Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Just like that Winona Ryder movie of a few years ago, sometimes reality bites.
Take Sunday, for instance. For turning the announcement of the U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team into yet another reality TV show, I'd give NBC about a 3.8 on a scale of 10. And that's being generous.
This is one decision that lacked technical merit. Or a conscience.
As if extending the Olympic selection process another three weeks wasn't grueling enough on these young girls, many of whom gave up being a teenager for the outside chance they might wind up on a Wheaties box, NBC thought it would be neat to show the jubilation (or was it relief?) on the faces of the chosen six they will attempt to turn into TV stars in Athens next month.
Only the cameras spent more time focused on those whose names weren't called than on the ones who were.
In had to be the most convoluted 10 minutes of sports television since Harry Caray tried to explain the infield fly rule during a Cubs rain delay. It began with U.S. team coordinator Martha Karolyi and the selection committee huddling "behind closed doors," as if NBC expected its audience to believe the identity of the team was still in doubt.
While this was happening, the 13 gymnasts who had been invited to suburban Houston for the final tryout fidgeted in makeshift bleachers looking very nervous, as if they were on trial or something.
Miraculously, Karolyi and the others reached a decision just as NBC returned from commercial break.
As the team was announced, those who were bypassed appeared on the verge of tears or breaking down altogether. The TV producers might as well had told them their dogs had died while they were away at gym camp.
Las Vegas' Tasha Schwikert, though, was having none of it. The only member of the 2000 team vying for a spot on this year's team, Schwikert kept a stiff upper lip when she was announced as an alternate, which is sort of like receiving the home version of "Concentration."
Lovely parting gift? Not exactly. But Schwikert nonetheless smiled for the cameras as she hugged those picked. If she was hurting inside, she wasn't going to give NBC the satisfaction of using her anguish for the sake of "good TV."
It was one of those up close and personal moments the Olympics are known for. The cameras were up close, hoping to capture a broken heart, but Tasha Schwikert kept all of that personal.
Good for her.
Around the horn
In a scene right out the movies, officials at the Gold Cup hydroplane race on the Detroit River Sunday walked into a celebratory news conference in the Miss Budweiser pits to take away the championship trophy of powerboat racing's Super Bowl and walk it down to the apparent second-place boat, the Miss Detroit Yacht Club, owned by Debbie and Kim Gregory of Las Vegas. You don't suppose Miss Bud's disqualification for a lane change violation had anything to do with the announcement earlier in the week that the beer giant is pulling out of the sport after supporting it for some four decades, do you? ... Add eccentric Dallas Mavericks owner and part-time Dairy Queen employee Mark Cuban to the growing list of those who believe the NBA will be first of the four major professional team sports to put a franchise in Las Vegas. "It can't happen soon eno ugh," Cuban told John Hanson of ESPN Radio 920-AM in Lake Tahoe last week. "I think it's just archaic, I think it's ! hypocritical, I think it's backwards that there isn't a team in Vegas right now. Gambling is internationally prevalent. There's not a town anywhere near water that doesn't have a casino of some sort. Once the variables evolve and change, I have no doubt there's going to be a franchise in Vegas." ...
Las Vegas Events president Pat Christenson is working on bringing a "high-profile" soccer game to Las Vegas next summer. He wouldn't disclose the identity of the clubs, only to say they would be highly recognizable to the average soccer -- er, football -- fan. ... If there's one thing I've learned in this business, it's that if we don't pat each other on the back, nobody else will. So kudos to UNLV football information director Mark Wallington and sidekick Kevin Force for placing first in their region and seventh in the nation for their 2003 football media guide. Wallington's 2004 UNLV tennis brochure also placed third in the nation. ... Actor Ben Affleck, who kinda, sorta looks like a young Don Haskins, has backed out of negotiations to play the legendary UTEP basektball coach in the movie "Glory Road," which chronicles all-black Texas Western's (which is what UTEP used to be called) victory against all-white Kentucky in the 1966 NCAA champi! onship game. As one former El Paso acquaintance of mine joked, "Ben heard he had to go to El Paso to shoot and said to heck with that." In reality, the Hollywood Reporter said profit-sharing arrangements were at the root of Affleck's decision to bail on The Bear. ... In an ad in this week's Basketball Times, one of those satellite high school basketball tournaments cherry-picking the Reebok Big Time in Las Vegas this weekend proclaimed the court at the Doolittle Center in North Las Vegas one of the "top high school gyms around Las Vegas." The last time I was there, a Metro cop was stationed at the scorer's table, just in case, I suppose, the hand-checking in the late night hoops league got a little out of hand. ...
One of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian's best quotes was rehashed in Basketball Times in John Akers' story on the lack of personality among today's coaches: "We need another coach like Jerry Tarkanian who once said: 'The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky, they put Cleveland State on two more years' probation,' " Akers wrote. ... Here's an upset: Yet another minor professional basketball league was announced last week without listing Las Vegas as one of its 16 potential cities. The new IBL, based in Tacoma, Wash., apparently is not related to the old IBL, which did have a team in Las Vegas. The Bandits lasted about as long as a Las Vegas thunderstorm. ... In that 424 athletes were named 2003-04 Mountain West Conference scholar-athletes, perhaps the home office in Colorado Springs should consider not giving everyone who passed biology a t rophy. UNLV, incidentally, placed fifth among the eight schools in smart guys and gals who play ball. But only two of the R! ebels' 24 honorees (football players Robert Arciaga and Michael Freund) represented the high profile sports of football and men's basketball. ... It looks as if the MWC is a stepping stone league in sports administration, too, as assistant commissioner Bob Burda (who always returned phone calls) has resigned to take a similar position with the Big 12. ... And finally, Ted Owens , one of the many basketball luminaries on hand for last week's NBA summer league at Cox Pavilion, said he made a grand total of $38,000 in the last of his 19 seasons as Kansas head coach in 1983. His successor, Larry Brown, probably spent that much on his wardrobe.
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