Columnist Ron Kantowski: Ousted Cavagnaro clams up

Thursday, June 28, 2001 | 11 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears Thursday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

If there was any doubt that Charlie Cavagnaro was pushed out of UNLV's revolving athletic door, rather than not let it hit his backside on his own terms, it was erased Tuesday.

The Rebels' maligned athletic director refused to talk to this newspaper (or any other media outlets) about his sudden decision last week to "resign" after the upcoming school year.

When the decision to quit is yours, you talk. Cal Ripken talked last week. Ray Bourque talked Tuesday. Tony Gwynn will talk today. Actress Marisa Tomei talked. (Didn't she?)

Cavagnaro has talked about as much as Marcel Marceau with laryngitis. If he really believed all that good stuff he supposedly accomplished according to a news release that the UNLV spin doctors hastily put together to announce his "resignation," don't you think the school would have called a news conference to let a valued employee take a few bows?

Instead, Cavagnaro jumped a plane for Hawaii quicker than Steve McGarrett on an extradition assignment. He did not pass Go, he did not collect $200. Not like it was necessary, given the $148,000 one-year contract extension he received from UNLV president Carol Harter just two months ago.

That's a lovely parting gift that would even impress Don Pardo.

I'm no Peter Falk, but Cavagnaro has been acting an awful lot like a guy whose future has been decided for him. Especially when it was he himself who said as recently as April 13 "(Retirement) is not something I've looked at.

"I don't see myself doing it until I'm 70," said Cavagnaro, who just turned 60. "But whether I'll stop when I'm 63, 64 or 66, I don't know."

Now we do know that he will stop at 61 -- or, if some influential UNLV administrators and boosters have their way, perhaps even when he's 60. According to sources, there is momentum building within the community to send Cavagnaro on his way long before June 2002. Like right now, for instance.

It might be doable, were somebody with deep pockets to step forward to -- here we go again -- buy out the year that Harter foolishly tacked onto Cavagnaro's contract only two months ago.

Is there any school that has wasted more money on buying out athletic department personnel than UNLV? If the Rebels keep throwing away cash on lame ducks at their current rate, they're going to have to recruit Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School") for the swimming team.

Cavagnaro's UNLV legacy, if you can call it that, is when somebody came to him with the idea of hiring John Robinson to coach the Rebel football team, he didn't screw it up. But is that reason enough to keep him around for a farewell tour?

The UNLV athletic department, which is trying to offset a $750,000 operating deficit, apparently is so strapped for cash that it has had to hit up a local radio station to finance a Heisman Trophy campaign for Jason Thomas, its wonderfully gifted quarterback.

If I were Cavagnaro, I'd hunker down in that lame-duck blind that Harter has conveniently built for him and lie awfully low. Because there are a lot of rich guys walking around town with camouflage clothing and loaded shotguns.