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Throwing in the Towel : For Decades, Jerry Tarkanian Has Passionately Fought Twin Battles: For Victory on the Basketball Court and Against the Powers of College Sport. Now the Clock is Running Out for the Coach of the Runnin’ Rebels.

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<i> Michael J. Goodman is a contributing editor of this magazine. His last story was "Caged Animals, Wild Hunters." </i>

Jerry Tarkanian looks rattled.

Warily he enters his nightly hangout, Piero’s restaurant, a celebrity favorite in Las Vegas. The foyer is empty and hidden from the dining room. He lingers for a moment, hugging his gray cellular phone like a teddy bear. At 61, after 35 years of unequaled success on the court and contention off it, and on the eve of his 19th and final season coaching the Runnin’ Rebels, the man who embodies the worst and best in college basketball is under attack--again.

This time, Tark the Shark has been sucker-punched.

Tarkanian spots Piero’s owner, Fred Glusman, short, muscled, dapper, fifty-ish and nicely tanned from an afternoon sun lamp. Glusman is Tarkanian’s most vociferous defender, a cocky, tenacious, brass-knuckles brawler with a personality to match. Glusman’s proud of it. “Let ‘em call me ‘schmuck,’ ” he says. “I know what I am. You drop me 30 stories and I’ll land on my feet.”

But on this November night, Glusman’s ego is in free fall; his mood redefines down-in-the-mouth. Las Vegas television news has just broadcast a videotape of Tarkanian’s coaching staff at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conducting what looks like an illegal preseason team practice to get the jump on the competition. Taken alone, it might be considered a bush-league fudging of the rules by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. But UNLV is already banned from the 1991-92 playoffs and awaits an NCAA decision on other possible violations, and Tarkanian himself was forced to resign last June, the culmination of unrelenting bad publicity. And now this. Las Vegas wants an explanation from its squat, paunchy, slope-shouldered coach with the droopy eyes, palooka nose and U-shaped smile.

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Ninety minutes have passed since the videotape was first broadcast. Tarkanian continues to duck reporters. His administrative aide, Denny Hovanec, has checked Piero’s for hostile press. Hovanec signals the all-clear via cellular. Tarkanian huddles with Glusman and Hovanec at the bar. Tarkanian is told that public reaction to the videotape is unanimous: It clearly shows an illegal team practice. “What’s your opinion, coach?” I ask. His entourage squirms uneasily. Tarkanian has a perfect record of conceding little, admitting less, confessing nothing and denying what seems undeniable.

“The tape doesn’t show anything,” Tarkanian rasps, his gravelly voice whining with indignation. “I don’t know why they released it.” The bartender rolls his eyes. Glusman and Hovanec act as if they didn’t hear. Tarkanian presses on. “All the tape shows is a conditioning class. They’re doin’ (conditioning) slides.” Tarkanian looks at me. “Come here,” he says. “Face me. Bend your knees like I am. Put your hands up. Now do what I do.” With our hands up, we herky-jerky from side to side. Tarkanian turns to the hushed bar crowd. “This is all they’re doing (on the videotape). They’re doin’ slides.” The bar crowd fidgets and melts away. Tarkanian smiles and heads for his table.

TOUGH IT OUT. DIG IN. ATTACK. THIS IS TARKANIAN’S WAY. HE knows no other. As a coach he’s relentless, obsessive, consumed--a brilliant recruiter and motivator. His dazzling results from recruiting uneducated inner-city toughs are assailed as exploitation by some, lauded as saving souls by others. He asks his players only for their best effort and unshakable loyalty. He places loyalty above all and repays it any way he can--jobs, a grubstake--long after they leave his care. They revere him. “We’d go through a brick wall for him,” says Greg Anthony, a star forward from the 1990-91 team who was picked 12th in the National Basketball Assn. draft and now plays for the New York Knicks. “He’s just so sincere and honest with his players. No mirrors, no jive. What you see is what you get.”

But their testimonials--and Tarkanian’s irrefutable record as the winningest coach in the history of college basketball--cannot overcome the perception that he wins by hook or crook, emphasis on the latter. Tarkanian gives his enemies too much to work with. His coaching wizardry is matched by his personal foolhardiness--tilting at windmills armed with his trusty mouth, defending loyal pals of tarnished repute. It is his brashness, his rashness that made him take on the NCAA nearly 20 years ago. He’s been fighting the ruling body of college sports ever since--in court, in the media, before Congress, in Piero’s.

