Thursday, April 2, 1998 | 10:41 a.m.
AFTER 25 YEARS of battling the NCAA, former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian can declare himself the winner.
Tarkanian put the same grit and determination into his epic legal fight with the all-powerful organization that made him one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history.
Nineteen of those years (from 1973-1992), Tarkanian spent at UNLV, where he took home a NCAA championship in 1990 and won the love and admiration of thousands of Las Vegans.
Many never will be able to put behind them the heartache and bitterness over the way the NCAA collaborated with those in power at UNLV to force his resignation in 1992.
But this week's word that the NCAA has agreed to pay Tarkanian $2.5 million to settle a 1994 lawsuit that was supposed to go to trial next month relieves much of the pain. Tarkanian had alleged the NCAA participated in a massive conspiracy to drive him from college basketball.
"I'm happy it's over with," Tarkanian said Wednesday, before boarding a plane to hook up with his Los Angeles lawyers for a news conference to announce the settlement.
"As many times as they kept hitting me over the head, I just hung in there and kept coming back."
Though the NCAA isn't likely to acknowledge losing the case, this is the first time it has paid out any substantial sum as a result of a legal challenge to its authority.
"You don't come up with that kind of money if you feel that you're on the right side," said Chuck Thompson, Tarkanian's longtime friend and Las Vegas lawyer. "Generally people who've got unlimited funds -- and the NCAA does -- will take these matters to the ends of the world."
Once again Tarkanian, who now coaches at Fresno State, seems to have re-written the NCAA's history books.
Broken down, the settlement means Tarkanian receives $100,000 for each of the 25 years he spent standing up to the NCAA. That, of course, is before an estimated $600,000 in legal fees is subtracted.
Thompson, who was not involved in the NCAA suit, said the settlement should cause people across this country to reconsider what they've been told about Tarkanian and his programs at Long Beach State, UNLV and Fresno State.
"It's time to sit back and consider that maybe Jerry has been the one who's been wronged and that maybe his courage, tenacity and stamina in this battle ought to be more appreciated," Thompson said.
Tarkanian's victory can be shared by his wife Lois, son Danny and the rest of his family and many friends in Las Vegas who stuck by his side when the likes of former UNLV President Bob Maxson was plotting the coach's downfall.
"I think this is a vindication, not only for the Tarkanians, but others at the university (such as ex-Athletic Director Brad Rothermel and former ticket manager Le Riggle) who had to undergo the vicious innuendoes and rumors spread about them throughout the community," Lois Tarkanian said.
Lois said the agreement also vindicates her husband's 1991 team she believes would have repeated as champions had they not lost their focus because of the onslaught of trouble created by the Maxson administration.
"I believe that team would have won the championship if those people at the university hadn't ripped out their hearts," she said.
That team, led by NBA players Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony, may have been Tarkanian's greatest ever, but it lost to Duke in the Final Four.
The settlement, Lois added, also should console her husband's last team at UNLV, the over-achieving 1992 Rebels who went 26-2, but were banned from post-season play by the NCAA.
Tarkanian said he's still amazed at the way Maxson and his henchmen helped the NCAA undermine his program those last few years.
"Our own administration even hired students to find violations, but they couldn't find anything," the coach said.
Tarkanian explained that he'll always have bad memories about his forced departure.
"I just feel like there's no way I could ever get paid properly for what they did to me," he said.
But at the same time, he said he's glad he kept up the fight.
So are such longtime Tarkanian supporters as Bob Golberg.
"I would have liked to see it go to trial because I think he could have gotten more money," Goldberg said. "But I think other loyal fans will say that the Tarkanian name has been cleared and that the settlement is fair."
Goldberg said he never will be able to forgive Maxson, now president at Long Beach State -- the university where Tarkanian first grappled with the NCAA, for what he did to Tarkanian and the UNLV basketball program.
"I think Maxson will always be a dirty name as far as we're concerned," Goldberg said.
"But this should close it once and for all, and it should let the public know that Tark was not at fault and that the NCAA really had a vendetta against him."
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