Columnist Ron Kantowski: Rebel hiring — You heard it here first

Thursday, Dec. 3, 1998 | 11 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is Las Vegas Sun sports editor. His notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

By now, John Robinson, one of college football's coaching messiahs, will have been introduced as UNLV's eighth football coach.

And a multitude of Doubting Thomases will have had a chance to poke their fingers under his sports jacket to see if it indeed is all true.

They won't find a wound to examine -- unless they check the area between his shoulders and beltline, where the gash left by Mike Garrett, Robinson's former back-stabbing athletic director at Southern Cal who last year informed the coach his services were no longer required by leaving a message on Robinson's answering machine, probably still is festering.

But that story already has been told. This one, that UNLV was able to land a personality as large as Robinson's to rebuild its woeful football program, continues to leave the mouths of even the most ardent Rebel enthusiasts agape in disbelief.

Starting with the local media.

The notion that a man of Robinson's stature would so much as express interest in the UNLV job was so incredulous that when the Sun first reported that he wanted it, way back on Nov. 20, we were all but called lunatics.

The very next day, in the press box at the UNLV-Texas Christian game at Boyd Stadium, Sun college football writer Steve Guiremand was ridiculed by some of his colleagues for affixing his name to such an outlandish report.

They wanted to know if Bear Bryant was interested in the Rebels job as well.

The Sun's report was thought to be so off-the-wall that the morning newspaper didn't even mention Robinson's name in conjunction with the UNLV opening until Tuesday of this week -- a full 11 days after the Sun's original story, and four days after a follow-up Sun report, confirming that Robinson had interviewed not once but twice for the Rebel job.

Even the revered Los Angeles media had its doubts. It didn't pick up on the Robinson-to-UNLV story until last Wednesday, when the omnipotent Los Angeles Times conceded that the Sun was onto something, running excepts from Guiremand's original story in its Morning Briefing section.

At least The Times was willing to give credit where credit was due. That's more than can be said for the Las Vegas media.

On Wednesday night, KLAS Channel 8 anchor Paula Francis segued to the Robinson report by audaciously stating that Dave McCann "broke the story" of his hiring. Had she picked up yesterday's Sun, the ink on a Page One story that said Robinson was on his way to Las Vegas to sign a contract would have rubbed off on her hands.

Today, the morning paper, perhaps still mystified that it could be beaten on the story of the year by "a five-day-a-week daily with little readership," as its sports columnist referred to the Sun recently, stated it was an unnamed, mutual friend that brought Robinson together with Rebels athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro.

Given that two high-placed UNLV athletic department officials contacted the Sun to confirm Robinson's interest in the Rebels job following our initial story, perhaps what they meant to say was that it was a "a friendly rival" that brought Robinson and Cavagnaro to the bargaining table.

All this sniping among the local media to take credit for breaking the Robinson story illustrates just how big a deal it is.

But, hey, we're willing to share the curtain call. We'll take credit for putting the bullets in the gun but Cavagnaro was the one who pulled the trigger on Robinson's hiring.

And that's something nobody can dispute.