Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 2, 1990 TAG: 9004020260
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Brill
DATELINE: DENVER LENGTH: Medium
Jerry Tarkanian, whose Nevada-Las Vegas team is favored to win its first NCAA title tonight, has the look of an old hound dog and a lack of understanding of the subject.
The NCAA would like to nail Tark the Shark. It will nail Tark, probably this summer, for indiscretions involving Lloyd Daniels, and a lot of card-carrying NCAA-haters will claim vindictiveness.
There are these things to know about Jerry Tarkanian and UNLV:
For the most part, this team has good kids. There is the erudite Greg Anthony, a Young Republican who spent a summer on Capitol Hill. There is the smiling, businesslike All-American, Larry Johnson, and the efficient Olympian, Stacy Augmon.
The image of the rebellious Rebels is perpetuated only by Moses Scurvy, oops, Scurry, a Mr. T lookalike with a trash mouth and a roughhouse inside game.
This is not Duke, nor should it be. But characterizing the NCAA title contest as good vs. evil is not only inaccurate, but unfair.
To the Vegas players.
The real problem with Tark is that he is totally one-dimensional. That dimension is basketball.
He is interested only in players. He gets them from the junior-college campuses and the inner-city ghettos, and he doesn't apologize.
He will argue that he is giving a second chance to most, and what's wrong with that? But he discriminates. It's not the second chance that is important so much as the ability to produce second-chance points.
UNLV has cleaned up its act. Somewhat. In Tark's first 10 years, 1973-82, only seven players graduated. Since then, 10 of 23 players who remained until their senior year received degrees.
Still a miserable record, but improved, and not the worst.
What convicts Tark is not his words, but his actions.
"Education is for everybody," he said. "Nothing bothers me more than when someone says they don't belong in college."
Tark doesn't understand some don't belong. No matter how well they dunk.
Daniels, a New York city legend with third-grade reading ability and no high school diploma, was admitted to UNLV in 1986. He was arrested on a drug bust in '87 and never played for the Rebels.
The next season, Vegas enrolled Clifford Allen, a playground superstar from Los Angeles. He had spent his life in foster homes and detention centers and never finished a semester of high school. Before his senior year, he was placed in a diagnostic center for psychiatric counseling after violating parole in a beating incident.
A rotten apple, he nevertheless was matriculated at UNLV. He lasted one month.
Tark doesn't apologize. "It backfired on us, bringing them in, but we didn't do anything wrong," he said. "All we did is give them an opportunity."
He believes even now that Daniels, subject of the present NCAA probe, would have worked out had he been drug-free. Tark does not understand that there is no way - none - that Daniels could have been considered a college student.
This is Tark talking about his '78 team, the year after his first Final Four: "Number 1, if all our kids went to class and we lost, I'd be fired."
He couldn't penalize the players for missing class because they were tired. "There's no question about that. My job, I understand, is to win. But there was a time in '78 when we had only six [quality] players," he said. No question, basketball came first.
Tark has had only four McDonald's All-Americans in 17 years. (Duke has seven - this year). But that's not his recruiting pattern. For the most part, he gets castoffs. Usually, academic casualties.
Tark, a man with zero hobbies, addresses only basketball problems. Not schoolwork issues.
He says, candidly because that's his nature, "I've always stressed going to class [perhaps forgetting '78]. But I'm realistic, too," he said. "There's never been a time when I've gone into a home and talked to a player and the first thing on his mind and his mother's mind wasn't academics."
Fair enough. That tells you what kind of homes he frequents.
The man is a great coach. His record of 564-119 is the best of anybody active in the sport. He has won more NCAA games than anybody except John Wooden and Dean Smith.
Unlike those coaching giants, however, Tark never got his priorities in order. The only question ever asked was "Can he play?" Not "Can he read?"
Tarkanian should be in coaching. It is all he knows. And he's a genius.
He is not in the wrong profession, just the wrong level.
With reform the topic of the day in college athletics, it would be a terrible thing if Tarkanian won a national championship.
But this predominantly blameless squad could, perhaps should, do just that. It would upset a lot of people, me included.
Tark is a coach, pure and simple. Education is not his bailiwick.
Which is why he's wrong. Has been. Will be. Until he quits.
by CNB