Columnist Dean Juipe: Denton falls from king to Colonel

Dean Juipe

Monday, July 27, 1998 | 10:40 a.m.

HIS WAS A tale with storybook possibilities.

He was the beloved local player with snap on his passes and a corresponding crispness in his verbal deliveries. Jon Denton had spunk, on and off the field.

It wasn't stretching the imagination too far to picture him all but immortalized at UNLV as the locally developed quarterback who became the football program's golden boy and possible savior.

There were endless scenarios and all of them followed a yellow brick road. Denton, it was commonly believed as recently as a year ago, would rescue the Rebels as best he could and emerge as a player with NFL abilities.

He would stand as something of a definitive Las Vegan: brash and sassy, but able to back it up.

Testy yet cool, he had folklore potential.

Now everything is past tense. Now the doubters outnumber the believers. Now Denton has left town and at the still tender age of 21 his UNLV obituary has already been written.

In fact, it's cast in stone and it reads rather quizzically: "What Might Have Been?"

What might have been was glory and appreciation, success and its accompanying splendors. Instead, with two years of college eligibility remaining, Denton said Friday he was packing his bags and heading for Richmond, Kentucky, and the seemingly wayward outpost of Eastern Kentucky University.

The man who would be king has been reduced in rank to a Colonel.

There's no cruising the Strip at Eastern Kentucky, a Division I-AA school with an enrollment of 14,609. If there's a Golden Nugget there, it's still buried in the ground.

It would be easy to say the Colonels might just be what Denton needs, except that would be sugarcoating the issue. What Denton, a native Las Vegan familiar with this city's dangers and entrapments, really needed was discipline and an unwavering desire to lead the Rebels.

He should have not only accepted the pressure but reveled in it. He should have been an opportunist, capitalizing on a chance to shine in a city of stars.

He was halfway there. Big passing numbers and national records highlighted his freshman season at UNLV, and his sophomore year wasn't a dismal failure despite some portraying him as crashed and burned.

He was an imaginative passer, a bit too innovative at times yet one with bravado and charisma. He should have been the Rebels' pied piper.

But that charmed life is rearview mirror stuff today. Denton, while still very much able to resurrect his career and someday be a starting quarterback in the NFL as many have envisioned, has, at least, been tarnished in that he failed to keep his eligibility at UNLV and managed to secure a spot in head coach Jeff Horton's doghouse.

As declines go, it was swift and decisive. A player once touted as Heisman material departs with a sullied reputation, apparently victimized by his own indifference and malfeasance.

He leaves not with his tale romanticized and chronicled for the ages, but with his tail between his legs.

He leaves in pursuit of a new beginning, while those in Las Vegas are left disheartened.