Columnist Ron Kantowski: Don’t be so sure Pitino is heading West

Thursday, March 1, 2001 | 10:29 a.m.

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

Provided Channel 8's Rick Pitino sources are more informed than its downtown dome stadium or NFL-exhibition-game-at-Sam-Boyd-Stadium sources, there's still a chance the slick former Celtics, Kentucky and Providence coach will take over at UNLV as early as next week.

But based on Pitino's latest comments made to ESPN.com on Wednesday, it seems more likely that the announcement will come later.

If at all.

Maybe the welcoming brigade took Joanne Pitino, the coach's wife, out to meet the XFL Outlaws during her two-day look around town this week. That might be enough to sour anybody on Las Vegas.

Because if you believe what has been said and written, Mrs. Pitino's approval of our (occasionally) fair city was all that was holding up her hubby from signing on the bottom line.

Curiously, in that he has never been here on official business, it was believed that Mr. Pitino was ready to take the Rebels' job sight unseen. Maybe he has seen enough of Las Vegas in those A&E channel documentaries to know that this is the place for him.

Then again, maybe it's another sense that has him backing off (again).

For instance, there's that odor that emanates from the Thomas & Mack Center every December. Regardless of how many games Pitino wins or how many championship banners he hangs from the rafters, the National Finals Rodeo will turn the first part of his season into horse manure. You can't practice in the Mack, can't play games there. So he'd have to take his team on the road and play 5-against-8 during the Christmas shopping season.

It's hard to fathom that a sharp-dressed guy like Pitino could tolerate being run out of town by a bunch of Skoal Brothers in Wranglers.

Maybe that's something Dick Vitale and John Calipari and any of Pitino's other basketball pals that have been advising him on the UNLV job neglected to tell him.

And what about that pungent odor wafting down the plain in frigid February? The one that smells a lot like the NFR? That's Laramie, coach. Where haberdashery runs a distant second to taxidermy.

I used to think it was impossible to win at Wyoming, what with the cast of "Deliverance" going crazy for the TV cameras and a conference rule that mandates oxygen tanks be checked at the door. But Dalron Johnson's 3-pointer at the buzzer this year proved me wrong.

Pitino could do the same. But maybe he stayed up late to watch the talented Cowboys play on Big Monday and figured Laramie was no place for a city boy from back East to pad his record.

Maybe he also did the math and figured the Rebels' returning players won't add up to much. He would be right about that because with the exception of Johnson, they basically stink. But at least that odor is only temporary.

One that's here to stay is the fragrance of designer perfumes and colognes on Gucci Row, where the Rebels' well-heeled boosters compare the sizes of their wallets and tell plastic surgery anecdotes.

It gets old by the first TV timeout. But given these rich guys would be responsible for most of Pitino's contract, maybe he doesn't want to be the one to have to throw them out of the lockerroom following a big win over Utah.

Maybe he's even thinking about letting somebody else be the bouncer.