Ron Kantowski wonders which corners must be cut in UNLV athletics

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, Feb. 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The other day I left a message with one of the higher-ups in the UNLV athletic department. Three days later he returned my call.

That’s typical when you leave a message with one of the higher-ups in the athletic department. But this was unusual, because this was the one higher-up who almost always calls back.

Turns out he didn’t get the message because his secretary has taken a medical leave.

And, he said, there’s not enough money in the budget to hire a temp.

Two weeks ago I wrote a column about how the UNLV athletic department could do its part to offset Gov. Jim Gibbons’ $283.6 million budget deficit. The tone was mostly light-hearted, partly because I’m a light-hearted kind of guy, and partly because I didn’t really expect the cost-cutting and fat-trimming to trickle down to the athletic department until sometime in the not-so-immediate future, if at all.

Well, that trickle already has reached the playing field. And the UNLV coaches are now knee deep in it.

Unbeknownst to the light-hearted one, when that column came out, the higher-ups were meeting with Rebels coaches, telling each he or she would have to tighten bootstraps and cinch purse strings between now and July 2009, the next time the state Legislature convenes to hand out free money to Nevada colleges and universities.

At first the coaches were told the department would have to trim $400,000 from operating expenses. Now, “after moving some money around,” it may be closer to $300,000.

When I asked the coaches about how the cuts would affect their programs, some grimaced, some smiled tightly and said they’d manage, some shrugged their shoulders and said “What, me worry?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger said. “You do what you need to do. That’s beyond my control. It’s nothing to worry about, if you can’t control it.”

Then Kruger smiled. It looked a little tight to me, but that was probably because seconds later, when I asked if he planned to coach long enough to surpass Bob Knight’s 902 career victories, he laughed like Cesar Romero as The Joker.

“As a department, we’ve got to make it happen,” Kruger said. “It affects all of us.”

UNLV swimming coach Jim Reitz was just as diplomatic as Kruger. I’d put him in the shrugged shoulders category, but that’s probably because during his 28 years as coach, he has had to beg, borrow and all but steal to make it to the deep end of the pool.

Reitz tells a story about Tim Dobias, UNLV’s first male All-American in swimming, approaching the platform to receive his medal at the 1983 NCAA swimming championships and being accused of being an impostor, because he was wearing unadorned old gray sweats instead of a snazzy warm-up suit with his school name and logo, like the other swimmers.

Another time, the Rebels were scheduled to swim at Pepperdine and as Reitz climbed behind the wheel of his car, he told his kids that hopefully, he’d see them in Malibu. And to drive carefully, because they also had to get there on their own.

“This, too, shall pass,” Reitz said.

He’ll also be glad to know I saw gas for $2.83 the other day.

There are those outside the coaching office who said this crisis could and perhaps should have already passed, if athletic director Mike Hamrick was more aggressive in raising sponsorships and other revenue.

“I don’t think Mike Hamrick should adopt this broad brush approach,” University system Regent Steve Sisolak said. “You can’t go after the programs that are generating revenue.”

Hamrick, who, it should be noted, returned my phone call on the same day, stopped short of saying he absolutely would hit up the coaches, only that he was still formulating a plan. But he said that yes, he has “asked our coaches to tighten the belt.”

As for the part about raising revenue, Hamrick refuted it. He said despite inheriting a $2.5-million deficit, he has raised more cash than his predecessors and that the athletic department now has a cash reserve of more than $1 million.

Not understanding how high athletic department finance works, I asked why some of that money couldn’t be used so the coaches wouldn’t have to cut corners. I told him I had a cash reserve, too — a shoe box in an upstairs closet — and whenever the transmission in my car goes out, I dip into it, rather than tell my wife we can’t afford those shoes.

He said that I didn’t understand, that the money in reserve has to stay there for a rainy day.

This $300,000, I guess, isn’t a rainy day. It’s just a trickle.