Columnist Ron Kantowski: Harter put her trust in outsiders

Thursday, Aug. 14, 2003 | 10:19 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Here's hoping that Craig Thompson and Max Urick know their athletic directors.

UNLV president Dr. Carol Harter, no doubt, is doing more than hoping. She's probably praying, with her fingers crossed on a rabbit's foot, that Thompson and Urick were right in backing East Carolina's Mike Hamrick for the Rebels' AD job, which he accepted Tuesday night.

Because if they are wrong about Hamrick, she stands to lose a lot more than they do.

If Hamrick doesn't turn out to be the right man for the job, it most likely will cost Harter hers. But that probably would have been the case regardless of who she hired.

While Harter was the one who made the ultimate decision to hire Hamrick, insiders believe Thompson, the respected Mountain West Conference commissioner, and Urick, the similarly well thought of former Kansas State AD whom she hired as a consultant, were the ones who put Hamrick's name in the forefront.

If that makes it sounds like Hamrick's hiring was a conspiracy, it's only because he seems to be the least popular of the three men who interviewed for the job.

For starters, the list of candidates might have been the least attractive since the Bull Moose Party was left holding the bag after Teddy Roosevelt decided to campaign as a Republican.

Nothing against Wayne Hogan and Mike Bohn, but their schools, Montana and Idaho, don't register with UNLV fans who didn't graduate from Northern Arizona.

East Carolina, from where Hamrick escaped, isn't easily detected on the NCAA radar, either. The best thing that can be said about the Pirates is that they play in a conference -- USA -- that most Rebels fans have heard of, at least before final exams at Cincinnati.

Based on the e-mails and phone calls I've received and the conversations I've had in the past 48 hours, Hamrick's first job at UNLV will be winning over coaches and personnel in his own department.

He has been described as something of a lame duck at East Carolina, although an ECU spokesman said that probably was a sentiment more steeped in internet chat rooms than reality. But I have talked to people who have worked with and for Hamrick who ripped him like a batting practice fastball.

His most serious detractors, of course, were ones that Hamrick fired. When I mentioned that to one, and that out of fairness to Hamrick that I had planned to contact one of the ECU coaches who liked working for him, he wished me luck.

"You'll look long and hard," I was told.

A source said Hamrick had a good working relationship with ECU basketball coach Bill Herrion. John Thompson, the new East Carolina football coach, has only been on board for a few months since replacing Steve Logan, who was fired by Hamrick in December.

That development is probably at the heart of the anti-Hamrick vibe in Greenville. Logan was a popular coach who guided the Pirates to a 67-58 record in 11 seasons, including five bowl appearances. His teams beat Miami, Pitt, Syracuse, Virginia Tech and South Carolina, which probably would have gotten Logan a sweet deal on an airport slot concession, had they happened here.

Hamrick also fired the most successful basketball coach in ECU history. Joe Dooley, now an assistant at Kansas, was gassed after compiling a 57-52 record and taking the Pirates to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 21 years.

Logan and Dooley preceded Hamrick to ECU, so if UNLV coaches are feeling a little nervous about their new boss' perceived lack of patience, you can understand it. Logan, who had no history with Hamrick, had one lousy season and he was gone.

But not forgotten. While many considered Logan's firing a dirty deed, it wasn't done dirt cheap. East Carolina will be paying off his $200,000 annual base salary through 2006.

From a purely selfish standpoint, I was hoping that Hogan would get the job, if for no other reason that he was a former sports information director at Florida State and thus might understand the value of returning a phone call before heading to the golf course -- er, an important meeting.

Then again, Charlie Cavagnaro, who in seven years at UNLV was to the athletic director's profession what the Edmund Fitzgerald was to cargo ships, was a former sports writer who as an AD never returned a phone call before 5 p.m. If at all.

One disgruntled fan who e-mailed me said Hamrick comes with too much baggage for a school overloaded with it. Maybe so. But his biggest problem might be coming on board when morale within the department, and within the community for the department, may be at its lowest point since Jerry Tarkanian was run off campus by his own administration.

Like anything else in sports, it will all come down to wins and losses. My guess is that if Hamrick is still here when they raise one of those NCAA championship banners alongside the one Tark won, that baggage to which his detractors refer will look no more significant than carry-on luggage.