He scores! He scores! He scores!
None of that hard-rock defensive stuff for the Arena Football League, where scores of 52-48 are run-of-the-mill.
Your Colorado Crush hosts the Chicago Rush at the Pepsi Center on Sunday for the American Conference championship. The winner goes to ArenaBowl XIX in Las Vegas on June 12.
Marc Stout, who does play-by- play for KHOW 630-AM, acknowledged the game is all about speed and scoring. “You have to keep your eye going,” said Stout, in his third season with the Crush. “There’s almost a different rule or something strange that happens every game. It’s difficult. There are any number of passing plays, but over the course of three years you get an idea of where the passes are going to go.”
The league, said Stout, has gained status since its founding 19 years ago. “Some people think it’s a sideshow, but the guys who play the games are all athletes. It’s not a rec league, it’s real football.”
The 1 p.m. kickoff is live on KUSA-Channel 9 and KHOW.
Endurance race
No wonder the Indianapolis 500 outdrew NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 on TV. Who has the endurance?
Nielsen ratings showed that the 500, thanks in large measure to Danica Patrick, drew a 17 audience share while the Coke 600 logged a 13, best for that event.
Last Sunday’s stock-car race featured 22 caution flags and a red-flag stop, leading to a race that lasted 5 hours, 13 minutes and 52 seconds, third-longest in history. I don’t have that many Doritos in the house.
The 500 apparently is already a “classic.” It’ll be re-shown at 7 p.m. Friday on ESPN Classic (digital cable channel 403).
The stock-car boys do it again Sunday with the MBNA Racepoints 400 in Dover, Del., at 11:35 a.m. on FX.
En Francais
Americans are scarce in the dwindling field at the French Open tennis tournament.
In fact, the best the U.S. of A. can do is Canadian-born Mary Pierce, whose father is American and her mother French. The French claim her. She swept past top seed Lindsay Davenport to reach today’s semifinals (6 a.m., ESPN2), where she plays Russian Elena Likhovtseva.
The women’s final is at 7 a.m. Saturday (break out the croissants) and the men’s at 7 a.m. Sunday, on Channel 9.
Around the dial
There’s a reason it’s called the national pastime: ESPN broadcasters Jon Miller and Joe Morgan passed time during the Cubs-Dodgers game on Memorial Day discussing Morgan’s military career as an Army clerk/typist (65 wpm) … The U.S. soccer team continues its march to the 2006 World Cup with a match against Costa Rica (5:30 p.m. Saturday, ESPN2) … Quotable: “Any statistic that appears interesting is almost certainly a mistake.” – A.S.C. Ehrenberg.
Dick Kreck’s column appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He may be reached at 303-820-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