He requires only an audience of one, preferably a rich booster he can out-fumble for the check. When it comes to money, Tarkanian--a millionaire three times over--hates parting with it, or missing a chance to get more. His name, his nickname, his face, presence, influence and the towel he sucks on are for sale to the highest bidder. His easy-money adventures have dismayed his family and endangered his reputation. But not a speck of evidence so far suggests that Tarkanian would fix a game, or is connected with anybody who would.

Glusman escorts Tarkanian to his usual spot by Piero’s front door. “I eat here almost every night--four, usually five times a week--except Sunday,” Tarkanian says. He gets meals on the house. Glusman’s eyes narrow. He’s worried Tarkanian might look like a moocher, a freeloader. “He’s great for business,” Glusman explains. “He’s a celebrity. He stops at a table, says hello. Shakes hands.” As Glusman speaks, Tarkanian goes to a table, says hello and shakes hands. “See what I mean!” Glusman says. “I couldn’t pay for what he does for this restaurant.”

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The waiter takes Tarkanian’s dinner order. Then Tarkanian orders another dinner to go--he brings one home each night to his wife. Tonight he selects sauteed John Dory for him and linguine pomodoro for home.

It’s customary, and considered proper table manners, to ignore Tarkanian--pretend he’s not there--when discussing anything but basketball. Tarkanian responds in kind. If the topic isn’t basketball, Tarkanian isn’t interested. He’ll pull out a worn leather address book and start calling on his cellular phone. He uses the phone for free, compliments of Centel Cellular, a local telephone company for which he does TV commercials. Tonight, basketball never seems to come up. Tarkanian canvasses people from the address book for feedback on the videotape crisis: “Hi. This is Jerry. How we doin’?” After three calls it’s evident “we” aren’t doin’ well. Tarkanian sets the phone between his silverware and stares at it.

Piero’s suddenly grows quiet. Attention shifts to two televisions mounted overhead. Local news is replaying the videotape. It’s black and white, jerky, a bit fuzzy. It’s shot from a video camera hidden in an air-ventilation duct of the UNLV gym. Ten very tall college-age men dribble and pass an imaginary basketball, run up and down the court in unison, practice guarding each other. Two older men point, nod, look thoughtful.

“They’re all basketball players,” Hovanec says glumly. Glusman sighs: “Yeah. They’re all basketball players.” They look to Tarkanian. He pauses between bites of salad: “I didn’t see all their faces.” He chews. “You can’t see all their faces.”

Seconds pass. “It’s just a minor violation,” Hovanec offers. Glusman nods. “Yeah. Only a minor infraction.” Tarkanian pauses between bites. “It’s not a violation.” He chews. “The tape doesn’t show anything.”

Tarkanian skips his after-dinner cappuccino and leaves immediately for the Alexis Park Resort hotel. He does a one-hour live radio show from the lounge each Tuesday at 9 p.m. during basketball season. Traffic is light. Tarkanian steers with one hand and talks strategy over the cellular. He wants to find out who masterminded the secret videotaping of his staff and players.

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“We’ll sue. Get everybody under oath,” he vows. He fumes at his boss, UNLV President Robert Maxson. He calls Maxson a “jerk . . . a liar,” and much worse. This is not his first outburst. At Piero’s a week earlier, Tarkanian had announced that Maxson and another UNLV official “are two of the biggest liars I ever met! Why don’t they just go away! Go down to the University of Miami, some place like that, and destroy them.” He paused for air. “That whole bunch over there (Maxson’s administration) . . . a bunch of jerks!” Someone named one of the bunch. “That jack-off!” Tarkanian rasped. Glusman leaned over. His voice was sad: “Jerry’s so full of hurt. It’s eating him up.”

