This article originally appeared in the April 8, 1991 issue of Sporting News.
It couldn't have happened to a more worthy guy. Jerry Tarkanian — a man who loves his Tark the Shark nickname so much that he put it up in lights outside his own Las Vegas nightclub — left the NCAA Final Four as a defeated man. Defeated, but still defiant.
"I'll be back," he declared.
That's what bothers me.
MORE: Players, coaches react to Tark's passing | Tark's lifelong love for basketball finally requited
Some folks have trouble with Tark the Shark as a concept. It isn't right, they believe, for a coach to win national championships when he has been found twice guilty of cheating by the NCAA, using players who drive Corvettes and BMWs while majoring in "liberal studies." Many people think this is abhorrent.
Funny thing, though. I'm not one of them. I can accept Tark as a concept. I just can't accept Tark as Tark.
Perhaps I should elaborate. Jerry Tarkanian is not unique. He didn't invent the notion of questionable behavior in college sports. Long before UNLV existed, there were other schools winning tainted NCAA championships by using players furnished with luxury cars and marshmallow transcripts.
Why, not even the two teams who played in Monday night's championship game have closets free of skeleton debris. Duke University's three senior players a year ago did not graduate, according to a recent TV documentary. And the University of Kansas left the NCAA probation hit parade just two years ago.
So the problem, for me, isn't Tarkanian the concept. The problem is Tarkanian himself. This is a man who epitomizes hypocrisy, money-grubbing and general bad vibes.
"I love these kids," Tarkanian kept saying about his team this season, in a rasping mantra. And many otherwise bright human beings, especially the ones in TV blazers, have been portraying Tark as a swell old guy who gets picked on by the NCAA for simply giving downtrodden youth a chance to excel.
This is interesting, because although Tark loves his "kids," he seems to primarily use them as a vehicle to line his pockets with dough, in every possible way.
Under his contract with UNLV, Tarkanian receives 10 percent of the school's postseason revenues. Last year, that amounted to $ 100,000. This year, owing to NCAA television contract reforms, he'll receive about one-tenth that much. This is on top of his regular $ 230,000 salary and his $ 120,000 shoe contract.
And what do you suppose Tarkanian does with his NCAA bonus money? Does he, say, endow UNLV with an academic scholarship for underprivileged youth?
Not at last report. In fact, when last we checked, Tarkanian was profiting richly from another sweet deal. One Nevada newspaper reported this winter that Tarkanian receives 220 free tickets to each sold-out Las Vegas home game.
Those, of course, are 220 prime tickets that UNLV's students cannot buy. They also are 220 tickets that Tarkanian can use as barter, allowing him to cut a myriad of deals in Las Vegas, a dealer's city. This season, Tark admitted he used 10 of the tickets in trade for $ 18,000 worth of meals for him and his coaching staff at a local restaurant.
Where the rest of the free tickets wind up, and how much Tarkanian receives in exchange for them, nobody knows. Last week, in one of the better one-on-one matchups of the entire NCAA Tournament, Ted Koppel of ABC's "Nightline" interviewed Tarkanian on the subject.
Koppel: "Coach Tarkanian, what about those 200-odd free tickets that you get? How do you account for those?"
Tarkanian: "I don't have to account for any of them. They're part of my contract."
Nice try, Ted. Next time down the floor, go to the zone.
Some of Tark's tickets, we do know, land in the darndest of hands. A few weeks ago; one ticket wound up being used by a man named Richard Perry, who was convicted in 1974 of fixing more than 40 harness races in New York -- which was sort of a warmup drill for Perry's involvement in the Boston College point-shaving scandal of 1979.
Tark said it wasn't his fault that Perry ended up at courtside. Tarkanian said he had given tickets to a friend, who had invited Perry to the game.
Even the celebrated battle Tarkanian has waged with the NCAA has been aimed at saving his own interests as much as the interests of his school. Las Vegas was supposed to serve probation this season but received a reprieve, largely because Tarkanian has tied up the NCAA with court cases and injunctions in the past and might have again if the sanctions had been enforced. Of course, now that his best players have used up their eligibility and Tark's best opportunity to earn a postseason bonus has passed, he may gladly serve out the NCAA penalties. Or maybe, some speculate, he will evacuate to pro basketball, leaving UNLV in the probation lurch.
Tarkanian says he won't do that, though. For a change, I believe him. He's got much too good a deal now. He makes a small fortune off his team, revels at his own nightclub, cuts his own secret deals with his free tickets and actually is beloved for all this by many civilians in his community. As a concept, apparently Tarkanian can live with that. As Tark the Shark, I think I'd be ashamed of myself.
Mark Purdy was a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and a regular columnist for Sporting News.