Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

where i stand:

With a clean assist from regents, Let’s go Rebels!

The UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, and the community that supports them, need to be a contender. Again.

With apologies to Marlon Brando, Las Vegas may not be a very long way from the waterfront, but we are 26 years from our first and only NCAA men’s basketball championship. It was 1990.

It is hard not to think about that one great moment of glory for our university, our coach, Jerry Tarkanian, and our city. And today there are new visions of sugar plums floating through the hearts and minds of basketball fans, because you just can’t forget what it was like to have a winner. We want to do it again!

Those visions, and the hopes, dreams and aspirations of basketball fans across the valley, will congregate at Maryland Parkway at noon today when the Nevada Board of Regents meets to consider the hiring of our next basketball coach, Chris Beard.

There are a number of ways this meeting can go. Because UNLV President Len Jessup and Athletic Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy already have told the world that Beard will be the next coach — a decision they made after an exhaustive, multiweek search for a perfect fit — the first and best case is that the regents ask whatever questions they have, then vote unanimously to welcome the coach with open arms.

By all accounts, what should happen at this point probably won’t.

Another scenario involves some members of the board — for whatever reasons — showing their disdain for the process, the president or the price of obtaining Coach Beard’s services in a most public way, then voting to approve the contract because it is time to get on with the business of coaching. The wounded win the day, but the day is pocked with black marks that should never be shown to the outside world.

And then there’s a possible scenario — call it the nuclear option — that has the pettifoggers reigning supreme to the point that the contract is turned down, the university and its leaders are embarrassed beyond measure, and the basketball program spirals down to that place where moribund programs go to die.

I am one of those fans who have followed the Rebels for decades. First, it was my job to report on their games from time to time back in the early days, and later to cheer with the rest of Las Vegas as they moved from the Rotunda of the Convention Center to the majesty of the Thomas & Mack. I made it to each of the Final Four contests and, frankly, I would like to do it again — as would most basketball fans in Las Vegas.

I don’t know if Chris Beard is our chance to do it again, but I do know that the people who have been put in charge of hiring him, Jessup and his athletic director, believe strongly that he could be the guy.

I also know that the Board of Regents understands the need to make this happen in a most public and supporting way. Whether the regents can do it is the question.

Every day that I come to work I pass a sculpture that we had commissioned by famous artist J. Seward Johnson Jr. It is called “Sharing the Headlines,” and it features my parents, Barbara and Hank Greenspun, sitting on a bench reading the newspaper. Of course, it is the Las Vegas Sun.

The point is the headline that they are reading. We chose the most compelling community story we could think of at the time. It reads, “UNLV Rebels No. 1!”

It is time for another headline just like that. And there is no way to get there without a coach. The rest of the world, as always, is watching how we do things in Las Vegas.

So please, regents, do the right thing. And do it in the right way.

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.

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