Las Vegas Mayor: Pro Team in Southern Nevada a 'Guarantee'
by Robert Ferringo

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to attend a Monday Night Football game live in Las Vegas? What would the NBA or NHL playoff experience bring to 'Sin City'? Or how about an Opening Day MLB start in the desert?

I can tell you exactly what it would be like. The back of your game ticket would be a scratch-off lottery game for lap dances and convertibles. There would be brilliantly lit slot machines in the bathroom stalls. At halftime, an opposing fan would be lowered into a cage and fed to a pair of white Bengal tigers. The vendors would be seven-foot mutants from Eastern Europe and the cheerleaders would be South American vixens. There would be midgets and clowns and a giant money tree that one lucky fan would get to shake at each home game.

It would be beautiful.

Las Vegas and a professional sports team are a natural fit. There are few things as American as the cultish pride, monetary excess and choreographed violence involved in pro athletics in this country. It's in our blood. It's our birthright. And America's Playground is the only city in the country that could possibly match that sort of frenzy and bacchanalia stride-for-stride.

The population of Las Vegas has tripled over the course of the last 20 years to 1.8 million, and it remains one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. Its economy pumps out a staggering $72 billion annually, with nearly 38 million tourists blowing through town each year and contributing their mortgage/retirement/child's college fund to that honey pot. If we assume three-fifths of all Las Vegas visitors are sports fans - a measurement the Founding Fathers would approve - that would yield a pool of roughly 24 million fans to draw from.

"I've said before that just like Dallas is America's Team, I truly think that a team in Las Vegas would be the World's Team," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said. "We really have the type of cosmopolitan people out here that would embrace the hometown team."

Goodman is an outspoken, martini-swilling, showgirl-loving Philadelphia native and the ace in the hole for the city's bid for pro sports. He is disarmingly honest, and has the guile and zeal one would expect from an attorney who used to defend such ruthless mobsters as Meyer Lansky and Anthony Spilotro. Goodman is on record in support of canings and thumb amputations as punishment, and has shown up in public surrounded by Elvis impersonators. Would you bet against him?

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