Ron Kantowski on the backlash both he and university system Chancellor Jim Rogers have felt since issuing missives on UNLV athletics

Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006 | 6:59 a.m.

There's a new sheriff in town and his name isn't Reggie Hammond. It's Jim Rogers.

If you think Reggie Hammond - the character played by Eddie Murphy in the popular movie "48 Hrs." - caused a ruckus when he strutted into Torchy's honky-tonk with Nick Nolte's detective badge, you weren't hanging around UNLV 48 hours after university system Chancellor Jim Rogers wrote a memo requesting the Board of Regents start taking more responsibility for UNLV and UNR football and basketball programs.

That's about how long it took for the memo to go from Rogers' desk to the 11 o'clock news. That's also about how long it took for those on the periphery of the UNLV program - and probably a lot of those who had grown way too comfortable collecting hefty paychecks within the vacuum in which it operates - to answer Rogers' inquiries with one of their own.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

Rogers said Wednesday during taping of a local radio show that he never envisioned the memo would become the most controversial document since the Unabomber's manifesto.

"What's interesting is all the flak it has caused," he said.

While Rogers mentioned the UNR teams in the same sentence as those from UNLV, most were right to insert a period after "Rebels." The Wolf Pack, give or take the couple of seasons when coach Chris Ault removed himself from the sidelines, have long been successful in football. And now they have become a force in basketball, too, under Mark Fox's watch.

The Rebels are no longer a force in basketball. In football? Well, substitute the letter "a" for the letter "o" in "force" and that about sums it up.

Of all the valid questions raised by Rogers' memo, the biggest talking point is the one posed in Section 4, Subsection A. (It was a long memo.)

Wrote Rogers: "I note that the Las Vegas newspapers now seem to describe the (UNLV) football program as one that was born with a serious heart problem and, after many years of struggling, seems to be on its deathbed. We need a comprehensive history of the football program, why it has succeeded, why it has failed, where it presently is and where it is going. We also need to know, what is to be done if the program does not improve?"

Nowhere does it say he advocates dropping the program anytime soon. Yet that's the conclusion those cashing the hefty paychecks in the athletic department vacuum immediately jumped to.

Rogers has been hearing about it ever since.

That's something he and I have in common (although I would rather be in his tax bracket). Three days before Rogers issued his memo, I had written that if UNLV doesn't start doing a better job of blocking and tackling, perhaps it should focus on becoming another Gonzaga.

The Zags, as I noted, don't play football.

While the majority of feedback I received upon leading readers to that rather obvious conclusion was applauded, I also heard from virtually every fan who attended the season finale against Air Force - in other words, about 25 - who suggested I be made to run a naked bootleg against the old Fearsome Foursome. With Dick Butkus, Ray Nitschke and Jack Lambert backing the line.

Another thing Rogers and I agree on is that second-year coach Mike Sanford isn't what's wrong with the football program. And that third-year coach Lon Kruger isn't to blame for the mediocrity that has enveloped the basketball program like a London fog.

"I don't think this is a Mike Sanford problem," Rogers said. "I don't think this is a Lon Kruger problem. I think it's 18 years of accumulation of the same old thing."

That would be losing. Or in the case of basketball, not winning nearly enough.

Rogers said he went to Tucson on Tuesday night, hoping to discover the Ghost of UNLV's Basketball Past. Instead, the Rebels got Scrooged by Lute Olson's Arizona Wildcats.

"I don't think we have the talent that Arizona's got," said Rogers, who is a major donor to both schools. "Yet Lon Kruger, as far as I know, can really, really coach. So what is missing?

"I don't know."

When he said that, Rogers' voice went up a few octaves, as if he were about to do Jack Cates' dirty work at some out-of-the-way redneck bar in the Bay Area.

Instead, the new sheriff sat down at his desk with a clean sheet of paper and a lot of questions about the UNLV athletic department that have gone unanswered for a long, long time.