UNLV Ruling: Is It Justice or Petty Revenge?

Yes, there is such a thing as sympathy for the devil. We feel it now, a wicked twist of emotions, in the wake of the NCAA’s delayed reaction against the University of Nevada Las Vegas basketball program.

For more years than the NCAA has hounded the ever-Runnin’ Rebels, UNLV has clung to its reputation as the Darth Vader of college basketball. We know it as the program without a conscience, the dynasty from the other side of the tracks. We know Jerry Tarkanian’s neighborhood to be a lawless town, where the win-first, study-whenever mentality is not only accepted and embraced but also flaunted.

He isn’t called Tark the Shark just because the words rhyme.

But today, we wonder if the cause of good and right was served when the NCAA took its defending national champion out of circulation for the 1990-91 tournament. UNLV gets stung now because its coach wouldn’t serve a two-year suspension in 1977 because he was able to out-injunction the NCAA for 13 years. If the NCAA couldn’t get its man, it was dead-set on getting the 15 young ones who play for him.

Is this justice? Or just petty revenge?

When UNLV was first cited for recruiting violations in 1977, the NCAA handed down two sets of sanctions. UNLV was to be placed on two years’ probation--excluded from postseason play and TV appearances--and Tarkanian was to serve a two-year suspension, a punishment unprecedented in the NCAA’s long history of ethical crackdowns.

UNLV accepted and served its sentence. Tarkanian would not. He fought the NCAA in state court and won an injunction preventing the school from suspending him. The NCAA fought back and, eventually, the case wound up before the Supreme Court. There, Tarkanian’s injunction was ruled a legal defense. In effect, Tarkanian was rendered invulnerable against the NCAA.

His basketball team, however, wasn’t permitted underneath the same umbrella.

It didn’t take long for the NCAA to redirect its aim.

Innocent bystanders wound up wounded. Players who were first and second graders when Tarkanian was busted are now the ones who suffer. Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon, players who resisted NBA millions for the rare opportunity to repeat, are left simply to repeat, “Why us?”

Johnson and Augmon made the costly mistake of hitching up with a coach with too much excess baggage and too many NCAA enemies. Sooner or later, even 13 years later, the NCAA was going to get Tarkanian. And it got him right where it hurts the most--right after his first national title, with a real chance of becoming the first team since UCLA to win back-to-back championships. Four starters were to return for next season, joining perhaps the best incoming class Tarkanian ever recruited, legal or otherwise.

Now, they may scatter. Johnson, Augmon and the other Rebel veterans are eligible to relocate at any other school and play immediately. Prize recruits Ed O’Bannon and Shon Tarver can void their oral commitments and sign elsewhere.

Break up UNLV? If the Big West never was able to find a way, the NCAA has apparently succeeded in willing it. And these are merely the prelims. The heavy action, involving the recruitment of troubled Lloyd Daniels in 1987, is due to come down by summer’s end.

Very soon, UNLV basketball could mean a three-on-three intramural class--Shirts versus Skins, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

UNLV officials say they will appeal, as well they should. University president Robert Maxson has accused the NCAA of punishing his school twice for the same crime, as well he should.

In the interim, the Big West is left to consider a mixed blessing. The up side: At least now, Cal State Long Beach might make the NCAA tournament. The down side: Where have all the TV dollars gone? The Big West made nearly $500,000 off the Rebels’ postseason rise in 1990. It’s doubtful New Mexico State or UC Santa Barbara will carry the same clout in 1991.

At any rate, a longevity record for ax-grinding has just been set. To score its victory, the NCAA played post office with Tarkanian and the Rebels. Neither snow nor rain nor the passage of 13 years kept the NCAA from completing its appointed rounds.

Or, to put the neon glow of this lesson another way:

If you don’t succeed at first, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again.

With a 13-year trigger itch, the NCAA knows no statute of limitations.