SAN DIEGO
Sports Columns
The readers’ votes are counted for our Horse of the Year pick. And the winner by a nose is Zenyatta. The champion filly won by a 49-47 percent margin over Curlin, while Big Brown and Zarkava each earned 2 percent.
While fishing at Lake Mead recently, I couldn’t help but notice the crowd that squeezed together at the end of the fishing pier that reaches into Boulder Harbor, where Lake Mead Marina used to be. Where there was room to fit perhaps 10 anglers comfortably, I could see double that, and nearly everyone had at least two fishing rods. The situation didn’t look fun, but as time went by, it provided a few laughs.
There’s that child in all of us, that part that never seems to disappear, no matter how much a hairline retreats like a Long March into middle age or how many fewer belt holes are needed to support our trousers.
Memo to the person who keeps official stats for UNLV basketball games: Tre’Von Willis wants to have a little chat.
It will come Saturday evening at San Diego State, the most significant football game UNLV will have played in eight years. But regardless if the Rebels win or lose against the lowly Aztecs, whether they become bowl eligible or finish two games under .500, Mike Sanford’s future as head coach should be even more solidified come Sunday morning.
It’s not often the better coaching job in a UNLV basketball game takes place opposite the Rebels bench.
Randy Couture over the last 15 months learned one or two or 10 valuable lessons but none more important than a simple truism often echoed throughout sports: Play to your strength.
Any handicapper who says jockeys don’t make a difference hasn’t been watching Rafael Bejarano ride on a day-to-day basis. His dominance of the Southern California jockey colony in his first year out west is truly remarkable.
It is in their hands now for the first time in what seems an eternity. Eight years, really. But what a long, painful, frustrating eight it must have been for those who follow UNLV football. Think of the world’s incessant wait for Tom Cruise to take up scientology full time and try ruling the universe in anonymity. That long.
The striped bass in Lake Mead have taken a page from the casino industry’s playbook. They have adopted the use of “periodic payouts” as a means of keeping the attention of anglers hoping to put a few of the fish on their stringers. Sometimes these periodic payouts come in the form of a striped bass, and sometimes the payout comes in the form of a striper boil.
He has made this walk before while thinking of her and will do so again.
The fifth season that could decide Mike Sanford’s future as head football coach at UNLV will arrive with this certainty: The Rebels are solid at a most significant position.
Face it. Watching poker live or on television is hardly like watching Ellen Burstyn in “Requiem for a Dream.” There is the drama of winning millions of dollars and a shiny bracelet, and then there is an electroshock therapy scene that leaves you immobile.