Later that night, driving home, Tarkanian wonders: “What’s going on here?” His body sags. He blurts: “This is sick ! It really hurts. They ripped my guts out!” Such hyperbole is vintage Tarkanian. He’s been anguishing out loud for two decades--with some justification. Year after year his niche in sports history continues to be subverted and disfigured by sinister suggestion. What once was an accusation, an insinuation, is now part of Tarkanian’s identity, like “droopy eyes,” or “winningest.” It is the price, Tarkanian says, for trying to prove his innocence. “I wish I didn’t have to fight for it,” he adds. “Once you fight them (the NCAA), they have a history of not letting up. Thirteen years in court, my reputation destroyed through media manipulation by the NCAA, nearly a half-million in legal fees . . . I paid over a hundred thousand myself.”

Through it all, Tark the Shark just keeps on winning. When the 1991-92 season began, Tarkanian:

--Continued as basketball’s all-time winningest coach at both junior and major college levels, with respective win-loss records of 212-26, an .891 percentage, and 599-120, an .833 percentage.

--Had won four straight California junior college championships (1962-66), a record still unequaled in the country, and lost two more in overtime.

--Had averaged 27 victories per season over 30 years, losing 10 or more games only three times.

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--Had qualified for the NCAA national tournament 16 times, fourth most in NCAA history, with nine straight tournament appearances, third most in NCAA history--keeping in mind his teams were ineligible two seasons.

--Had posted 35-5 and 34-1 records his last two seasons, including a national championship in 1989-90, and had almost won a second championship in 1990-91, losing to Duke in the semifinals.

“Look how many players we lost over the years because of the NCAA (sanctions and bad publicity)!” Tarkanian exclaims. “Can you imagine what our record would be without all that?” Tarkanian’s voice seems to plead: Please believe me. I really am a good coach.

Other coaches believe. “Jerry Tarkanian is one of the best team and motivational coaches of all time,” says Jim Brandenberg of San Diego State University. “His accomplishments may never be duplicated,” adds Pat Kennedy of Florida State University. Concludes Steve Fisher of the University of Michigan: “Everywhere he has been he has produced great teams.” No such praise was expected this year. “I lost my starters from last year,” Tarkanian explains, “and I didn’t really recruit because we had no postseason and they’d be playing for another coach next season.” This year’s team are mostly second-stringers and red-shirts (players who sat out last year for eligibility reasons). Yet by late January the Runnin’ Rebels had posted an 18-2 record and were rated in the top 25. “We weren’t even in the top 45 when the season started,” Tarkanian says.

Tarkanian’s UNLV teams have been among the highest scoring and most exciting to watch. His Runnin’ Rebels consistently draw top television ratings. He is a cult figure nationally, worshiped in Las Vegas. Then on June 7 last year, Tarkanian painfully, bitterly announced his retirement effective this March, two years before his contract expires. He explained to reporters: “Although I have been toughened over the years by the pressures of these battles, the pain I see in my children’s eyes makes me realize none of this is fun anymore.” But his future remains uncertain. “Right now I’m leaning toward coaching for another couple of years,” he says. “I’m looking at both pros and college. I’ll decide when the season’s over.”

The person most responsible for Tarkanian’s troubles is Tarkanian. The monster is his own creation. He gave it life 19 years ago by publicly taunting the NCAA when he was basketball coach at California State University, Long Beach, another school he turned into a national contender. The NCAA holds absolute power over its membership--roughly 850 colleges and universities--but it’s the members, who join voluntarily, who give the ruling body its power. They make the rules. If a school thinks there are too many, it can leave. But then it might as well write off its major sports program.

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It is sometimes called “the beast,” or the NCTA--National Collegiate Tyrannical Assn. Times sports columnist Jim Murray once observed: “The NCAA as a governing body in collegiate athletics occupies the same spot in the heart of its subjects as the Gestapo in Warsaw.” Even Tarkanian says he was warned: “Let them (NCAA) beat the heck out of you, thank them for it and kiss their butt. If you speak up they’ll make an example of you. They have unlimited funds, and they’re vindictive as hell. They’ll destroy you.”

Undaunted, Tarkanian baited the NCAA in newspaper columns he wrote for the Long Beach Press-Telegram in 1972-73. He was seething over what he felt was UCLA’s special treatment. The NCAA, he wrote in 1972, picks on small colleges like Western Kentucky when “the University of Kentucky basketball program breaks more rules in a day than Western Kentucky does in a year. . . . The NCAA just doesn’t want to take on the big boys.” Then Tarkanian wrote in a January, 1973, column that it was a “crime” for the NCAA to punish little schools “while the big moneymakers go free.” The NCAA promptly opened an official investigation into Tarkanian’s basketball program.

