UNLV chief faces big decision on new AD

From: Las Vegas Review-Journal Sports Department

First desk in side office (sauna) with no windows but trusty Wal-Mart fan.

Date: 28 July 2009

To: Neal Smatresk, UNLV provost and acting university president

Dear Neal:

Thought it best to check in about this athletic director situation, given the cruel irony of a planned vacation occurring at the exact time Mike Hamrick decided to return to the state covered by forests, which should come in handy when he needs a place to hide from all those humans.

A quick congratulations seems in order, what with news that the state’s chancellor has recommended you be appointed full-time UNLV president with a two-year contract.

I am sure you realize sports and university presidents are inseparable nowadays, that academicians have run college athletics for some time and that their power and influence have reached extraordinary levels. This can be a good thing, Neal. And a bad one.

Take the decision on who should be your school’s next athletic director now that Marshall University has called one of its sons home.

The latter is good news for Hamrick, who in a few days probably will be recognized by more people in Huntington, W.Va., than he was in six-plus years here. This is also good news for UNLV, which needs someone running athletics with a feel for the city, all its major players and who could raise more money than what it costs for a morning Starbucks run.

I’m not sure what brand of moonshine Marshall president Stephen Kopp might be sampling, but when someone describes Hamrick as a person who “knows how to build friends and relationships,” it must be some of the crisp, clear, tasty stuff.

It was on the day he was introduced at Marshall when one UNLV athletic department official offered me this: “I am sure if he drove a bus over six of the more influential athletic boosters, he couldn’t name five of them.”

His words, Neal. Not mine.

Another who has followed and supported UNLV athletics since 1974 wrote that Hamrick was the only athletic director he never met or saw in the community. That he was invisible.

This just in, Neal: Casper the Friendly Ghost is a simple but effective Halloween costume. He doesn’t make a good AD.

Hamrick was more out of place here than snowshoes, and that weakened his department. Do some research. Ask about the revolving door of capable employees who left under his watch. Inquire how many times he promoted from within (if you get to two, you’re our grand prize winner).

While others are championing academic progress made in athletics under Hamrick — and it’s true a majority of UNLV student-athletes view attending class a positive venture — what also should be explored is a marketing arm that today is laughable at best.

An arm that is so inept and lacking, basketball coach Lon Kruger had to hire his own marketing person last year just to assure the public knew a little something about the school’s most important team. Kruger would never say so publicly, but it’s as much a fact as that Sweet 16 run in 2007.

Revisit the history of Hamrick hiring close friends such as Perk Weisenburger in 2005 as associate athletic director and bringing such things as ticketing and marketing and broadcasting and corporate sales in-house, moves that proved dreadful in some areas.

Check out the years after Hamrick mistakenly went away from ESPN Regional handling such matters and before ISP came aboard to save them. If not for Kruger’s success in basketball, UNLV athletics during those times would have been more undetectable than a dust mite.

It all reinforces this stance: The next athletic director must have strong local ties and the ability to fundraise far beyond the fantasy levels Kopp is spinning to the Marshall faithful.

This is not UCLA or Arizona State. It’s a different animal starving for a hometown approach. I am sure you have heard the names. Let’s hope you have begun researching them.

Steve Stallworth. Dwaine Knight. Tina Kunzer-Murphy. Don Logan. Your interim AD, Jerry Koloskie. People with a clue. People who get this town and who overnight would be a vast improvement sitting in the AD’s chair, some more than others but a major step up just the same.

Forget even the tiniest temptation to launch a national search. In a word, stupid. One isn’t needed given the strong pool of local candidates, and such endeavors often result in lining the pockets of an adviser with tens of thousands of dollars to perform a service that could be expertly handled by a committee of diverse, intelligent civic leaders — people with more knowledge about UNLV athletics in one finger than some overpaid consultant could ever own.

It’s a big decision, Neal.

Take your time. Sit and chat with Stallworth and Kunzer-Murphy and the like.

I promise you this: They will look you in the eye and speak passionately about their part in UNLV’s athletic history and how it could lift the department to much greater heights.

And wouldn’t that be a welcome change.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He also can be heard weeknights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on “The Sports Scribes” on KDWN Radio (720 AM).