Tark Gets a Final Season to Improve Image

Jerry Tarkanian played for the tie.

He knew he wasn’t going to win, not with the charges stacked against him (Lloyd Daniels’ verdict coming this summer), the opposition stacked against him (UNLV President Robert Maxson joining the fray), the evidence stacked against him (three Rebels hot-tubbing with convicted sports fixer Richard Perry) and no more aura of invincibility left to protect him (Duke 79, UNLV 77).

So Tarkanian called off the press, dribbled out the clock and played not to lose. He’s still a smart coach. Tarkanian got the maximum out of the minimum--a deadlock at the end of regulation and one period of overtime, which will keep him in the game until some time next March.

As compromises go, this one was all for show, but isn’t that all that matters in Las Vegas? Tark may have learned his coaching chops in Riverside, Pasadena and Long Beach, but his image is total Las Vegas: tacky, shady, a tad slippery, yet damningly alluring.

And image, as prominent Las Vegas native Andre Agassi informs us, is everything.

In reality, the Tarkanian era at UNLV is dead, dead as a 22 on the blackjack table. His players are gone--Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony, Anderson Hunt, George Ackles, all NBA-ready. His reign over the Big West is gone--UNLV is ineligible for the 1992 conference championship. His self-defining obsession is gone--no invitation from the NCAA, no vindication over the NCAA.

The Runnin’ Rebels are going nowhere in 1992. They are on probation as part of the NCAA’s pay-now, pay-later penance plan, where you serve once for the recruiting crimes of 1977 and then when your coach squirms out of a two-year suspension through legal machinations, you serve again, 15 years later.

There is no reason for Tarkanian to stay, other than appearance, which is precisely why Tarkanian fought so hard for the right to walk away after one more season.

He has two years remaining on his contract and Maxson offered a substantial buyout. But to Tarkanian, accepting a buyout is to suggest that Maxson is throwing money at a problem--make that problem go away--and that the problem is Tarkanian.

Tarkanian had been battling the NCAA for 15 years. To quit now, like this, would be to surrender in disgrace. He has the highest winning percentage in collegiate basketball history, .833. To quit now, after the most notorious defeat of his career, is to give the NCAA too much satisfaction.

Thus, we arrive at the Tarkanian-Maxson Accord:

Tarkanian gets one more season before bowing out gracefully, or as gracefully as Tarkanian’s able.

Maxson gets out of the second year of the contract and is financially responsible for nothing more than Tarkanian’s 1991-92 tab of $400,000.

The cost of a farewell tour just went up. Tarkanian is waiving nearly a half-million dollars for the privilege of resigning on his own terms. It should be some tour, too. In a reversal of form, maybe some old Runnin’ Rebels will get together and buy a car for Coach.

Funny, but Tarkanian might have been able to weather it all--’77, ‘92, the Lloyd Daniels’ thunder and lightning--if the photo file at the Las Vegas Review-Journal had been one entry slimmer. That photo the Review-Journal printed in its May 26 editions might have been two years old, but it was a killer: Perry, two times convicted of sports bribery, sipping pina coladas in a hot tub with three members of the 1990 NCAA champion Rebels--David Butler, Moses Scurry and Anderson Hunt.

Image is everything. Three UNLV players, in the tank. A known points fixer, showing three players from the shakiest program in the land a good time. UNLV, coming off a most curious semifinal defeat to Duke, a team it ravaged by 30 points in the 1990 NCAA final.

No evidence beyond the photographic has been revealed, but that didn’t stop the talk shows from raising the question: Was Duke’s victory purely pure and simple?

And, come to think of it, why did Larry Johnson pass up that final shot to tie the game?

Maxson needed none of this. He has sought to be an environmentalist at UNLV, trying to clear the darkened air above the basketball program, but now the oil fields were ablaze. Last week, the salvage job began. Many meetings later, Maxson and Tarkanian reached a course correction both could live with.

Good to get it down on paper, too. In recent days, the rumors were flying and the wildest had Tarkanian chucking it all, moving across the Big West and landing at . . . get ready . . . Cal State Fullerton. Right. Just what Fullerton needs--a coach with a salary and a reputation it can’t afford.

No, UNLV and Tarkanian will lame-duck it together. One more year and no more Tark. If only UNLV could say the same about NCAA retribution. After next season’s probation, however, the Lloyd Daniels’ carnage should be worth at least an extension through ’93.

The countdown on Tarkanian’s UNLV career has begun. It has been as turbulent and as tumultuous as they come, but who’d have thought it would end this way?

In a photo finish.