Three Up, Three Down: No event can seem small when held in Jones Mahal

Who needs the Bowl Championship Series?

Maybe Texas Christian. Definitely not the Cotton Bowl.

The Cotton Bowl isn't part of the BCS and no longer is mentioned in context with the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls. But you wouldn't have know it from Louisiana State's 41-27 victory over Texas A&M, played in front of 83,514 fans under a giant video screen in prime time on Friday night.

The atmosphere was tremendous. You could feel the electricity. Especially when they showed the replays.

Credit Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for that. Every event in Cowboys Stadium just seems like a big deal.

The Jones Mahal has hosted George Strait and the Jonas Brothers and Paul McCartney and U2 and Arlington Bowie vs. Richland in high school football and the NBA All-Star Game and the Big 12 Championship Game and assorted college basketball games and the professional bull riders and monster trucks and Manny Pacquiao and his fists of fury (twice).

Jones also has met with officials representing the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the National Finals Rodeo. Uh-oh.

On July 19, 2009, a crowd of 85,000 watched Costa Rica beat Guadeloupe and Mexico beat Haiti in soccer at Cowboys Stadium. This makes you wonder why, when times were better, Las Vegas didn't have the foresight to build a Jones Mahal instead of downtown high-rises in which nobody wants to live. Or why we don't become an official sponsor of the Mexican national soccer team.

On Feb. 6, Cowboys Stadium will host Super Bowl XLV. Jones no doubt envisioned the stadium's chief tenant, his Cowboys, hosting a couple of playoff games in the interim. But he needn't fret. If making marginal events seem legitimate is the goal, the list of possible tenants for Cowboys Stadium is nearly limitless.

There's the debut of Will Ferrell's next movie and a Timberwolves vs. Kings game and the Pro Bowlers Association and any hockey game not played outdoors and the NFC West (except for Marshawn Lynch and those blocking for him downfield Saturday) and the ABBA reunion and the Klitschko brothers and Air Force basketball and anything on C-SPAN and the Saints' defense and any attempt to re-create the Woodstock Festival, especially the 1999 attempt, which featured violence, rape, fires and the Insane Clown Posse.

Check that. They could have put a stage in the Great Pyramid of Giza and turned up the amplifiers to "11," and it wouldn't have saved the 1999 Woodstock Festival.

THREE UP

■ Eastern Washington rallied to edge Delaware 20-19 in the Football Championship Series (or whatever alias Division I-AA answers to these days) title game. Eastern was seeded fifth in the playoff bracket; Delaware was third. Using those seedings, it would have been the equivalent of Texas Christian playing Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl for the Big Boys championship. But the Eagles do have something in common with the Horned Frogs in that neither will be featured in a commemorative edition of Sports Illustrated.

■ Auto racing diva Danica Patrick performed the coin flip at the GoDaddy.com Bowl in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday -- and even acted happy to be there. The game featured lesser-knowns Middle Tennessee State and Miami of Ohio, which makes you wonder why they just didn't get NASCAR journeyman Hermie Sadler to flip the coin.

■ Mike James, a reserve guard at Lamar, came off the bench to score an NCAA season-high 52 points in a 114-62 win over Division III Louisiana College. UNLV's Tre'Von Willis wasn't guarding him, either.

THREE DOWN

■ The 51s are claiming new Hall of Fame inductee Roberto Alomar, who played nine games for Las Vegas in 1988, as one of their own. This is sort of like Yellow Brick Road claiming Sammy Hagar, who jumped on stage to sing with the local tribute rockers at Boulder Station one night, as a member of the band. Except that Hagar never spat on an umpire and wasn't twice sued for having unprotected sex while knowingly possessing the HIV virus.

■ One of the CBS women's college basketball studio hosts on Saturday predicted a final four of Baylor, Connecticut, Duke and Stanford -- which are ranked Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4. She also admitted to being deathly afraid of tree limbs.

■ The Chilean Miner, aka Edison Pena, will visit Las Vegas beginning Monday. Too bad he couldn't have moved up his arrival a few days. The Rebels could have put him on Jimmer Fredette.

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