Columnist Dean Juipe: UNLV takes a needlessly slow approach

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, May 30, 2001 | 3 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.

Leave it to UNLV to delay the inevitable.

Believing it needs committees, reports, discussions, interviews and their accompanying expense-account luncheons to find its next head baseball coach, the school has chosen to play the turtle in a scenario in which the hare holds all the aces.

It is procrastinating and dawdling at a time when it should be springing into action.

It also reflects a lack of vision within the athletic department when it cannot simply hire Tim Chambers without turning it into a month-long, bureaucratic ordeal.

Chambers is here, he's ready and he's available. He's a phone call away.

Given the likelihood that he will be hired regardless of how long it takes the appointed committee to come to that easy conclusion, why not just sidestep the usual elongated process and do it now?

Let Chambers get started today.

He's far and away the best man for the job, and the sooner he can get started recruiting the better it will be for the Rebels.

Having the coaching position vacant for a week, as it has been, or a month, as it might very well be, is illogical and counterproductive. Memo to UNLV athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro: Chambers' office number at the Community College of Southern Nevada is 461-2785.

He has been there for two years, building a junior-college program from scratch and winning 99 of the 117 games the Coyotes have played. He leans heavily on kids from Southern Nevada and his ties within the local baseball community run deep, the result of also having coached at Bishop Gorman High School and during the summer Legion season.

Rarely has UNLV had a coaching vacancy arise that would be so easy to fill. Politically correct or not, in this instance the school should skip the perfunctory committee process and send a runner out to CCSN to get Chambers' signature on a contract.

He'll sign it, too, and without much of a fuss. He admits to being ready for a new challenge and coaching at the Division-I level is it.

No matter how extensive the UNLV search, it will not uncover a better fit for the baseball job than this man who is already in the backyard.

Actually, a few days before Rod Soesbe was fired, we were told Chambers had already been handpicked as his successor and that CCSN interim president Mike Meyer would come along as a fund-raiser for the athletic department (replacing Jim Bolla). Meyer, the story goes, would be promised something better down the road -- A.D.? -- and he and Chambers would attempt to succeed where Soesbe had tried so diligently yet come up short.

The information was solid in that Soesbe was let go, yet Chambers (and Meyer, for that matter) maintain they have yet to be formally contacted about switching their allegiances to UNLV. If that's true, the university is dragging its feet without any sort of valid justification.

This is the definitive example of a coaching vacancy that does not require a search committee. In fact, forming a committee is downright extraneous.

So come out of your shell and get with the program, Charlie.

The man you want is waiting for your call and we're getting impatient even if he's not.