Columnist Steve Addy: Rebels, NCAA may soon coexist

Steve Addy

Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2001 | 8:35 a.m.

Steve Addy covers college basketball for the Las Vegas Sun. Reach him at 259-4087 or by e-mail at addy@lasvegassun.com. Dean Juipe is on vacation.

By deciding to let UNLV basketball recruit Ernest Turner suit up this season, the NCAA did more than cut some slack to a kid whose SAT score came up 10 points short.

It gave the Rebels a chance to cast off their persecution complex.

Feeling put-upon has become UNLV's favorite pastime after 25 years of grappling with the NCAA. The Rebels have spent much of that time under investigation or on probation. It's no way to run a program.

It has also become customary for Rebels diehards to blame the NCAA.

The theory goes: Duke, Indiana and everyone else on Dick Vitale's Christmas card list have cheated as much as UNLV, but the NCAA is so obsessed with paying back the Rebels for Jerry Tarkanian, it doesn't have time to stake out Coach K's cronies.

There is a morsel of truth there. UNLV fans are right in recognizing that the NCAA would prefer not to have the Rebels as their national champions, because UNLV isn't the sort of school the NCAA wants as its symbol.

It's a relatively young school with a middling academic reputation in a city whose life blood is gambling. When Jim Delany handed the trophy to Tark in 1990, you just knew the NCAA brass were holding their noses, bemoaning the victory of Evil (UNLV) over Good (Duke).

But even if the NCAA isn't predisposed to love UNLV, that doesn't excuse the Rebels' culpability for their misery. They've done little to help themselves.

Rules have been broken by the program and its surrogates. Longtime reliance on Juco transfers and a lousy graduation rate have given UNLV a rent-a-player reputation the NCAA finds unseemly. It doesn't help that some boosters still regard Tarkanian as their ruler-in-exile.

Taken in total, it's easy to see why the Eastern-biased basketball media still view UNLV as a place where players drive pricey cars, pose for hot-tub pictures and don't go to class.

But the Rebels have a chance to turn that around. They were diligent and earnest enough in the last probation case to avoid the death penalty. They gained NCAA brownie points for firing Bill Bayno. They hired a coach, Charlie Spoonhour, with a spotless reputation in the NCAA office.

None of that can hurt, evidenced by the decision to grant Turner's eligibility waiver.

The NCAA claims to judge each case on its own merits, but such decisions aren't made in a vacuum. The NCAA was not obligated to let Turner play, but after the steps UNLV has taken to cleanse itself, the NCAA probably doesn't want to hamstring Spoonhour's fresh start.

It was telling that in UNLV's press release on the Turner case, compliance director Eric Toliver said, "This demonstrates to both the UNLV and Las Vegas communities that the NCAA does indeed treat our institution in a fair manner."

The message: the NCAA might be on our side now, so let's not screw it up.

There's no doubt that the Rebels will always be regarded suspiciously by the NCAA, and they brought that on themselves. But for now the NCAA branch office on Maryland Parkway is closed, and UNLV's mission is clear.

Obey the rules, and let the NCAA scrutinize someone else for a while.