And so it began: Tarkanian vs. the NCAA, now in its 19th year.

DANNY TARKANIAN GREW UP WATCHING THE MEDIA PORTRAY HIS father as a scoundrel, a cheat, an exploiter of ghetto blacks. He remembers his mother’s anguish and his father’s anger. But now he’s joined the fray, and has all but taken charge. He is 28, a lawyer, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of San Diego law school. He was a star high school quarterback and a first-string guard on his father’s Runnin’ Rebels (1981-84). He’s tall with broad shoulders and a handsome, chiseled face. Right now his face is taut. His intense, dark eyes are stony. He is wary, edgy. Danny has no use for reporters. It’s clear why. I ask anyway.

“Because we’re not going to win,” he replies crisply. “Whatever we do, the impression is always bad. You go out of the way to embarrass my father or hurt his image.”

Danny is in the family room of his parents’ ample five-bedroom, two-story house on Justice Lane, a cul-de-sac in an older but moneyed section of Las Vegas. The family room contains more than 300 awards and tributes on walls, shelves, the floor and in two china cabinets. They include trophies, loving cups, mugs, plaques, plates, bowls, team pictures, family pictures, a Tark and Sinatra picture, bronze and silver basketballs, a Size 17 bronze basketball shoe, a pen and pencil set, the key to Las Vegas, three shark statues and a very large shark’s tooth. A hundred or so more awards are packed in boxes down the hall.

Jerry and Lois Tarkanian join Danny. Jerry wears a red and black velour warm-up suit. He slumps on the couch cradling his cellular. Lois is in her fifties, with a full face and alert, thoughtful dark green eyes. During her 35-year marriage she raised four children, was a career therapist and consultant working with handicapped children, received a doctorate in human behavior from United States International University in 1980, and currently is president of the Clark County School District Board of Trustees. She goes to Mass daily and attends home and road games, often fingering her rosary beads in the stands.

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Danny grimaces at his parents’ arrival. “Don’t interrupt!” he warns. “I’m trying to explain something.”

I spend three afternoons with the Tarkanians thrashing over the events leading to Jerry’s forced resignation. The story, by the public record, goes like this:

When the NCAA officially arrived in Long Beach in March, 1973, to investigate Tarkanian, there was no Tarkanian. He had left four days earlier to become basketball coach at UNLV. “Believe me,” Tarkanian maintains, “if there was any question in my mind they were going to investigate the Long Beach basketball program, I’d have stayed. I thought we were cleared. So did the athletic director and the administration.”

Tarkanian’s departure further antagonized the NCAA. UNLV basketball was under NCAA investigation a week after Tarkanian’s arrival.

The NCAA has filed an estimated total of 43 charges against Tarkanian’s programs. The most serious were that Tarkanian, while at Long Beach, had other students take tests for players and, at UNLV, asked a professor to give a player a good grade for a class he supposedly didn’t attend. The lesser charges include that he gave a player $35 spending money. Tarkanian denies all of the NCAA charges.

Tarkanian counterattacked. He produced a dozen or so affidavits from players and others saying that NCAA investigators had threatened their careers if they didn’t cooperate, even suggesting that they lie. The players said NCAA staff vowed: “We’re gonna get Tarkanian . . . run him out . . . drive him out of coaching.” The affidavits portrayed the NCAA’s lead investigator, David Berst, as being obsessed with getting Tarkanian. Berst later testified that he sometimes called Tarkanian a “rug merchant,” referring to Tarkanian’s Armenian ancestry.

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NCAA investigators relied on sketchy notes or, in some cases, only their recollections of what people told them. They said they didn’t record the interviews.

The NCAA ruled against Tarkanian in 1974, banishing Long Beach from postseason tournaments and live television appearances for three years. Then UNLV was banned in 1977 for two years. In addition, the NCAA ordered UNLV to suspend Tarkanian from coaching for two years--an unprecedented punishment. Tarkanian got a court injunction and fought the suspension to the U.S. Supreme Court. He lost. The high court ruled 5 to 4 in 1988 that while NCAA treatment of Tarkanian was “constitutionally inadequate,” the NCAA was a private, voluntary organization, not governed by laws of due process. If Tarkanian didn’t like the rules, he could quit. A state injunction prevented Tarkanian’s two-year suspension, so the NCAA instead banned UNLV basketball from postseason play for one year. Tarkanian got in a few licks, too. In 1978, U.S. Rep. James Santini of Nevada persuaded Congress to investigate the NCAA. That, combined with Tarkanian’s case, forced NCAA internal files into the public record.

