Friday, April 17, 1998 | 12:35 p.m.
ACTING AS IF you have money and actually having money are two entirely different things.
UNLV's athletic department certainly has been acting as if it has money.
It's conscientiously adding gender-equity programs, like women's soccer, which gets off the ground next fall.
It's spiritedly building new facilities, like a track for its women's program.
It's whimsically ripping up coach's contracts, like it did when volleyball coach Deitre Collins was offered a job at Iowa but stayed here instead when UNLV gave her a $30,000 raise to $70,000.
It's graciously paying off contracts of coaches who were forced out and are no longer here, like Rollie Massimino and LaDonna McClain.
It's frivolously hiring new coaches with borderline credentials and paying them handsomely, as it did when women's basketball coach Regina Miller signed on for $85,000 per year in spite of her 60-100 career record.
It's even doggedly paying off extensive cellular phone bills rung up by its freewheeling staff.
All in all, it's giving the appearance of widespread prosperity.
Trouble is, the UNLV athletic department was at least $750,000 in debt when it distributed an ominous letter to its head coaches April 2 and the department remains at least $380,000 in debt today.
The net result: That happy picture of a sprawling campus and athletic-department opulence is a facade. Truth is, the department is not only spending beyond its means and suggesting each of its programs to adhere to a 4-percent funding cut, those charged with raising money within the community are nervously fearing the worst and many of the coaches are -- once again -- sour if not despondent.
In addition, some of the coaches are jealous of the salaries, perks and benefits accorded their more privileged brethren.
Add in the fact that many if not all of them are reluctant to speak freely and for the record because they fear repercussions from the administration, and there's more than just an undercurrent of unhappiness at UNLV.
It's a phase that comes and goes, initiated as it was by Jerry Tarkanian's removal as coach of the men's basketball team in 1992 and periodically rekindled during the tumultuous reign of iron-handed Jim Weaver, the school's relatively unloved athletic director from late 1991 into 1995.
Now here's Charlie Cavagnaro in the A.D.'s hot seat at a time when the university should be celebrating its return to prominence in men's basketball as well as lauding its new programs and facilities, and, instead, all that was heard on campus this week had a negative tone to it.
Reporters even spent time delving into supposedly racist remarks attributed to a person who certainly should know better, as well as looking into the background behind last week's curious hiring of the seemingly unqualified Miller as head coach of the women's basketball program.
Had enough?
To put it bluntly, those who have to raise money for the university are afraid you have had enough. Their lives were easier when the picture was nothing but rosy.
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