Cutting Them Off With the Pass : The Posse, Las Vegas’ CFL Franchise, Comes Up Short With Its Field--but Has Been Long on Controversy

Oh, Canada, did they get letters.

They came by fax, cable, express mail. Some were cryptic; others official denouncements double-spaced on parliament parchment.

G.E. Alexander, Regina, Saskatchewan: “ ‘O Canada’ is NOT sung to the tune of ‘O Christmas Tree. . . .’

Alice G. Burrows, Coquitlam, British Columbia: “I must protest the bastardization of the Canadian Anthem. . . .”

Jim Abbott, member of Parliament, Kootenay East: “I was absolutely disgusted with the pitiful insulting performance of the Canadian National anthem on television on Saturday night. . . . If we continue to exhibit a lack of pride in Canada, the greatest nation on earth, and passively allow the absolute butchering of our fine national anthem, we deserve to be the laughingstock of the United States, and I for one won’t stand for it.”

Noreen Main, Regina: “Well, you people have done it again. First, it was the flag upside down at the World Series. Now we have a singer who cannot carry a tune, who sings the Canadian national anthem to his tune and his words. What an insult to all Canadians.”

Lee Meade gathered the stack of letters from his desk and returned them to a file. After a distinguished career in newspapers and public relations, Meade, 66, had retired to Minnesota to write a novel when he was called back to head up publicity for the Las Vegas Posse, one of three 1994 expansion franchises awarded the United States by the foundering Canadian Football League.

Meade had not planned to become the Red Adair of public relations fire-fighting.

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The CFL crossed the border into Sacramento last year and this season put down stakes in Baltimore, Shreveport, La., and Las Vegas.

Self-respecting Canadians turned their heads for last December’s official naming of the Las Vegas’ franchise. For the team’s unveiling at the Lady Luck Hotel, a bare-bottomed magician known as Melinda--First Lady of Magic--was shot out of a cannon.

The Posse, purchased last July for $3 million by Ohio businessman Nick Mileti, held training camp at the Riviera Hotel, which tore up a parking lot and built the Posse a practice field adjacent to its casino. During camp, the team’s assistant equipment manager won $2,200 in jackpots over two days.

Coached by NFL-savvy Ron Meyer, the Posse does not have a Canadian-born player on its 37-man roster. Canadian-based teams are required to have at least 20 “non-imports” on the roster.

Because of size limitations at Sam Boyd Stadium, the Posse does not play on a standard CFL-sized field. The end zones are 15 yards deep, five shorter than regulation, and the playing width is two yards narrower than the standard 65 yards.

It makes for cramped quarters. One opposing team complained the Posse’s showgirls were distracting players on the sidelines during the game.

Mileti encourages gambling on his team and was thrilled when local bookmakers began posting betting lines.

So far, the Posse--one of the few publicly held sports franchises--has proved a good bet. At the team’s stock offering, 650,000 units sold out in minutes. With the $7 million raised, Mileti paid off his debts and began the season $3 1/2 million in the black.

Then there is the heat.

Game-time temperature for the team’s June 29 exhibition opener against Edmonton was 115 degrees, 146 on the artificial turf.

It was an 8 p.m. start.

“The heat is highly overrated,” Meyer said.

In an opposing viewpoint, Edmonton Eskimos quarterback Damon Allen said afterward it felt like “the Devil was breathing fireballs at me.”

That was Canadian bacon compared to the Posse’s July 16 regular-season home opener against Saskatchewan, when Dennis Casey Park of Fullerton stepped to the microphone and let fly “O Canada.”

Park mangled both tune and lyric.

The singer, in fact, had been a last-minute anthem replacement for the step-son of John Chura, a Posse assistant coach. Apparently a late-night television psychic intervened and demanded a more accomplished singer to pair with Dionne Warwick, who sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Park came billed as a seasoned pro, son of a circus acrobat. He had been in show business since age 3, once toured with Bob Hope and sang a medley before 112,000 fans at the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.

Park had also played Vegas before, but does not subscribe to the stereotype.

