|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
'Integrity' is not in UNLV's vocabulary
I doubt that Rick Pitino will end up as the next coach at UNLV. Now that the Boy Genius has tabled plans to spend a week palling around the Nevada desert with Runnin' Rebels athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro, I'd guess that any of the other places attached to the Pitino name -- UMass, Indiana, UCLA, Michigan, even his old Kentucky home -- are likelier ultimate destinations for the former Boston Celtics coach, perhaps another year down the road. But Pitino made a comment to The Providence Journal last week -- "UNLV is a sleeping giant and could be brought back to where it was in the '80s, only this time with integrity" -- that occasions two observations. The first is that, while not the worst offender that college hoops has ever had, Pitino is no paragon of righteousness either. He was implicated in a messy scandal at Hawaii during his days as a recruiter. He bridled at rules designed to keep professionalization at bay, such as the NCAA's weekly limit on practice time. If he could and felt he needed to, he'd swap out an entire team each year, G.M.-like. But the second point is even more germane: There's simply no doing it "with integrity" at the University of Nudity, Language and Violence. Before that statement invites a flamefest from partisans of Las Vegas and the Rebels, let me give the city its props. Vegas has gone a long way toward remaking itself as a better-scrubbed, more family-oriented place. The city has more churches per capita than any other burg in the country, a fact Jerry Tarkanian often mentioned within the first 10 minutes you spent with him. But let's look at the record, beginning with Richie (The Fixer) Perry's romp in that hot tub on Tark's watch, and ending with the booster's payoff to Lamar Odom that ultimately cost Bill Bayno his job. Rollie Massimino ran afoul of the rules, cutting a little side deal with the school president at the time, Robert Maxson, that compromised the claims the two men had of being reformers, and left them sharing the title of most unpopular man in town. With his lap-dances-and-gold-chains schtick, Bayno tried to out-Vegas Vegas. Not a good idea unless you tend to the little things that UNLV fans expect their coach to take care of -- that Tarkanian unfailingly took care of -- such as beating a school like Princeton on those occasions you play it. Tim Grgurich is the only UNLV coach since Tarkanian who cared about nothing other than being a basketball coach. He went scandalously unappreciated for it. In the minds of the teenage boys whom UNLV recruits, Las Vegas is still a theme park of adult diversions. If they're thinking about any book, it surely isn't the NCAA rule book. Think there's a restaurateur in Comp City USA who'll expect any Rebels player to pick up a check? Think a kid like Casey Jacobsen is going to give Vegas a second look when he could go to Stanford, Duke or North Carolina? Think every on-the-make high school player, rapacious parent or traveling-team sharpie wouldn't see the combination of Pitino's obsession with winning and Vegas' virtual civic pride in flouting NCAA rules as an invitation to drive their asking prices higher? The salary cap may have been the bane of Pitino's life with the Celtics, but in an environment like Vegas, he'd quickly yearn for the days of strict limits on compensation. As one basketball figure with longstanding ties to the city and the school tells me, "Vegas isn't a program. It's an era." His point: The run of Runnin' Rebels teams we remember -- of Armon Gilliam and Larry Johnson, of teething towels and the strains of Walk Like a Tarkanian -- is over. No grasping will bring it back, least of all with a (pardon the pun) patina of virtue. Success may be a choice. But there are some places where integrity just isn't one. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Odyssey, which will be published in January 2002 by Warner Books. He can be
reached at thehooplife@aol.com.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
