Three dots ...

* The accolades continue to roll in for former UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger and his No. 1-ranked Oklahoma Sooners. "The Oklahoma Sooners are the Golden State Warriors of college basketball," wrote Reid Forgrave of Fox Sports. "At a time when college hoops is trying to keep its national relevance by making the game more free-flowing and offense-centered, the Oklahoma Sooners are exactly what college hoops needs to cure what ails it." ...

* Former Desert Pines basketball player Dominique Lawrence scored a career-high 22 points to lead the University of Mobile to a 63-56 victory over Blue Mountain College. Mobile is a nationally ranked NAIA school seeking a berth in the national championship tournament in Kansas City, Missouri. Having witnessed a couple of these NAIA shindigs when they were played at old Kemper Arena near the stockyards, I hope Lawrence's team makes it that far. The NAIA tournament is a fantastic showcase for 6-foot-4-inch guys who can run the floor and shoot the J and almost always get back on defense. ...

* Matt Polster, the former Gatorade soccer player of the year at Palo Verde High School who now plays for Major League Soccer's Chicago Fire, is on a roll. He recently was called up to the U.S. Men's National Soccer Team as a 22-year-old, and then the other night, in the runway of StubHub center in Carson, California, where the USMNT is training, he had a chance meeting with his boyhood hero. Steven Gerrard, the former international legend for Liverpool and the English national soccer side — he's still pretty good at the end of his career for LA Galaxy — smiled and exchanged soccer pleasantries with the young Las Vegan he had inspired. Somebody captured the moment, and Polster put it up on his Instagram account. You can see it here: http://tinyurl.com/jv9us3t.

— Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.