Ron Kantowski is a sports columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, covering a variety of topics and the Las Vegas sports scene.
rkantowski@reviewjournal.com … @ronkantowski on Twitter. 702-383-0352
In 1987, when I was the new guy on the sports staff, I was assigned to cover the National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center, because that was what the new guy did. A quiet man from Utah named Lewis Feild was awarded the gold buckle for being the best all-around cowboy.
It was just after 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at Clifford J. Lawrence Junior High School. Kyle T. Busch, originally of Las Vegas, now of a compound on a lake near Charlotte, N.C. — aka “your 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion” — was having his ear bent by a school district trustee in the hallway outside Stacy Schaumburg’s STEM classroom.
It was February 2001, the Las Vegas Outlaws vs. the Memphis Maniax, the XFL on UPN. Surely you remember the XFL.
The bartender looked at me in a bewildered fashion, as if I had just dropped in from Neptune or somewhere. This was Sunday, at Victory’s Bar & Grill at the Cannery on Craig Road.
There’s an image I have of Kyle Busch, the lead foot from Las Vegas who won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship Sunday in Florida. It was before he built a reputation for being a more excellent driver than “Rain Man.” He might have still been driving in the truck series full-time.
When people around here refer to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon, they usually just drop the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas part.
A lot people, including young general managers and desperate guys trying to impress women in bars, are into baseball sabermetrics: WAR, WHIP, OPS, what have you.
These college basketball lid-lifters and early-season games against teams supposedly easily vanquished have not always gone well for Dave Rice’s UNLV teams. The words “gasoline” and “fire” immediately come to mind.
Ken Schrader is what you would call a racer’s racer. To use NASCAR chairman Brian France’s favorite word, he just might be the quintessential example of it, now that A.J. Foyt has turned 80 and has too many health problems to drive much of anything, except for maybe a tractor on his ranch.
You wouldn’t know it from his name, or from the songs he sings, or from the way he styles his hair that Chadwick Johnson is a singing cowboy.
The elbow caught Diamond Major square. It was as if someone had painted a target on the middle of her forehead and fired a bazooka. It was friendly fire — it was at a Lady Rebels practice a couple of weeks ago.
In its quest to remain relevant during football season, NASCAR foisted a playoff system upon the public. Now it has foisted drivers smacking into one another on the track upon the public, and the handing down of dramatic penalties.
Colin Cowherd was on TV again on Monday. He was interviewing presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
Because guys who started the baseball season pitching for the 51s apparently will get you only so far, this World Series might be remembered as being more anticlimactic than memorable.
Helen Reddy released “I Am Woman” as a single in 1972, three years after Shirley Muldowney competed in her first U.S. Nationals. Three years after the record went to No. 1, Muldowney won her first NHRA Nationals, at Columbus, Ohio.
