Columnist Dean Juipe: Birthdays, boos affect Rebel coaches

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 9:03 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's fun for a guy like Charlie Spoonhour when he's introduced before a game and the Thomas & Mack Center crowd responds with a complimentary chorus. "Spoooooooonnnnnn," the fans go, bestowing their praise on the UNLV basketball coach.

But such a greeting can, at perilous times, mask an entirely different sentiment. For those inclined to boo the coach, their vocal response to his introduction gets lost amid the howl.

Yet more pronounced boos are only another loss or two away from overtaking the majority's positive reaction, as Spoonhour begins to feel the heat for a season of unexpected failure.

Already, he's under the gun in some quarters by longtime fans who recall the program's golden era and feel it can be reclaimed with a magic wand (or Jerry Tarkanian).

Either way, Spoonhour's second season at UNLV has (at least temporarily) lost the glow of his first. And, like the man who doubles as his supervisor and the school's football coach, he's hearing about -- if not feeling -- his age.

Spoonhour is 63 years old.

John Robinson, the athletic director and football coach, is 67.

Are they men who are taking care of their respective teams, or are they men who in a few short years will be in need of their own caretakers?

There is no easy answer, although I find it practical to side with maturity. UNLV has had younger men coaching its football (Jeff Horton) and basketball (Bill Bayno) teams within the past decade, and the failures of their teams is what led the school to pursue coaches with a dominance of gray in their whiskers.

Spoonhour and Robinson provide a credibility to UNLV's most prominent athletic programs, a credibility that did not precede them at the university. Each is well spoken and dignified, and both can relate to the public with a warmth that can't be faked.

But, of course, there does come a time when a man should retire and give way to the next generation. That neither Spoonhour nor Robinson feels that time is at hand is to their benefit, yet that doesn't preclude their critics from stoking up the age issue.

Robinson is fair game on two fronts: not only does his age come into play in reference to his football team, there are those who believe he cannot simultaneously manage a sprawling athletic department. It's a legitimate criticism, albeit one that I personally don't find applicable.

Robinson can do both and has the support of underlings and higher-ups alike. He enthusiastically approached his recruiting duties this winter and is said to be anxious to get his team back to a bowl level.

He's also worth his weight in (donor's) gold to a department that had public-relations disasters in Charlie Cavagnaro and Jim Weaver as athletic directors through most of the 1990s.

Spoonhour, whose reeling team plays tonight at San Diego State, may have a less binding tie to UNLV than Robinson, but he has neither indicated nor hinted that he would voluntarily resign anytime soon.

But he is on the spot with the school's highest profile program, and can ill afford to see his team on the short end of too many one-sided beatings.

When "Spooooooonnnnnn" completely melds into 'boooo" we'll all know he's in trouble.