“This provided a unique glimpse inside the NCAA’s enforcement program,” wrote Don Yaeger in his 1990 book, “Undue Process: The NCAA’s Injustice for All.” Yaeger continued: “Public records suggest (Tarkanian’s) case was the worst investigation ever conducted by the NCAA, rife with intimidation of athletes, bigotry . . . slipshod work, creative note-taking and untruth by an investigator and vindictiveness by a disgruntled former coach.” Yaeger concludes: “Jerry Tarkanian got screwed.” Sportswriters and coaches generally agreed that Tarkanian was the victim of NCAA meanness, his reputation scarred.

Tarkanian counterattacked again. Last Dec. 30, he filed a defamation lawsuit against the NCAA in federal court in Las Vegas. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and accuses the NCAA of deciding to “teach Coach Tarkanian a lesson” for his critical 1972-73 newspaper columns. “From that time forward,” the suit claims, the NCAA has “conspired to remove Coach Tarkanian from college athletics by wrongfully and unlawfully attacking” him and his employers, and causing emotional distress to his wife.

James Marchiony, a spokesman for the NCAA, responds: “The issue of a vendetta against Jerry Tarkanian is an absolute myth . . . preposterous. From 1977 to 1987 UNLV never got one letter of inquiry. . . . Jerry Tarkanian has essentially gotten the same treatment everybody else has gotten.”

DANNY SIGHS. HIS VOICE is bitter. “My father was totally consumed by the NCAA fight.”

Jerry is nodding off on the family room couch. Lois is fading fast. Danny is asked about his father’s often-criticized recruitment of players from the inner city, especially from New York, and of Lloyd Daniels in particular. Despite a 50% graduation rate of his players since 1973, on par with the national rate of all college students, Tarkanian has been accused of ignoring his players’ schooling. Jerry stirs. He’s awake--wide awake.

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“Lloyd Daniels was one of the greatest talents I’ve ever been around,” Jerry says. “Recruiting him turned out to be my biggest mistake by far. It totally backfired on us.” Daniels was a 6-foot, 8-inch high school basketball wonder of the early 1980s. He had dropped out of five high schools in three states, was never graduated and, charitably, had the reading skills of a third-grader. Undaunted, Tarkanian signed Daniels and sent him to a community college for a semester in 1986 to qualify as a transfer student to UNLV in 1987. He never made the first practice. Daniels was busted and later convicted of buying crack cocaine from undercover police in Las Vegas. The next day Tarkanian announced Daniels would never play for UNLV, but made no apologies for recruiting him.

No one has had more success recruiting inner-city players, or has been at it longer. In 1968, while coaching at Pasadena City College, Sports Illustrated dubbed Tarkanian the “Pied Piper from Pasadena.” In 1972, Newsweek wrote: “Envious rivals grumble that Tarkanian fields a piebald collection of dropouts, gymnasium gypsies and friendless problem children. . . . To some, Tarkanian’s team recalls the Duke of Wellington’s memorial comment (circa 1809) . . . of a particularly disreputable contingent of British troops--’I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.’ ”

“Tarkanian takes guys any other coach would run out of the gym and makes them into winners,” says Joe McCullough, co-author with Richard Harp of the 1984 biography: “Tarkanian: Countdown of a Rebel.” Harp and McCullough are UNLV English professors. McCullough adds: “Many of these kids do things--play harder for Jerry than for anybody before him, or after.” The secret, McCullough says: “Jerry’s open, accessible, non-judgmental, has a certain humility that is genuine . . . as is his affection for his players. He also has great patience and tolerance. He won’t dismiss a player even his own assistants say is bad news. I think Jerry feels he knew the guy was a potential problem going in, so he’s obligated to stick with him and work it out.”

