Tuesday, May 6, 2003 | 9:06 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If UNLV really wanted to fill up Sam Boyd Stadium for a football game, it would have the Rebels ride onto the field on motorcycles.
Once again, the AMA Supercross Series attracted a sellout crowd for its Las Vegas finale Saturday night. The announced crowd was 37,012, which are UNLV-Wisconsin numbers. And that was about 17,000 more than usually show up when the Badgers aren't in town.
Even more remarkable than the live gate were the TV ratings Sunday's tape-delayed broadcast of the race on ABC generated in Las Vegas -- a solid 4.5, which finished second only to the NBA playoff game (5.9) and dwarfed everything else on the tube, including PGA golf (2.0), Arena football (1.3) and the Diamondbacks-Braves (1.0).
And just think how popular Supercross would be if Harley-Davidson fielded a team.
If that name sounds familiar to local fans, it's probably because Criner was coach of our short-lived XFL franchise, the Outlaws.
But if the fact that Criner ran afoul of the NCAA comes as news, it might be because the Outlaws P.R. department did such a good or at least creative job of disguising it in the team's media guide.
Criner, according to his biography, "helped the Cyclones become competitive in the Big Eight before taking a break from coaching for five years."
Well, that's one way to spin it.
During his nine-year coaching hiatus, Criner ran a fishing supply business called Bud Lilly's Trout Shop in West Yellowstone, Mont.
The sanctioning body went back into its protective shell when driver Jerry Nadeau was critically injured in a practice crash at Richmond Friday night, offering little information about Nadeau's condition or what might have caused his life-threatening injuries.
In that the contact with the wall did not appear to be especially heavy and Nadeau was wearing his HANS device, a head and neck restraint system that in concert with safety belts is supposed to prevent a driver from being tossed around in the event of an accident, race fans were mystified as to what might have caused his injuries.
While it's not advisable to speculate, if I were a driver, I'd be demanding a thorough investigation of Nadeau's crash. Just because his name isn't Earnhardt or Petty doesn't mean Nadeau shouldn't be treated as their equal, especially in this instance.
Little's record as a boat owner is unsurpassed, with 134 race victories, 22 series championships and 14 wins in the Gold Cup, boat racing's Super Bowl. And if you didn't think Little was directly responsible for Miss Bud's success, he had little ways of letting you know -- such as putting his name on the cockpit, where most teams inscribe the name of their driver.
But Little was a likeable fellow, and spent a lot of time trying to create interest in his sport, such as by taking reporters for high-speed rides on Lake Mead in his turbine-powered speedboat after the hydros were done running.
I'll always remember walking into the Miss Bud pits to do an interview and feeling a tug in the area of my hip pocket. It was Little himself, pulling out the Miss Miller High Life notebook I was toting and replacing it with two Budweiser ones.
archive
