Ron Kantowski wonders what has changed between now and basketball season that has made the Thomas & Mack Center obsolete as a viable venue for sporting events

Monday, May 1, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.

Maybe these aren't the worst of times at UNLV. After all, Rollie Massimino is long gone. But they certainly aren't the best of times, either.

The football team hasn't had back-to-back winning seasons in more than two decades. The basketball team, once the cash cow of the program, is now a cash calf. The minor sports are either unsuccessful or operate in a vacuum, because nobody within the athletic department knows how to market or promote them.

The athletic director recently received a contract extension that virtually nobody believes he deserves, beginning with the guy who is running the university. In this past week alone, I have talked to at least a half dozen people in the athletic department - a few in low places, a couple in the middle and one pretty close to the top - who say morale is like an old Slinky bounding down the stairs.

"It's worse than when Charlie (Cavagnaro, the universally despised former head of the athletic department) was here," said one of the disgruntled ones about the downward spiral in sports.

And now this week, the Thomas & Mack Center, The House That Tark Built, the palatial home - or so we thought - of the Rebels' basketball team (and virtually everything else in town), has been deemed obsolete by city officials who have been watching events from the luxury boxes for years without once complaining, at least not publicly.

"The basketball facilities at UNLV are without question among the best anywhere in the country. We have five different venues in which to practice and the Thomas & Mack Center is undoubtedly one of the great arenas in the world."

That wasn't Tark speaking in 1983, when the T&M opened. It was current Rebels coach Lon Kruger, speaking on page 4 of this year's basketball media guide.

So if the Thomas & Mack Center was one of "the great arenas in the world" six months ago, just when did it become the Cow Palace?

The answer is that it's not the Cow Palace. In that I couldn't reach Rick Barry or Nate Thurmond to confirm it, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Kruger is right. I don't know about the Mack being one of the great arenas in the world, as he said. But as a place to play college basketball, it still does just fine.

The problem is that instead of the purpose for which it was built, UNLV needs the Mack to have more purposes than a Swiss Army Knife. The building hasn't sold out for basketball since his own administration ran Tark out of town during the early 1990s. So instead of catering to its chief tenant, the T&M has catered to all tenants, in an attempt to put some much needed rent money into the athletic department coffers.

Rodeos, prizefights, circuses, hockey, arena football, arena soccer, pro basketball, semipro basketball, high school basketball, rock concerts, rap concerts, Disney on Ice, high school graduations ... if you can rope it, punch it, tame it, ice it, kick it, dunk it, listen to it or walk down the aisle with it, the T&M has probably hosted it.

But during its 23-year history, those modest luxury boxes haven't gotten any bigger. Nor has the seating capacity. With cavernous new arenas around the country sprouting up like dandelions in springtime, City Hall has commissioned a study to determine the feasibility of replacing the T&M as Las Vegas' primary place to play and keep up with the Basketball Joneses.

See, this is what happens when we send Mayor Goodman to Houston to case the NBA All-Star Game.

It should be noted that it's going to be a while before the guys with tasseled loafers start picking out mahogany furniture for their luxury suites. But just in case this arena feasibility study results in a sensible plan to build one, UNLV had better start doing its homework.

It may have to spend some money if it intends to continue making some as a landlord. The T&M has been renovated twice, but obviously, not to the point where it measures up to any of these modern multi-use arenas that have been going up in NBA cities.

Or, if a new arena is built, UNLV could just sack the Mack and use the real estate to erect a new dormitory or classroom building, which it seems intent on doing anyway, given the nonstop construction on what used to be the Thomas & Mack parking lots.

But then it would have to stand in line with a monkey and a tin cup, right along with everybody else, in the hope of receiving a weekend date on which to play New Mexico in Goodman Arena or Binion's Extra Large Horseshoe or whatever they wind up calling the place.

That would probably be a mistake.

While a couple of the Big East teams have shown it's possible to run a successful college basketball program out of a downtown arena, most perennial winners have a Dean Dome right in the middle of campus to attract fans and recruits alike.

Without one, it's just a matter of time before you become DePaul.