Folksiness Obscures Flaws of Tarkanian

He gazes up with those big raccoon eyes. That Bowery Boys face. He says something funny. Something suitably goofy. He tells you: “Never hire an assistant coach who owns a set of golf clubs or a camper.” Then he tells you why. Or he tells you: “Europe is overrated.” Then he tells you why. You laugh. You laugh with him, or maybe you laugh at him. Either way, he’s got you.

It is the way Jerry Tarkanian has won over outsiders for years. Nobody in Nevada needs to be won over. What Tarkanian has done with the city of Las Vegas’ permanent floating ballgame has been enough for even the lowest-roller. Outsiders, however, come seeking explanations for the scandals, the rumbles, the investigations, the violations, the dark side of Tark the Shark.

His funny stories pacify some of them. His undeniable charm disarms them. They no longer inquire about whatever UNLV does wrong. They forget to ask about the grade-point averages that come up snake-eyes. Suddenly the only average that seems worth mentioning is Tarkanian’s winning percentage, the gaudy 82.6%--going into today’s West Regional championship game against Loyola Marymount--that currently rivals Clair Bee’s as the greatest of any college basketball coach ever.

Never mind the NCAA’s relentless prosecution--persecution?--of a man who has won 562 games. In Vegas, the coach is bigger than Wayne Newton, with better records. On the Strip, somebody’s probably on stage as a Jerry Tarkanian Impersonator. Basketball is not the only game in town, but it’s the only one people prefer to watch than play.

And, when UNLV wins, nobody who cares about the team cares about anything it has done that hasn’t been on the level. Nobody cares that Utah State is afraid to play there, that Arizona from now on refuses to play there, that Ball State, the team Vegas eliminated from the tournament here Friday night, found itself jaw-to-jaw with the Rebels in a hallway after the game, whereupon the Ball State coach reportedly branded Tarkanian’s players as “a bunch of thugs.”

Rebel rooters see the coach as some sort of Father Flanagan type, a regular guy who is willing to take a chance on hard-up, dead-end, misunderstood kids. Tarkanian gratefully accepts this assessment, saying: “If I like a kid, I’ll take him. I don’t care what other coaches think of him. What makes a coach right all the time? Why are coaches always the ones who are right about a kid?”

Before long, Tark the Shark is on a roll, telling you how coaches take themselves too seriously, how recruiters make too much of occupational hazards, how NCAA administrators fret so much about petty law enforcement that they forget to look out for the well-being of impressionable young adults. And there’s where he gets you. There’s where Jerry Tarkanian wins you over, convinces you that anybody this nice just couldn’t be too bad.

Instead of looking slick, he stands there dressed like someone who’s just heard someone yell: “Fire!” He mocks the guys who play golf or drive campers for using up too much valuable time and energy that could be better used watching a basketball game. He kids recruiters, telling them how lucky they are to be going out on the town, staying in a nice hotel, ordering a nice room-service steak, meeting some nice young man’s nice family.

Tark teases tourists, saying: “I went to Europe for three weeks! Couldn’t wait to get home! Wandering around Germany someplace! Can’t remember the name of the city, but it looked like Pittsburgh! I’d rather be in Pittsburgh! Everybody speaks English in Pittsburgh! Getting to Europe takes a whole day! I’d rather go to Newport Beach! I can get there in 45 minutes and I know where I’m going! Europe is overrated!”

Let’s face it, Jerry Tarkanian is hardly a renaissance man. His idea of culture is Dick Vitale. His idea of a good book has X’s and O’s in it. Once his wife dragged him to a ballet. Jerry’s heavy eyelids quickly fell shut. “All of a sudden, everybody’s standing up clapping!” he said. “I’m wondering who scored!”

You can only dislike him from a distance. To meet Jerry Tarkanian is to fall into a trap, like a dribbler being pressed. He’s just too engaging for words. Just a common man, with modest goals. Only later do you remind yourself that college basketball is supposed to be more than fun and games, that all those players who could barely write “X” and “O” when they left UNLV might have been somewhat better served by a coach who didn’t have to have it explained to him after their release who the Iran hostages were.

Funny how the regional final has come down to a war of wits and wills between Tark the Shark, who has the savoir faire of a stevedore, and Paul Westhead, who is a professor and Shakespearean scholar. UNLV has the superior players, athletically speaking--and could have had more.

“I wanted Bo Kimble,” Tark said. “When he and Hank Gathers left USC, I got a call from Jim Maloney, the Temple assistant, who knew them from Philadelphia. He told me Kimble was going to be a pro. Gathers was good, but Gathers had some limitations. Kimble, he said . . . Kimble will play in the NBA. I checked it out, but Kimble and Gathers wanted to play someplace together. I couldn’t take ‘em both.”

Leave it to Tarkanian to tell you the whole story, just blurt it out, not flower it to unnecessarily exaggerate the greatness of a great young man who died. This is exactly what the friends and fans and players of Tark like about him, his lack of pretense, his straight talk. Those who do not like Tark might as well keep it to themselves. If they say it to his face, he’ll just talk them out of it.