“I’m not a Vegas singer,” he said recently from his home in Fullerton. “I’m not a lounge singer. I’m not Wayne Newton.”

That night, Park sang like Nate Newton. Wailing a cappella, he made a monumental mistake by not properly gauging the delay and distortion of his voice’s echo.

“I get the first two or three notes out, then right back in my ear I heard all those old, used, no-good notes coming back,” he said. “I just wish I had an identical twin to blame it on him.”

Park couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

“To the people who were insulted, I let them know it was unfortunate, that I was sorry,’ Park said. “I understand completely. I knew where they were coming from.”

Mileti says Park will never again attempt a high-C at Posse games.

“It’s not so much that he was a ‘Vegas’ guy, but I think he didn’t know the song,” said Mileti, who wrote a letter of apology to the Canadian prime minister. “It was a nightmare. Embarrassing. Everything about it was wrong.”

What could be worse?

Well, there were those horse droppings on the playing field. The Posse mascot is an equestrian group called the Posse Nine, which entertains during pre-game and halftime.

Referee: “OK, Saskatchewan, which goal do you want to defend?”

Saskatchewan: “The one up wind.”

Roughrider Coach Ray Jauch feared the horses were going to trample his players. “Get those damn horses away from us,” he kept yelling.

Cheerleaders posed another problem. Because wider Canadian fields mean less sideline room, Posse showgirls often ended up too close to the opposing bench.

“Our guys are young, and they were hot and sweaty,” Jauch told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “Naturally, they’re going to look at the young ladies and take their minds off the game for at least a few seconds.”

Once, the cheerleaders had to be chased out of the end zone during play.

Saskatchewan filed a complaint with the CFL.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Posse can’t draw horseflies to their games. The team averaged 11,025 fans for its first three games in a 32,000-seat stadium.

Joyce, a waitress at the Hotel San Remo and a big football fan, summed it up when asked if she would be attending that night’s game between the Posse and Baltimore CFLers.

“Hell, no,” she said. “It’s too damn hot.”

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Most of the football fallout had since settled in the Nevada desert.

After considerable barnstorming, Dennis Park made his peace with outraged Canadians. Park served penance by granting 70 mea culpa interviews with radio and television stations, and Canada called off the dogs.

July 28, Park was invited to Hamilton, Ontario, to made amends before a Tiger-Cat game against Ottawa.

He was escorted by limousine to the field.

“Maybe so they could have a running car waiting for me,” Park joked. “I just wanted to go do it and do it right.”

This time, backed by a keyboard, Park knocked the crowd dead with a rousing performance and received a standing ovation.

“It was almost worth going through just to go to Canada,” said Park, whose career might have actually been aided by the publicity.

Live and learn.

The Posse finally got a handle on its horse problem. First, the horses’ diet was regulated before the games. Second, in what has turned out to be a publicity coup, the team commissioned a cleanup crew since dubbed the “Posse Pooper Scoopers” who, for $5 an hour, scamper onto the field, do their job and even cleanse the carpet with an anti-bacterial solution.

The “Pooper Scoopers” have played to rave reviews.

To solve the cheerleader dilemma, the team constructed platforms in the stands on which they now cheer.

And the players?

“I’m from Chicago,” said Len Williams, a street-wise rookie quarterback. “But everything here is 24 hours a day. You can get sucked in. But I think we’ve handled it well.”

Practices, for one, were moved from evening to morning, a ploy Williams believes was deliberate.

“I think coach changed because guys were staying out all night, waking up at 2 p.m. and coming in sluggish.”

Williams said he knows of only one Posse player who has lost his paycheck to gambling. Fortunately, CFL players, who average about $30,000 in salary, have little disposable income to lose.

The publicity department proudly reports no Posse player arrests or DUIs to date.

“The distractions don’t bother us,” Posse Coach Meyer said.

The most recognizable player on the roster is former Colorado star Darian Hagan--and he is only the third-string quarterback.

