It was Rogers the fan who knocked A.D.

Monday, March 27, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.

Was that Jim Rogers, university system chancellor, or Jim Rogers, rabid basketball fan, who ripped into UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick last week?

Rogers says it was a little bit of both.

During discussion before the Board of Regents voted to extend Hamrick's contract until 2012, Rogers criticized Hamrick for his three lackluster basketball and football seasons. Hamrick's successes in balancing the budget, improving athlete GPAs and avoiding NCAA violations were all fine and good, Rogers said, but when was UNLV going to win a national championship?

"He doesn't understand the tremendous frustration that those of us who have looked at this program for 15 years have," Rogers said in an interview Friday.

"The question is where are we going with an athletic program that is mediocre at best. So it was part of my frustration speaking as a basketball fan and a football fan."

As chancellor, Rogers said he also did not want to see the next president handcuffed by extending Hamrick's contract when he still had two years left. Rogers also suggested that Hamrick was trying to leverage offers from other universities to force UNLV's hand.

Rogers, who donates heavily to UNLV athletics, is one of many in the Las Vegas community who yearn for the days of Jerry Tarkanian. As basketball coach for two decades, Tarkanian raised UNLV's national reputation, racking up 20 consecutive winning seasons, four Final Four appearances and one national championship, in 1989-1990. He also embroiled the school in controversy after controversy with the NCAA.

Hamrick, who has been on the job for less than three years, shot back that if Rogers wanted someone to "win at all costs ... I am not the right athletics director."

Regent Mark Alden returned an uncashed, $1,000 check for his re-election campaign to a donor this week after the donor allegedly called him during the regents' meeting in Reno to campaign for Hamrick's contract extension. The donor gave the money with no conditions, Alden said, but then tried to tie the donation to a positive vote on Hamrick.

Alden said he voted in favor of Hamrick's contract extension because Hamrick had cleaned up the athletic department. But he returned the donation to avoid any perception that the money is why he voted for Hamrick's contract.

UNLV's Boyd School of Law is taking a microscope to President Bush with a visit this evening from Pulitzer Prize winning historian Jack Rakove.

Rakove will analyze how the Bush administration has interpreted the president's constitutional powers in the war in Iraq and in the war on terror, said the law school's dean, Richard Morgan.

The 7 p.m. Philip Pro lecture, "Presidential Commander: Constitutional Myth, Political Reality," is in room 102 of the law school on UNLV's Maryland Parkway campus. It is free and open to the public.

Local developer Michael Saltman and his wife, Sonja, have joined Rogers, gaming magnate Bill Boyd and the Thomas and Mack families in the law school's big donor club.

UNLV will be honoring the Saltmans Tuesday for another contribution to the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution, Morgan said. The Saltmans have asked Morgan to keep the amount confidential, but they gave $1 million to get the center started.