Johnson puts hype, humor into Wranglers

The more I am around Billy Johnson, the more I’m convinced he was the kid in school who orchestrated the prank in the girls’ locker room and then glanced disapprovingly at a classmate when the principal asked the perpetrators to step forward.

“If I remember correctly,” Johnson says, “I was beaten as a child.”

He’s a little deviant this way. Demented, really. A cross between an intelligent, politically incisive businessman and a nut.

In other words, the perfect guy to run a minor league hockey team.

Midnight madness in college basketball is a time for hope and pomp and electricity. Midnight with the Wranglers is a time for wondering how Santa Claus snuck in the liquor he swigs from youth soccer water bottles.

It’s a crazy scene, and jolly ol’ St. Nick is three sheets to the wind after the first period at the Orleans Arena. Others wear pajamas and circus attire that gives new meaning to the phrase, “Looks good on you, though.”

It’s also Johnson’s favorite night of any regular season. He learned long ago the value in promotion, about humanizing a team for its community and eliminating the actual game from the sales equation.

The thinking goes that it’s OK to be polarizing and turn off some people, because those who buy into the concept are hooked for life, or at least until one of Johnson’s gimmicks so completely offends them, the idea of forking over money for another ticket rivals going for a colonoscopy.

“People give sports far too much credit,” said Johnson, the Wranglers’ president and CEO in his sixth season with the team. “They think everyone cares about them, but the reality is nobody does. Throw baseball or football or hockey into the general marketplace and 90 percent of the people are into other things — music, art, ballet, family life.

“Promotions allow for those people to realize there is something else to this organization and that they don’t have to understand hockey to come and be part of it with family and friends and just have a good time.”

The latest midnight game took place Monday and ended in a 1-0 win for the Ontario Reign, lowering the Wranglers’ record to 10-12-2 and exposing them as the not-yet-average team results have shown. Las Vegas doesn’t do anything exceptionally well. A fourth straight 100-point season is as unlikely as Johnson’s ideas growing dull.

So while his team scuffles along and walk-up attendance lags, Johnson again looks for ways to put fannies in seats and gain the franchise some buzz beyond city limits. There is no better forum to exploit than our shadowy political landscape. No better group to ridicule.

“I got on this kick last summer that someone was going down over the next six months in some embarrassing criminal investigation,” Johnson said. “We started planning for a prison uniform night right then. Lo and behold, G-Rod walks right in. … He’s my dream. I don’t have to worry about death threats for doing something on someone with a 13 percent approval rating.

“I love turning a sports team into a satire piece. If we had more of our (die-hard fans), the people we love most, we wouldn’t have to do these things. But no minor league team in the country can’t afford not to do them.”

Johnson’s G-Rod is Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Wranglers on Jan. 30 will wear those striped prison uniforms in honor of his arrest on federal corruption charges. It looked as though Johnson had one of the jerseys hanging from a chair in his office Monday, but that was just his Halloween costume. He seems to have a thing for convict attire.

Johnson eats this stuff up, actually, same as he did when the team in 2006 held Dick Cheney Hunting Vest Night following a shooting mishap when the vice president mistook his friend for a quail and shot him in the face.

The vests weren’t Johnson’s favorite publicity stunt. That came when he was running a minor league baseball team in New Hampshire and they held “Injured Fan Night.” Anyone who attended while wearing a cast was seated in the front row above the dugout.

The team that season had been riddled with injuries and the idea went that if you put the most accident-prone fans in the most dangerous seats and they didn’t get hit, the curse of injuries would end.

“Sure enough, eight people with various casts showed up,” Johnson said. “It was a great visual. For me, that was hilarious.”

Incisive, yes.

Demented, for sure.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.