Tark Merits Serious Look From SDSU

As president of San Diego State, Thomas Day faces and resolves much more important issues than who should coach the university’s basketball team.

Indeed, under normal circumstances, a university president merely rubber-stamps his athletic director’s choice for such an assignment.

Circumstances are not normal these days at SDSU.

The most successful coach in the history of collegiate basketball, at least in terms of winning percentage, has made it known that he would like to be SDSU’s new coach. He also has made it known that it would not necessarily take a salary commensurate with his stature.

It would be a slam dunk that an ecstatic athletic director would take such news to a delighted president . . . if that coach’s name was not Jerry Tarkanian.

Tarkanian, you see, is easily the most controversial coach in the history of his and maybe any other sport. His ongoing feud with the NCAA is legendary. On top of that, he is now battling his own administration at Nevada Las Vegas.

Through it all, he has won, won and then won some more. With all of his star players gone from last year’s 34-1 team, Tarkanian has reloaded and UNLV is 25-2 this year with a virtually new team.

Regardless, he is done at UNLV. He absolutely will not coach there in 1991-92.

He wants to be at SDSU.

Therein lies a quandary for Tom Day.

Tarkanian is a coach anyone would love to hire, but hate to take a chance on.

Day has to make the decision on whether to hire, or even seriously consider, Jerry Tarkanian. A call of this magnitude goes beyond search committees and athletic directors.

He is getting help.

“I’m getting letters and phone calls,” Day said Friday. “I’m always grateful to get advice. Normally, in the course of changing coaches, this doesn’t happen.”

It will not be the most important decision Day will make or has made, but it will be a most high-profile decision.

Never has there been so much interest in the SDSU basketball program than there is now. The mere notion that Tarkanian could be coming here has rattled the apathy that has pervaded SDSU basketball. Never has there been so much conversation.

And, no, not all are indignant and appalled at the thought of Tarkanian being hired. Most of it, in fact, favors going for him.

Would it be ludicrous to hire Jerry Tarkanian?

It would be easy to step into a self-righteous pulpit and suggest that SDSU would be selling out on its principles to win, finally, at all costs.

Maybe too easy.

An easy way out for Tom Day would be to make, or at least announce, no decision at all. He would, he said, be involved when the list of candidates gets down to finalists. However, he simply could leave it to Miller to announce so-and-so had been hired from Somewhere Tech to coach the Aztecs.

This won’t work. It’s either Tarkanian or a list, not Tarkanian on a list.

SDSU must resolve whether it is interested in Tarkanian. Too many people hereabouts are excited about the prospect of Tarkanian coming to town for more than just a vacation at his Pacific Beach condominium. Too many people would conclude that SDSU had chosen to sustain mediocrity. Interest would sink quickly from whence it came.

Jerry Tarkanian himself has said he views SDSU has an opportunity to prove he can win big and win clean. He sees SDSU as a challenge and also a haven for vindication. He wants a chance to succeed at an institution with SDSU’s academic standards and program for NCAA compliance.

Win at SDSU under such circumstances, he reasons, and maybe folks will listen to his insistence that he has been unfairly maligned and persecuted all these years.

Is this sincere or is this rhetoric?

Is this a situation in which Tom Day should opt to take a chance?

Tough call, Tom.

It is a fascinating dilemma, pondering whether hiring Tarkanian would be doing something for the program and university or to the program and university.

It has been suggested to me that Tarkanian’s detractors are being unfairly judgmental. The bottom line is that Day is paid to be judgmental, albeit fairly judgmental.

And this situation is probably not unique for Day, just higher in profile.

There have surely been times when he has encountered similar decisions in terms of hiring professors with outstanding records but maybe some ponderous baggage. You probably would not want a faculty which has traveled nothing but the straight and narrow.

It appears a person does not even need be sainted and untainted to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas Day should not rashly and brashly hire Jerry Tarkanian, and he won’t. But he owes it to SDSU’s fans to seriously consider him. He owes it to those who clamor for him . . . and he owes it to those who don’t.