Columnist Ron Kantowski: UNLV’s coaching choice already has made one grade

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2004 | 10:19 a.m.

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

Based on the wide smiles at Monday's news conference announcing Utah offensive coordinator Mike Sanford as the new UNLV football coach, it can be assumed UNLV got the man it wanted.

And based on the mostly positive reviews that Sanford's hiring has generated in the local press, it can be assumed the Las Vegas media also got the man it wanted.

Knute Rockne is dead and Rick Neuheisel is on de facto double-secret probation, so it can be assumed Rebels fans didn't get the man they wanted. But they'll get over it, if Sanford can pick another Alex Smith off the recruiting tree and start winning some football games.

But in that Sanford was not a minority job candidate, it also can be assumed that the Black Coaches Association did not get the man it would have preferred to lead the Rebels out of the college football doldrums -- although nobody at the BCA would come right out and say it.

"I'm not going to comment on what they did or how they did it," executive director Floyd Keith said from BCA headquarters in Indianapolis on Monday.

Keith said the forthcoming BCA Hiring Report Card for NCAA Division I-A and I-AA schools with head coaching vacancies will clarify the group's position on whether UNLV was diligent in pursuing/considering a minority coach for its opening that developed when John Robinson announced earlier this year that he would resign at season's end.

The first BCA report card, for the 2003-04 academic year, was released in August. It assigned each of the 28 I-A and I-AA schools that had football head coaching vacancies a letter grade based on five criteria: number of communications with Keith; number of minorities on the search/hiring committee; number of minorities who received on-campus interviews; length of time in hiring a candidate; and documented adherence to the institution's affirmative action policy.

Last year, 17 of the 28 schools were assigned an A grade, which can be construed as a positive development. But of the 17 on the A-list, only one, Mississippi State, hired a black coach (Sylvester Croom), which many will construe as a negative development.

Only four schools that had head coaching vacancies received an F grade. Sad to say, Nevada-Reno was one of them.

At least Keith chuckled wryly when I mentioned the big, fat F -- using those exact words -- that then-UNR athletic director Chris Ault received for hiring himself as coach without talking to anybody else.

"(UNLV) conducted a better search than Nevada, that's where that is," Keith said when pressed for a comment.

Of the handful of coaches who were linked to the Rebels' job, two were black. Arizona Cardinals running backs coach Kirby Wilson was one of four candidates who interviewed with UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick and president Dr. Carol Harter.

Cincinnati Bengals assistant Hue Jackson also was mentioned in conjunction with the vacancy but it was reported that almost from the start, the job was Sanford's to accept or refuse. So when the BCA posts this year's grades, it's doubtful UNLV can expect much more than a C.

But you can't really criticize UNLV for choosing Sanford over a minority candidate, unless there was a minority candidate who met as many of the criteria that Hamrick stated he was looking for in a coach when he learned he would have to hire one.

The BCA sees it another way. It lists the "best fit" explanation as one of several defense mechanisms schools use for bypassing minority head coaching candidates.

Hamrick said he was looking for a guy with West Coast ties who threw the ball and was a class act. Sanford, the self-proclaimed mastermind of Utah's prolific spread offense -- "Urban (Meyer) was the CEO ... but it was my offense" he bluntly stated Monday -- gets check marks in all three categories.

I don't think it would have mattered if Sanford was white, black, brown or chartreuse. He could have worn the Unknown Comic's bag over his head and UNLV still would have hired him.

Over the years, UNLV has been proactive with regard to hiring minority head coaches, or seemingly at least as pro-active as the next school. Before this year, when volleyball coach Deitre Collins was fired, three of the Rebels' 15 head coaches were black.

Again, the BCA says that is a "justification" schools use for not hiring a minority head football coach.

But had the BCA been doing its report card in 1986, UNLV would have received straight A's. It was considered something of a pioneer when it made Wayne Nunnely the first minority head football coach on the West Coast and only the fifth in the long, stodgy history of the NCAA.

What's stunning is that since then, only 16 men in 17 seasons have succeeded him in moving into the biggest office in the football complex. And only two (of 117 possibilities) remain there following the recent firings of Fritz Hill at San Jose State, Tony Samuel at New Mexico State and Notre Dame's hasty parting with Ty Willingham last week.

That said, Hamrick said the BCA wasn't any more aggressive than usual when it came to Robinson's replacement.

"No, no," he said. "The BCA has standards, and we followed every one of those standards."

Except the one about having minorities on the search committee. Hamrick acted alone as a one-person search party.

"We were in communication with them," he said of the BCA. "They sent us a pool of candidates, we communicated with them and we used that pool. And we had minority candidates involved in the interview process."

Even University System Regent Linda Howard, who was outspoken in her criticism of the athletic department for not interviewing former Rebels such as Reggie Theus and Sidney Green, who are black, for the basketball job that went to Lon Kruger, seemed satisfied with the football hiring process.

"I was pleased to know that at least they brought in an African-American candidate for an interview, which is a step forward," Howard said Monday.

"That wasn't the case (with basketball). And look what happened with Trent Johnson (at Nevada-Reno). He did really well, and after UNR, look at what he did -- he's now at Stanford.

"This idea about not being able to find minorities who are qualified is not going to wash very much longer."

That's her opinion, but I'll close with a fact. If the higher-ups at UNLV believe the proportion of white head coaches to minorities in college football is out of whack, they did not improve the percentage when presented with the opportunity.

Nor, it should be noted, did we in the media put any pressure on them to do so.