Columnist Dean Juipe: Magazine takes UNLV to task

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1999 | 10:46 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

You have to take the bad with the good.

So while UNLV is feeling especially robust with its football team 2-0 after winning only six of its previous 45 games, a national publication is balancing the emotions in a review of each of the NCAA's 112 Division I universities.

In this week's edition of The Sporting News, the men's basketball and football programs at each school are evaluated and ranked from 1 to 112 on four criteria: win-loss records; graduation rates; community support; and the athletic department's ability to stay within NCAA rules and comply with issues such as gender equity.

UNLV came in a somewhat embarrassing No. 103.

The survey's results are obviously arbitrary and dependent to a great degree on public perception as much as hard, cold facts. But, if nothing else, UNLV's position in the standings reflects the widely held belief across the country that the programs are undisciplined and that a course in Mischief 101 is on every freshman's itinerary.

Of course that 103 ranking isn't totally out of line, given the evidence of occasional athletic-department indifference and the knowledge that the UNLV basketball program is in the midst of being investigated by the NCAA. If the NCAA hammers UNLV when that investigation is complete, by next year the school's ranking could bottom out no matter how lucky John Robinson's team remains.

Quibble with the grades if you'd like, but The Sporting News gave UNLV a D minus in winning games, an F in graduating football and basketball players, a C in community support, and a D minus in athletic-department support and NCAA compliance.

In a flippant remark that accompanies the grades, TSN said UNLV's "4-class grad rate in basketball is 0 percent."

That's true, yet, as those in the basketball office are quick to point out, it is deceiving in that coach Bill Bayno does have a player (Mark Dickel) on pace to graduate next year (within four years) and that a handful of transfers and players Bayno inherited when he came here in 1995 have graduated even if some have not.

Nonetheless, it's an area UNLV needs to work on in light of continuing beliefs that the school is lame academically and that its athletes spend more time on the Strip than in a classroom. The only way to combat those impressions is to recruit better scholar/athletes and make a serious commitment to graduating athletes and not just keeping them eligible. (re: basketball star Shawn Marion last season.)

Obviously, every school near the bottom of The Sporting News' list will claim the magazine arrived at its conclusions via erroneous or misleading data, yet the survey has its merits and is a conversation piece even at face value. The truth of the matter is that UNLV has yet to truly live up to its advertising claims as an "up and coming" bastion of higher intelligence and learning.

But -- things could be worse, as they are at No. 112 Louisiana-Monroe.

Conversely, those schools at the top (Penn State, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Stanford) are not only recruiting excellent athletes but maximizing those athletes' collegiate experiences.

UNLV would be wise to emulate them, or, if nothing else, at least make a run at No. 83 Nevada-Reno.