Columnist Ron Kantowski: UNLV president pulling too many strings in sports

Friday, July 18, 2003 | 10 a.m.

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

The athletic director's chair remains empty and the guy doing the majority of the behind-the-scenes work to make sure the department doesn't dry up and blow away doesn't even have the "interim" title in front of his name.

But figuring out who is running the UNLV athletic department these days isn't exactly the biggest mystery since Paul Newman set out to discover who owned the Charlestown Chiefs.

If you dusted any piece of athletic equipment belonging to the university for fingerprints, there's a good chance you'd find Dr. Carol Harter's whorl pattern on it.

Ask any coach on Maryland Parkway who doesn't fear for his/her job -- if you can find one, now that it has been a while since fearless Fred Dallimore retired -- and he/she will tell you that the UNLV president has been running a puppet show from the day John Robinson decided to resign to spend more time with his ailing wife. Or simply had had enough.

In fact, I've had others on the inside, guys and gals who don't wear whistles, tell me it has been that way ever since Harter pulled a semi-fast one and orchestrated the process that got the easily manipulated Charlie Cavagnaro into the high-back chair several years ago.

Getting back to "Slapshot," if Dickie Dunn were covering this story, he'd write that Harter has more in common with the Chiefs' owner than their sex, not that being a woman has anything to do with it.

It's just that whenever major decisions that impact the athletic department are made -- such as the hiring and firing of coaches and conducting investigations of stolen long-distance phone cards, all of which have happened with the AD chair vacant -- she conveniently remains in the background, chooses not to comment or has one of her minions issue a tersely worded statement.

Sources tell me that Harter is the biggest control freak since Greg Maddux, except when it comes to taking responsibility for what happens within the athletic department. Then she prefers the shadows of the bullpen.

But there may be a reason for it. All this turmoil in sports comes at a bad time for Harter, who is seeking a contract extension and is being evaluated "as we speak," according to a source. So she may be trying to wash her hands before it costs her a raise.

The only problem is that when you've had them in the water for as long as she has, not even a good soaking in Palmolive is going to fool those in the know.

And Harter's wicket might be getting stickier. Another source close to the search for Robinson's replacement as athletic director called it "a joke," saying that the committee was given no guidelines or objectives for identifying candidates.

Even Harter's supporters suggest her naivete about the machinations of a big-time athletic program is more to blame for the situation she finds herself in than her micro-management of the department.

Before becoming UNLV's chief executive, Harter was president at State University of New York at Geneseo for six years. I'm not saying her former school is small-time, but when they talk about the Big Dance at SUNY Geneseo, it usually is prefaced by the question "Do I need a tux?"

A UNLV source I trust has told me that Harter is honest, and that she has does no worse than an average job on the academic front, and maybe even slightly better than that. But it's not very often that the fate of a university president is determined by his or her ability to raise funds for a new wing on the library.

Conversely, if you don't think crossing a high-profile coach or putting your nose inside a highly visible athletic department where everybody can see it can effect your professional reputation, I leave you with two names and an abbreviation:

Dr. Bob Maxson.