Sports Hall of Fame finds new home at Dollar Loan Center

You won’t feel compelled to test drive a Toyota the next time you visit the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame.

Nor will you have to take out an installment loan with a flexible payback plan — although that now is an option.

The SNSHOF has been relocated from Findlay Toyota to the new Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, the soon-to-be permanent home of the Henderson Silver Knights hockey team and site of this week’s Big West Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

The Hall of Fame’s new exhibit on the concourse is as spiffy as the rest of the building.

“We have traveled with the Findlay family to wherever their newest dealerships were and the Findlay family has been great,” said Steve Stallworth, the former UNLV quarterback and longtime director of the South Point Areana. “But we’ve been looking for a new home for a while now and we cannot be more proud.”

Stallworth said the interactive display — Golden Knights president Kerry Bubolz was instrumental in seeing the project through — is about 90 percent done, with the finishing flourishes to be completed in advance of this year’s June gala during which Larry Brown (baseball), Shawn Davis (rodeo), Glen Gondrezick (basketball), Ryan Ludwick (baseball), DeMarco Murray (football) and Amy Purdy (snowboarding) will be feted.

The agreement with the Knights and DLC is for 20 years, and Stallworth said there is room for the display to grow.

“We are going to do a lot of activations at the site,” he said, mentioning the possibility of a National Signing Day ceremony for high school athletes and school tours among those. “It’s definitely been built to grow, but it was designed in a way that you don’t even notice it was built to grow.”

Stallworth was part of the last Hall of Fame class in 2019 (the last two years were preempted by COVID) but laughed when asked if there were spotlights and bells and whistles directing visitors to his part of the display.

“No, you’ll have to look real close,” he said.

Around the horn

— Unlike past grand marshals of NASCAR’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Raiders Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen didn’t leave after giving the command to start engines. With only a few laps to go, he was still in the media center watching the cars circle the track.

He also expressed some interesting thoughts about the Pro Bowl, which moved from Hawaii to Las Vegas this year.

“I would like to see them get rid of the Pro Bowl. It’s become rather laughable,” Allen said, noting that when he played in the NFL all-star game, players still blocked and tackled each other.

“It was about the AFC and the NFC, and we wanted to show our conference was better. Today, it appears (the players) don’t care about that. They don’t have the respect for the game they should have.”

— Alex Bowman and Kyle Busch of Las Vegas turned the latter’s expletive-ridden in-car radio rant about the former’s good fortune and “backing into the win” at LVMS into something positive.

Bowman said he would donate 18 percent — 18 being Busch’s car number — of the proceeds of a T-shirt featuring the Las Vegas sign with the inscriptions “All Luck, No Skill” and “Backing into Wins” to animal shelters.

Busch later called Bowman to apologize and, noting Bowman’s car number, said he would offer a T-shirt on his website commemorating his 2019 series championship at a 48-percent discount.

— Former Las Vegas broadcaster Tim Neverett and his son, Matt, called the same Big West Tournament game — Cal State Northridge vs. Cal State Bakersfield — at the new Dollar Loan Center in Henderson Tuesday.

Papa did the play-by-play for ESPN+. Son did the same for Sirius XM. Green Valley High grad (and former North Carolinia Tar Heel freestyle swimmer) Molly Sullivan was the sideline reporter.

0:01

— “Filling out an NCAA bracket for my office pool is the most work I’ve done since last March.” — anonymous office worker.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.