Ron Kantowski lifts an idea from UNLV golf and Arizona State wrestling that could save endangered programs: Forget the ADs and legislators, find donors

By Ron Kantowski

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A year after Arizona State hired football coach Dennis Erickson and approved a contract that would pay him $5.6 million over five years, the Sun Devils dropped three men’s sports.

Nobody would say that was the direct result of giving Erickson the key to Millionaire Acres, but these drastic actions are becoming more common in Poor Farms across the land. They used to be called athletic departments, but that was when there was money to operate them.

Hire a football coach, drop three sports to pay him. It’s coming to that. In fact, Rutgers dropped six sports in 2006 before signing Greg Schiano, its football coach, to a four-year contract extension.

To save $1 million annually, ASU cut men’s wrestling, tennis and swimming May 23.

Ten days later, wrestling was reinstated when the private sector raised $8 million to endow the program.

That was huge.

This could be what ultimately saves minor college sports, or at least removes some of the burden from the football and basketball programs that finance them.

Want a tennis team? Go find a car dealer to pay for one.

“This is measurable on the Richter scale,” Arizona State Athletic Director Lisa Love told The Arizona Republic. “All I’m feeling ... is a deep sense of gratitude because people are helping. If that sets up the model for others (nationally) then we’re happy to be in that situation in what has been difficult circumstances recently.”

If a light bulb didn’t go off at Control headquarters — er, the UNLV athletic department, sorry about that, Chief — it should have. If you want to execute an end run around Carson City for semifrivolous (at least in the grand scheme of things) activities such as wrestling, tennis and swimming, getting somebody else to foot the bill would seem the way to go.

Dwaine Knight, the UNLV golf coach, has been running power sweeps around budget cuts and restrictions for more than two decades. Before he came to UNLV 21 years ago, Knight was the golf coach at New Mexico, where he had the idea that if he could raise $50,000 over 10 years to pay for scholarships, the Lobos wouldn’t need a tin cup, or even a handout from the state Legislature, to be competitive.

Figuring correctly that there was more money in Southern Nevada than there was in Albuquerque, Knight’s goal was to endow the UNLV golf program to the tune of $2 million and live off the interest. It took him about 10 years, but he got it done.

Now, when the Rebels want to fly to a tournament or need new 9-irons, they simply reach into their cookie jar the way a 10-handicapper reaches into his bag for a new ball when playing No. 17 at TPC Sawgrass.

“It was this city that made it happen. I really didn’t have anything to do with it,” Knight said in typical Knight fashion, which is to give credit to others.

At New Mexico, the future of the golf program and every other nonrevenue sport was tied to the success of the Lobos’ basketball and, to a lesser extent, football programs, much as it is here. When those sports did well, there was money for golf. When they didn’t, the Lobos used 9-irons with wood shafts.

At UNLV, football never does well.

So Knight’s golf program became self-sufficient by raising its own capital. The only money it gets from the department is used for his and his assistants’ salaries. Donors such as Christina Hixson of the Ernst F. Lied Foundation, International Game Technologies, the estate of Earl E. Wilson, the Las Vegas Founders and the UNLV Golf Foundation pay for everything else.

With money not an issue, Knight spends most of his time and energy teaching the Rebels how to play golf. UNLV won the NCAA title in 1998. Ex-Rebels Warren Schutte and Ryan Moore won NCAA individual titles in 1991 and 2004.

To put it mildly, the Rebels are not lacking for success. Or new 9-irons.

Knight’s knowledge of how to play a downhill lie notwithstanding, don’t think the money he collected during his first decade on the job didn’t have something to do with it.

But why should these endowments begin and end with the golf program?

“One of the things I have learned is that each sport has a constituency of its own,” Knight said.

Wrestling certainly has a constituency of its own at Arizona State. Ten days to raise $8 million? Unless you own a Conoco station, who thought that was possible? Supporters of the Sun Devils’ tennis and swimming teams also are well on their way to resuscitating those sports by throwing money at them.

That beats throwing an ax at them.

So here’s an idea: Maybe instead of having to take a beating from Wisconsin on the football field and getting a handout from Lon Kruger and Disney on Ice and motorcycle races and whatever else Daren Libonati has planned for the Thomas & Mack Center and Sam Boyd Stadium, perhaps UNLV should just throw an ax at sports that don’t make money.

Like football.

Then stand back and watch the money come in to save them.