Columnist Steve Guiremand: Award Robinson A.D. job

Steve Guiremand

Monday, July 2, 2001 | 10:14 a.m.

Steve Guiremand is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at 259-2324 or by e-mail at steveg@lasvegassun.com. Regular columnist Dean Juipe is on vacation.

The next six months or so will be crucial in defining the future of UNLV athletics.

John Robinson's football squad and star quarterback Jason Thomas will get unprecedented national exposure on ESPN and ABC television. If the Rebels can come out of the gates strong and survive a brutal September schedule, it wouldn't be surprising to see Thomas get invited to New York in December for the Heisman Trophy ceremonies.

You also have the start of the Charlie Spoonhour era of UNLV basketball. If the folksy Spoonhour can find a way to keep his star players from overzealous boosters and teach them basic basketball fundamentals, the program will immediately take a big step forward. Meanwhile, Regina Miller's Lady Rebels and standout forward Linda Frohlich figure to christen the new Cox Pavilion in style with an NCAA Tournament invite.

And the UNLV baseball program, which has one of the top facilities on the West Coast but has underachieved on the field in recent years, gets a fresh start with a new coach expected to be named sometime this week.

But by far the biggest and most important matter involving UNLV athletics in the coming weeks will be finding the replacement for retiring athletic director Charles Cavagnaro, who is expected to have his bags packed by Christmas.

Cavagnaro has taken his share of shots from the media since his June 20 retirement announcement for his lack of leadership and laziness. Some shots also came from disgruntled ex-UNLV employees. But even if some of those stories are true, he'll at least go away with the legacy of being the man who had the foresight to hire Robinson to turn around his then-sorry football program.

A lot of credit has come this way for Robinson's hire after I wrote a front page column back in November of 1999 in the Sun saying Robinson would be the perfect man for the job. But that was just a newspaper story. Sportswriters don't hire coaches. Athletic directors armed with big checks from boosters do. Anybody who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.

Cavagnaro had the sense to follow up and find out that Robinson really was interested in taking over a team that had lost 16 straight games. He then had J.R. signed, sealed and delivered for UNLV within a week. A few months later, Jason Thomas arrived in Las Vegas. 'Nuff said.

Contrast that with how the athletic director at storied USC, Mike Garrett, managed to screw things up. He wanted to fire Robinson a year after he won the school's only Rose Bowl in the '90s because he didn't like a couple of Robinson's assistants. One was defensive coordinator Keith Burns, now the bright young head coach at Tulsa, who is a big season or two away from a Big 12 or SEC head coaching job. Another was offensive line coach Mike Barry, who has already gobbled up one national championship ring at Tennessee.

Robinson stood by his coaches but Garrett, backed by a school president who has professed to know little about sports, eventually got his wish and fired Robinson a year later. Then Garrett went out and replaced the future Hall of Famer by hiring arguably the worst head coach in recent Division I football history, Paul Hackett.

See what we mean when we say this is a cruical hire for UNLV?

Guess what? The perfect man to take over for Cavagnaro, the man with the leadership and vision and foresight to take the still-building UNLV athletic department into the future, is already on campus. His name? John Robinson.

The main responsibilities for the new A.D. will be fund-raising, running a smooth ship and taking UNLV's athletic program to the Pac-10 level. And who has better credentials to do that than Robinson, who could bring in and groom an assistant or associate A.D. to do the nuts-and-bolts paperwork part of the duty? That would free Robinson to do what he does best -- coach football and raise funds.

The big question: Would Robinson have the time to be both head football coach and athletic director?

John McKay did it his final four years (1972-75) at USC and managed to win two national titles in the process. Back in those days, Heritage Hall was a fun and friendly place to be around, where people weren't always looking over their shoulders to see if the boss had a pink slip or a four-letter word waiting for them.

Would John Robinson take the job if offered? I can think of two words which would make it hard not to.

Mike Garrett.

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