Ron Kantowski evaluates Chancellor Jim Rogers’ ideas for stopping the program from killing itself

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Friday, Nov. 16, 2007 | 7:25 a.m.

On Tuesday, it will be one year since Mr. Rogers removed his slippers and kicked the UNLV football program in the backside with a size 9D cowboy boot.

Chancellor Jim Rogers' five-page memo to the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents sort of read like the NCAA handbook. There were a lot of numbered points followed by a lot of lettered points. Its focus, at least in theory, was the football and basketball programs at UNLV and UNR. In reality, the memo and all its itemization were meant for the UNLV football team, which was headed toward another two-win season and/or oblivion, the chief byproduct of too many two-win seasons.

Apparently the message went unheeded. Rogers took a lot of grief for putting his nose where Regent Brett Whipple and others don't think it belongs. But maybe it's time for Rogers to have Maria take a second letter.

If you haven't checked the standings recently - and why would you? - UNLV is headed toward another two-win season.

Worse, Rogers said, is that after some initial posturing to his missive, UNLV is no closer to fixing the football program than it was at this time last year.

Four days before Rogers' memo, after learning UNLV was about to lose another $2.8 �million on football, I wrote that perhaps UNLV should consider dropping football and becoming another Gonzaga.

Rogers took that ball and ran with it like Forrest Gump.

Actually, his exact words in the memo: "We also need to know what is to be done if the program does not improve."

I don't think he was referring to "punt." I think he was referring to trading in his helmet for a thin veil and drop-kicking the football program into moth balls, although Rogers denies it.

"What I said is we need to take a look at the program. I wasn't suggesting closing it down, period," he said this week.

But Rogers said if last year's perfunctory look into the football program's deficiencies isn't followed by serious action, or at least a plan for some, my suggestions and his memos will be as useless as running Tank Summers outside the tackles.

"We need to see some major changes in the program ... or it's gonna kill itself," he said.

It's this march to a slow death (three winning seasons in the past 21) that is ... well, killing Rogers.

Forget the advisory boards and committees and this week's vote of confidence from athletic director Mike Hamrick (the alternative was a contract buyout that would cost money Hamrick hasn't been able to raise) for coach Mike Sanford. "This problem is much broader than Mike Hamrick or Mike Sanford," Rogers said.

If UNLV football is ever to turn the corner and become competitive in the Mountain West - which shouldn't be that hard to do - Rogers believes it needs an on-campus stadium and new training facilities and a "boatload" of cash (my word, not his) to make it happen.

Then it needs to "steal" (his word, not mine) a proven Division I coach who is used to playing in bowl games after Christmas.

That's where the boatload of money comes in. Or two boatloads. Two Lusitania-sized boatloads.

I told Rogers I loved the simplicity of his plan. But that it would take Phil Knight money to make it work here. That's the not-so-natural resource that has transformed Oregon from Duck soup into national championship contenders in every sport that Knight, the Nike co-founder, makes a shoe for.

Rogers told me we already have Phil Knight money in this town. Only it has the pictures of Jerry Herbst and Michael Gaughan and Bill Boyd and Steve Wynn - sports fans with a boatload of cash only marginally connected to the UNLV football program, if at all - on the tens of thousand-dollar bills.

What we don't have, Rogers said, is a strategy that would entice those guys into investing in a program that hasn't been successful since the wishbone offense was in vogue.

"We have to have a plan where (private donors) are willing to invest because we can't go to the Legislature" for additional money.

One rumor making the rounds at last week's San Diego State game was that Rogers had a $1 million offer on the table to oust Mike Sanford as coach. Rogers denied it. Besides, he said, it is going to take a lot more money than that to make the football program viable over the long haul.

But, he said, develop a plan for an on-campus stadium and for how we'd steal Mark Mangino away from Kansas - I'd start by mentioning that the seafood buffet at the Rio is to die for - then maybe he could see fit to add another million to all the ones he already has contributed to UNLV.

Without a plan, UNLV might as well keep running Tank Summers outside the tackles.

Or give that $2.8 million the football program loses every year that Wisconsin's not on the home schedule to Lon Kruger, so he can recruit a big man.