Las Vegas lost three in a row after a 2-0 start, but few doubt Meyer, 53, is the man to lead the Posse (3-4) through the desert. Meyer is a local hero, having resurrected the UNLV football program in the early 1970s. He has fielded winning teams at every stop since: at Southern Methodist from 1976 through ‘81; with the NFL’s New England Patriots from 1982 through ‘84, and with the Indianapolis Colts from 1986 through ’91.

Meyer also says he has something to prove, having been fired by two of the NFL’s most eccentric owners: Bill Sullivan of the New England Patriots, who has sold the franchise, and the bumbling Bob Irsay of the Indianapolis Colts.

“Thank God I never worked for Bill Bidwill,” Meyer said of the Arizona Cardinal owner, not noted as an NFL visionary. “That would have made it a trifecta. It was never my idea to leave the sidelines. I love coaching, I love the game. I think I’m good at it. . . . A little bit of this is ‘I told you so.’ ”

After his 1991 ouster, Meyer went into private business and worked as an NFL analyst for CNN.

Working for Mileti took some adjusting.

“I never see him,” Meyer said, smiling. “He stays out of day-to-day operations. I love that.”

As part of his deal, Meyer had to fill his staff with coaches who had previous CFL experience who could help Meyer through the game’s nuances. The CFL plays with 12 men instead of 11, and on a wider and longer field.

While there has been some old-line resentment to American expansion in the CFL, Meyer believes U.S. teams will ultimately save the league. Thirty cities have submitted bids for four available CFL U.S. franchises next season.

The future of the CFL, most experts agree, is south of the Canadian border.

Meyer contends the high-scoring Canadian game will eventually offer an alternative to the NFL.

“I think we can be a godsend, if we don’t Americanize the game,” he said.

*

“I miscalculated,” Mileti said as he rooted his team on from the 55-yard-line bleacher seats high above the field. It was late in the third quarter of a game between minutes-old CFL rivals Las Vegas and Baltimore. “I thought we’d sell out the first game. I was wrong.”

The Baltimore game drew only 10,122.

“I underestimated the heat’s impact, psychologically,” Mileti said.

The temperature at game time was 112. Mileti said it is difficult convincing fans that, once the sun sets, the weather is tolerable.

“If it was baseball or volleyball or tennis, you’d say, ‘Well, it’s hot,’ ” Mileti said. “But football is Notre Dame and Michigan and crisp fall winds. Football and 112 degrees do not wash.”

Fans who come are devout. Mileti spends much of the game in the stands, getting to know them. He has been known to hand deliver birthday requests to be announced over the public address system.

Mileti, 63, has long been associated with longshots. The Ohio-born businessman ignored the naysayers in the 1970s and built the Richfield Coliseum outside Cleveland. Mileti is a former owner of the Cleveland Barons of the American Hockey League, the Crusaders of the World Hockey Assn. and, for 10 years, the NBA’s Cavaliers.

Mileti was retired and living in Rome when he got the bug to acquire a CFL franchise.

He knew Las Vegas was the place.

“Eventually, we will sell out and be the hottest ticket in town,” Mileti said.

Mileti puts his faith in the town’s expanding population and the eventual credibility of his product.

“We have excitement in a bottle,” he said. “We have Sinatra here.”

Unlike the NFL, which has tried to fight gamblers off with a stick, Mileti welcomes the action. Local bookmakers report betting on the CFL has increased significantly since the Posse joined the league.

“It’s a big, big, big factor,” Mileti said. “You can bet $2 and then come watch the game. I’m too old to be a hypocrite.”

Mileti says it is folly the NFL denies its obvious multi-billion-dollar association to gambling.

“It’s embarrassing,” he said. “It’s legal. Damn right I’m being honest about it.”

Mileti has one other trump card. The CFL desperately needs him.

“This is going to make or break it,” said Doug McConanchie, who covers Saskatchewan for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. “Why do you think they let Vegas in with a field 10 yards shorter and two yards narrower? Can you imagine the NFL doing that? Horses racing up and down the field, those are minor faux pas. “