Stadium plans render minor sports irrelevant

It's all good. At least in the artist's rendering.

Er, renderings.

On Friday morning, UNLV's Dome Rangers -- billionaire Ed Roski and his right-hand man, Silverton president Craig Cavileer -- will try to convince the Board of Regents why they should be awarded the exclusive negotiating rights to build a sports stadium for the Rebels.

The way everybody was talking last week, it was assumed the regents would be bringing their rubber stamps to the special meeting.

Now another group of schemers -- I mean, dreamers -- has entered the picture. International Development Management LLC has an artist's rendering of its own for not one, not two, but three new stadiums and arenas that would be built near Symphony Park downtown.

Now the regents have a decision to make: Should they crawl between the sheets with the Dome Rangers? Or with Klaatu from "The Day the Earth Stood Still," who one assumes will represent IDM at the meeting based on the metallic-looking spaceship design of its project?

While all this wild speculation about arenas was being wildly speculated on for like the 129th time -- and still no shovel in the ground, go figure -- the UNLV softball team spent Wednesday afternoon brushing up on hitting the cutoff woman in preparation for the start of its season Friday.

What does the UNLV softball team have to do with these stadium proposals?

Absolutely nothing.

But the Dome Rangers didn't have to be so blatant about it.

Pete Manarino has done a nice job of turning around the UNLV softball program in the two years since he came out of retirement to become Rebels coach. But last week, the program was literally obliterated from the map.

When Roski and Cavileer unveiled their artist's rendering at another special meeting, Eller Media Stadium, the home of the UNLV softball team, did not appear on the schematic that showed how the campus will be rebuilt with lots of parking lots and fern bars.

The media, of course, was quick to pick up on the oversight. The developers are already saving the school money by eliminating softball, they joked. Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney thought about drawing a softball stadium on the campus diagram in magic marker when nobody was looking. (OK, I admit to being the instigator.)

"It's all good," Manarino said with a laugh.

Manarino says that when he gets out of bed in the morning. He's always smiling, always laughing, always wanting to play two, like Ernie Banks. Even if there's nowhere on the map to play.

"I saw the drawing myself," Manarino said, still laughing. "It's a great concept, great for the university ... it's also great for the community of Las Vegas."

But for your sake, what about the drawing, Pete?

"I spoke with athletic director Jim Livengood, and he has assured me that softball will continue," Manarino said.

"It's all good."

I dropped by softball practice Wednesday, just to make sure the infield hadn't been bulldozed. Livengood, as coincidence would have it, was addressing the players -- not to assure them the infield wouldn't be bulldozed under his watch, but just to say a few words. To show the softball players that, for a few minutes anyway, they were as important as the football players or the basketball players or the influential boosters or even the Dome Rangers and their parking lots and fern bars.

Then the batters adjourned to the batting cage and the pitchers began to work on their rise balls and Manarino told me he really liked this team and that Saturday's game against No. 4 Washington would be a big test. And then it was my turn to feign interest.

But it occurred to me these scenes were being played out all over campus, at the swimming pool or on the baseball diamond or at the golf course or on the tennis courts or at the track or in the field: Athletes with major goals representing minor sports, practicing hard, not really caring that much if anybody noticed, which is good, because hardly anybody ever does. (Until you pull somebody down by her ponytail on the soccer field, or something of that nature.)

And then, I thought, it's too bad there wasn't an artist around to render that. Because as Pete Manarino likes to say, it's all good.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352.