Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Take that, Abilene and Eastern Washington

I’ve been asked if I feel the NCAA has changed much since I was coaching at UNLV, and I’m not so sure if it has. I’m going to wait and see.

I saw what happened to Alabama football last week. They got three years’ probation. But, basically, there are no sanctions. They didn’t lose any scholarships and they’re still on TV. They still get to play in bowl games.

To me, that’s such a farce. They say they’re going to bury the big guys, but they lose no scholarships. And they’re still on TV. That’s what would hurt you in recruiting, if you’re not on TV or can’t go to a bowl.

Abilene Christian in Texas and Eastern Washington got buried hard, but they didn’t bury Alabama. And they won’t bury USC. They might get a three-year probation, but there won’t be any sanctions.

That’s all b.s.

Every organization needs a governing body. I agree with that. The NCAA needs an enforcement staff, you only hope they treat everyone the same. If they make a rule, you hope they enforce the rule and it’s the same for everyone … which it never has been.

I got a kick out of that Alabama news. It was all over TV. But they don’t lose a scholarship and they still get to go to the bowl games. So where is the penalty?

The penalty is they’ll come and monitor you for three years. Well, they can do that anyways, but it looks good in the paper. Oh yeah, they say, we got Alabama.

Yeah, they really cleaned up college football when they came down hard on Abilene Christian and Eastern Washington.

It bothers me the most when they don’t apply the same rules to everybody.

Someone told me how some writer made a smart-(aleck) remark about me last week, how when he was asked about who might follow Tim Floyd at USC he said they won’t be calling me.

But that kind of stuff doesn’t affect me. The thing is, we’ve been dragged through everything. When it was all over, they never had a major violation, not one major violation, against us.

We never had a situation where we were accused of giving someone money or anything major. Now you read about certain guys getting $300,000 or $400,000. We had no allegations of any kind like that.

There are big schools that have hundreds of major violations … but I can’t get into that.

It bothered the hell outta me when I’d see what’s going on around the country.

Someone asked me about UNLV basketball returning to the top of the game, what it’ll take and how long it will be before the Rebels are back among the elite teams in the country.

Not just getting into the NCAA tournament but making long runs.

I’ll tell you what, they’re not that far away. Lon Kruger has taken them to the tournament and they’ve won three games there, the first time they’ve won games in consecutive NCAAs since I was there.

That is not too bad. I think they’ll be really good again next season. But returning to the top of the basketball world? That’s hard for anybody to do.

You have to be really talented and you have to be really lucky. You have to have a great ball club. Things have got to go the right way and you have to get the calls.

You can have a great team and lose, anytime, if you get a bunch of calls against you. Your best player can foul out. There are a lot of factors. The big thing is you want to be competitive every year.

That’s more realistic than talking about winning it. And if you get to the big dance, going against North Carolina or UCLA, even Kentucky again, you’re going to have to be better than those teams.

You won’t get the calls or any of the breaks, so you have to be better and hope the ball bounces right.

Next time, I’ll write about my incredible trip to Armenia.

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