Tuesday, July 13, 1999 | 10:48 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is sports editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
Until last Friday, the lowlight of acerbic sports talk host Jim Rome's career probably was the day Jim Everett turned him into a tackling dummy on national TV.
The maligned Rams quarterback was upset with Rome's line of questioning, and for constantly referring to Everett as "Chris."
That was long before Rome tried to interview Shawn Marion, the former UNLV basketball stalwart recently drafted No. 9 overall by the Phoenix Suns, during his syndicated radio show.
Rome said -- although it went without saying -- that it was the worst interview he had ever done. And it should be noted that not once did the self-annointed "Van Smack" refer to Marion as "Mrs. C," or have a negative take on the ex-Rebel's character or playing ability.
I was on the Nevada side of Kingman, Ariz., heading for home from a New Mexico vacation, when I tuned into Rome's interview with Marion mid-stream. The part I heard consisted of Rome lobbing Marion softball questions, and the former Rebel whiffing with one-word replies -- usually "Huh?" or "What?"
Forgot about a sound bite. There wasn't enough there for a sound nibble. Had it been the Playboy Interview, the captions under the first two pictures of Marion would have read "Huh?" and "What?" And under the third, there would have been just a swatch of white space, for the way Marion said goodbye.
Actually, he never said goodbye. When Rome mercifully cut the interview short/off by wishing Marion well, there was stone, cold silence on the other end of the line. Not even a hang-up or a dial tone. Just silence. As if Rome had just played Side One of "Marcel Marceau's Greatest Hits."
Afterward, the host remarkably went light on our guy. He even praised him for agreeing to come on. But the listeners in "The Jungle," the nickname by which Rome's shown is known, were as unforgiving and relentless as a Las Vegas thundershower.
Rome had to replenish his fax machine paper three times as Marion and that four-lettered bastion of higher learning for which he hooped it up challenged Dan Quayle's record for being the butt of the most jokes during a one-hour segment -- a mark once considered as untouchable as DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.
Rome's pointy-tongued "clones" still were going off on Marion and UNLV on Monday. As the host said almost apologetically, "This thing has taken on a life of its own."
Marion is a nice kid but a "bad quote." But so was Larry Bird during his Indiana State days. Either he became more comfortable in front of a microphone or had a crash course with Dr. Henry Higgins. Because by the time Larry Legend was midway through his Celtics career, he was waxing more eloquently than Miss Eliza Doolittle.
Perhaps it's time some (more?) rain fall on UNLV's plain, and somebody like Dr. Henry Higgins joins the faculty. Other schools sponsor media workshops and seminars for their high-profile jocks, so the next time Brent or Dickie V. or Peter Gammons sticks a microphone in his face, graduates don't take down their diplomas from the den wall out of embarassment.
I don't care how many press releases UNLV cranks out to say it's getting more like Harvard or Stanford every day. The national perception of UNLV is that it is a basketball factory that places little emphasis on academics.
The Shawn Marion Interview only perpetuated it.
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