EX-REBEL TAKES BEEF TO MEDIA

Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

Former UNLV running back Robert Paulele knows about passion.

He's a Polynesian fire knife dancer back home in Maui and he said the blazing knives represent the passion that always burns inside.

It took passion to walk on, without a scholarship, and play for the Rebels.

But UNLV extinguished his passion for football, Paulele said. He was demoted to the scout squad - and out of the Saturday game plan - after the third game of the season.

"Saturdays were my paydays, and it was worth it," Paulele said. "(But) I knew I wasn't going anywhere with this."

But it was more than the demotion that caused him to leave the team. It was the way he was treated by the coach, he said.

Without a scholarship, he was having trouble paying his bills. He figures that by the end of this semester, he and his mother, Darby Osborne, will face $20,000 of debt for his year at UNLV.

He said he approached coach Mike Sanford before the fall semester to ask if he could help with the financial burden.

The two have different stories about what happened next.

Paulele (pronounced pah-LAY-lee) said Sanford offered him access to a credit card with a $5,000 limit and 17 percent interest through a local banker. His mother and girlfriend persuaded him not to take it.

Sanford vehemently denied making any such offer. "Absolutely not," Sanford said. "I never did that. It never happened. He's all wrong."

Paulele stands by his statement. "How could I make up such a scenario?"

Even if that offer had been made, UNLV athletic officials said it wouldn't have violated NCAA rules because similar credit card offers are prevalent on college campuses.

Such disharmony often dogs a football team that has lost six consecutive games and is 2-8, the record the Rebels take into today's game at TCU.

Some players and coaches channel that negativity into improving themselves. That's the tack Sanford wishes Paulele had taken.

Instead, Sanford said, Paulele quit. Bottom line. End of story.

"It's absolutely crazy," Sanford said. "The sad thing is, he probably would have ended up playing. And if he had ended up playing, he might have been able to earn a scholarship this spring."

Paulele, 23, transferred to UNLV in January.

He had played football at high schools in Hawaii and Washington and for two years at Orange Coast Community College in Costa Mesa, Calif. He went to New Mexico State but developed staph infections and left without playing a down for the Aggies.

With two years of eligibility left, he said, he picked UNLV so he could be near his girlfriend, May Guevar, who attends Chapman College, and for a chance to help a struggling program.

The Rebels had won only two games in each of the past two seasons during Sanford's first stint as a head coach after serving as offensive coordinator at Utah.

If Paulele had known his UNLV scholarship chances were so slim, he said, he could have gone to Grand Valley State, a Division II school in Michigan, to play with buddy Tupua Ioane.

Instead, he signed up for 18 units of upper-division classes at UNLV in the summer so he would be eligible to play in the fall. His girlfriend took a summer job in the UNLV psychology department to support him.

"I told him, 'If you do great in (fall) camp, there's a chance you could earn a scholarship in the spring. A chance,' " Sanford said. "I didn't promise him anything. I told him there was a chance. My exact words.

"That better be what's written in this article."

Before the fall semester started, Paulele said, Sanford told him that a local bank official, a friend of wide receivers coach Kris Conkovich's, could get him the credit card.

Paulele said Sanford wrote the terms of the card and the official's name on a sheet of yellow legal paper and gave it to him.

Sanford didn't allow the Sun to interview Cinkovich, who'd coached at local high schools before joining the UNLV staff in 2004.

NCAA rules prohibit a student-athlete from receiving preferential treatment, benefits or services because of his or her athletic ability. But an NCAA official said it would be difficult to judge if an infraction had been made without investigating the specific situation.

After Sanford was asked about Paulele's claims, the UNLV athletic department did some checking. A spokesman said Eric Toliver, a UNLV associate athletic director in charge of compliance, told UNLV Athletic Director Mike Hamrick that most U.S. students could acquire a card at those terms, so the issue was moot.

Hamrick was disappointed that Paulele and his mother went to the media without notifying anyone in the UNLV administration, according to a spokesman.

Osborne, Paulele's mother, visited Las Vegas to watch her son play against Wisconsin on Sept. 8. She saw the 5-foot-8, 205-pound running back catch a third-down screen pass and ramble 34 yards.

That weekend in her hotel room, Paulele showed his mom the piece of yellow legal paper on which he claimed Sanford had written those credit card details. Osborne said she was so enraged she ripped the paper to shreds and threw it away.

"That was insulting and disturbing," she said. "I was so angry. The audacity. For everything my son has put into this, it was the wrong thing to do."

Osborne said she did not consider calling Sanford or the UNLV administration.

Against Hawaii the next week, Paulele caught one pass. Two nights later, Paulele was told he was being demoted to the scout team - which mimics the next opponent during practice. That meant no Saturday paydays.

Paulele quit. "My decision wasn't spontaneous," he said.

Sanford said Paulele did "very well" in the spring but fumbled too frequently during fall camp. Paulele could have earned his way back, Sanford said. The demotion wasn't permanent.

"Now he's coming back and putting some stuff on us that is completely unfair," Sanford said. "It was all in his court, and he didn't get it done."

After she read a story detailing another player's frustrations with UNLV's recruiting, Osborne sent an e-mail critical of UNLV coaches to the Sun.

For more than a month, Paulele pondered going public. During several hours of face-to-face interviews and dozens of phone calls, he finally said he wanted other fringe players to be leery of UNLV.

"I'm not going to just walk away and let them feel they got the better of me," he said.

In recent weeks, three other walk-on players have quit UNLV. Ronald Boone, a defensive lineman from Sierra Vista High in Las Vegas, was critical of how the Rebels coaches treated walk-ons. "I was miserable on that team," Boone said.

On the other hand, Omar Clayton, a walk-on from Illinois, rose through the ranks to become UNLV's starting quarterback and earned a scholarship beginning in the spring.

Sanford is disappointed that Paulele didn't stick with the program.

"To me, it's a story of a young man who had a difficult time," Sanford said. "Some things didn't work out the way he thought they would."

Paulele plans to move to Southern California after this semester and finish his degree online. He said he'll attend graduation ceremonies in Las Vegas in May.

"I came here to make a name for myself," Paulele said. "I didn't want to be Rudy (in the football movie). That's a good story, but I wasn't here only to play one down in football."

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