UNLV ticket flap may escalate

By Rob Miech

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Jim Rogers promises he won’t skewer UNLV Athletic Director Mike Hamrick so publicly this time around.

But if you talk long enough with the chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, you can tell that Hamrick isn’t completely out of his cross hairs.

Rogers grilled Hamrick last year at a Board of Regents audit committee meeting in Carson City. Rogers told Hamrick that he never saw him at public events and accused Hamrick of not hustling enough on the fundraising circuit. Two university system regents intervened before the meeting became an open personnel-review session.

The regents meet Thursday and Friday in Reno. Again, Hamrick will stand before them, this time to explain how UNLV distributes complimentary football, basketball and NCAA Tournament tickets.

Regents Mark Alden and Steve Sisolak say they have heard from disgruntled boosters for several years, so they pushed the ticket item onto the agenda.

University of Nevada, Reno, also will show how it distributes those tickets and who has received them, but this isn’t about Wolf Pack Athletic Director Cary Groth. It’s about UNLV, which says it can account for its ticket distribution for the past five years.

Rogers, 70, believes the issue is minor, hardly one that could result in Hamrick’s firing or even a reprimand.

“No, no, no, no,” Rogers says. “Mike is not dishonest. I don’t think anybody around him is. I think it’s a straight program. I don’t think that’s the issue. The real issue is we don’t have anybody, at this point, who can set the ...”

Alden interrupts.

“ ... gold standard,” Alden says.

“Right,” Rogers says, “and reach it.”

It isn’t just about tickets, either.

It’s about Rogers’ getting answers from Hamrick in a timely manner.

It’s about a Rebels athletic department barely keeping its head above water in an environment of rising expenses and increasing state budget cuts.

And it’s about watching a football team struggle for almost all of the 40 years Rogers has been watching it.

This is the first three-year stretch in which UNLV hasn’t won at least three games in a season, and the program bleeds about $4 million a year from the department.

Rogers, tabbed by Time magazine as one of the top 12 philanthropists in the country for donating or pledging $275 million to various colleges and universities, looks at that bottom line and comes to a quick conclusion.

Hamrick doesn’t envision UNLV’s shutting down its football program, but Rogers says that will have to be considered if the state keeps slashing its financial aid.

But, no, he can’t see UNLV dropping football, even though Rogers thinks Sam Boyd Stadium should be razed.

“It can damn near run in perpetuity in the basement, like it is, and we’ll tolerate it,” Rogers says. “Other sports will fill the hole. There will be moaning and groaning and (complaining), but I don’t see it coming to an end.”

Inactivity makes Rogers bristle, which he does when asked about a December 2006 letter he drafted to UNLV President David Ashley.

Get 99 people to annually donate $50,000 — or $100,000 or $150,000 — for 10 years to athletics and Rogers and his wife, Beverly, will match it.

Rogers, who has degrees from Southern California and Arizona, never heard from Ashley or Hamrick.

“That was door-slamming time,” Rogers says. “I’m not going to kiss your (butt) or beg you to take my money.”

That financial boost wouldn’t immediately put UNLV into the elite athletic class with USC, Ohio State and Florida, but it would be a first step. Rogers says he could gather 10 or 20 of those people himself.

“The Michael Gaughans of the world, the Jerry Herbsts of the world,” Rogers says. “If we didn’t have the money in this town to do it, that’d be one thing. But, God, we have all the money in the world.

“And I never got a phone call from (Hamrick or Ashley), not one word.”

Rogers says he diverted a monthly stipend of $4,000 from the athletic department, which helped pay for salaries, to the English department.

Hamrick learned about it a year ago. Rogers received a thank-you note for the past donations a couple of months later.

“If I had been Mike Hamrick,” Rogers says, “I would have been on the phone in 30 seconds. ‘What the (heck) are you talking about? We need the money.’ ”

Maybe Mike Sanford shouldn’t have been given his first post as a head football coach, Rogers says. Maybe UNLV should have sought someone who had experience as a head coach. Maybe Hamrick shouldn’t have been hired.

“Thing is, he doesn’t work for me,” Rogers says. “He works for Ashley, and Ashley won’t touch him. He doesn’t have any interest in that. I tell David, I don’t think you’re right. He says, ‘Yeah, but I’m the president.’ ”

A year from now they’ll all be out of Rogers’ cross hairs when his five-year term as chancellor expires. They need someone, he says, with fresh ideas and fresh energy.

Other projects beckon. He’s recuperating well from bladder cancer surgery and is 15 pounds from his target weight of 205.

“I don’t mind a fight,” Rogers says as he wolfs down a plate of trout almandine. “I think I have the type of personality that generates that. If all you have is a bunch of milquetoasts, nothing gets done.”