Teams Will Always Gamble on This Town

Las Vegas is a graveyard for failed professional sports franchises. But that doesn’t keep investors from flocking to Sin City to try cashing in on the burgeoning population. With the Arena Football League’s New Jersey Gladiators announcing last week intentions to relocate to the desert, Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Joe Hawk thinks they have a realistic chance at survival, on a smaller scale.

“The way the [XFL’s] Outlaws were widely accepted -- by past pro franchise standards -- in 2001 told me there is a market for such in-kind ventures in this valley. The Outlaws still might be playing here, perhaps continuing to average 22,600 fans, had not the league collapsed under them. It genuinely was a good time for most who attended the games. So, what’s to say it can’t be that way for the Gladiators?

“Team owner Jim Ferraro said at a ... news conference at the Thomas & Mack Center, the home of the new franchise, that he would like the Gladiators to average 10,000 fans for its eight home games, but that ‘might be a pipe dream.’ Uh, yeah. A crack-pipe dream.”

Trivia time: Who holds the Las Vegas Bowl record for tackles?

Where’s the visor? Jacksonville Jaguar running back Fred Taylor looked across the field Sunday at Tennessee Titan Coach Jeff Fisher and had a sense of deja vu.

“It begins with their head guy [Fisher]. He’s a little bit like Coach Spurrier,” Taylor, who played college ball for Steve Spurrier at Florida, told the Nashville Tennessean’s David Climer. “He has a little bit of swagger in him, and that carries over to the players. They fly around and play with confidence. It’s like they’re geeked up on something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s something they’re not telling the NFL about.”

Here comes the money: According to Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe, Timberwolf forward Kevin Garnett, who instigated the latest trend of high school players jumping to the NBA in 1995, is due some compensation.

“[Garnett] begat Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady and Rashard Lewis and Al Harrington and Jonathan Bender and Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry,” Ryan wrote. “Kevin Garnett should demand a cut of all their first-year earnings.

“[But] what might have happened if young Kevin Garnett had come into the NBA and laid a monstrous egg? Suppose he turned out to be horribly overrated.... Would that have halted the high school phenomenon right there?”

Minnesota Coach Flip Saunders told Ryan, “I’d like to say yes but I doubt it. Everyone in high school was paying attention. The egos were too big. There would have been kids out there saying, ‘Well, I’m better than him, anyway,’ during those first 30 games, when he wasn’t doing that much.”

Trivia answer: USC’s Troy Polamalu, who had 20 tackles in a 10-6 loss to Utah last year.

And finally: Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the latest news out of the world of severed heads and cryogenics.

“I see Ted Williams’ kids cut a deal in court to keep him permanently frozen,” Armstrong wrote. “You figure they’ll at least have the decency to buy him a hat and gloves for Christmas?”

-- Paul Gutierrez