“He really taught us how to stick together, on and off the court,” says Stacey Augmon, a forward on the 1990-91 team who was picked ninth in the NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks. “He showed us the meaning of loyalty. We’re a family. He stuck with us, even if somebody said something bad or attacked us. I’ll never forget that.”

Augmon, like Greg Anthony and last year’s No. 1 NBA draft choice, Larry Johnson, now with the Charlotte Hornets, wears “2,” the number Tarkanian wore when he played college basketball.

Tarkanian says that players from poor backgrounds “never had anybody they could trust, believe in, or cared about them. If you show him you care, you believe in him, you’ll help him succeed in life, why they’ll play so hard it’s incredible . . . sometimes reach unbelievable heights. That’s why we took a chance on Lloyd Daniels. If it had worked out, Lloyd Daniels would have been one of the greatest success stories of all time.”

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There’s a subplot here, though. Daniels had a patron, a Big Brother kind of guy. He went by “Sam Perry,” affable, generous. A commodities broker, he said, from New York who moved to Las Vegas in 1986. He loved basketball and coached in several New York summer leagues. He liked to help out promising inner-city players. He gave them money, paid bills, guided their careers. “Coach Sam” he was sometimes called.

Perry was instrumental in bringing Daniels to UNLV in 1986, and Moses Scurry, a forward from Brooklyn, in 1988. Scurry and other players went to Sam Perry’s house and occasionally lunched with him on the Las Vegas Strip. Time magazine described one lunch in its April 1, 1989, edition: Two UNLV players “walked through the casino at Caesars Palace and out to the pool to have lunch with a man they knew as Sam Perry. As Perry rose to greet the two, he drew a wad of cash from his pocket and peeled off a bill for each of them. ‘I gave them a hundred bucks, so what?’ ” Perry told Art Ross, a professional coach who was sitting with Perry. “Everybody does it. It keeps them out of trouble.’ ”

When the story broke, the two players insisted Coach Sam gave them $20. The amount became moot. Coach Sam, it turned out, had another nickname: Richie the Fixer. Sam R. Perry was really Richard Mark Perry. His nickname evolved from his conviction in the fixing of New York harness races in 1973 and his guilty plea in 1984 to conspiracy to commit sports bribery in a point-shaving scandal involving basketball players at Boston College. In all, Perry was fined $15,000 and imprisoned for about seven months. Federal witnesses described Perry as a mob bookmaker associated with the Lucchese crime family in New York. One of Perry’s specialties was providing bettors with inside information about teams and players.

At the mention of Richie the Fixer, Danny bleakly shakes his head. Lois sighs. Jerry sits up, drowsiness cured. “We only knew him as Sam Perry,” Jerry rasps. “Perry’s a common name.” Lois starts to talk. Danny stiffens. His face flushes. “That’s not what we’re talking about!” he snaps. “Why don’t you two just go! Take a walk so we can finish!” Jerry and Lois hesitate. “Leave!” Danny orders. Jerry and Lois obey, faces impassive. Lois tiptoes back and promises: “I won’t interrupt--won’t say a word.” She joins the conversation a few minutes later. Danny grumbles and lets her stay.

He points out that the media, UNLV officials--everybody--were aware in 1987 that a “Sam R. Perry” had posted Daniels’ $1,500 bail after his cocaine arrest. Yet Perry’s true identity didn’t surface for two years. Danny asks: “How could my father be expected to know in 1987 what nobody else seemed to know until it came out (in Time) in 1989?”

Tarkanian says Perry--under any moniker--was never associated with his basketball program. After the Time story, Tarkanian says Perry and the players were told to end any contact. Even Perry has said he and the players agreed to “tone down” their relationship. This didn’t mean Perry couldn’t watch them play. As the 1990-91 season unfolded, “Perry sightings” at games became a media event. He was usually spotted in seats controlled by VIPs--or coaches. On one occasion, Perry’s ticket originally belonged to Tarkanian. The explanation: Tarkanian had given four tickets to Danny, who gave them to a donor who also was Perry’s lawyer, and who didn’t mention that one was for Perry.

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Bartering UNLV basketball tickets for good seats is a cottage industry in Las Vegas; their distribution is an ongoing scandal. Tarkanian says his contract includes 140 season tickets. Practically all, Tarkanian says, go to friends, boosters, charities and the like, but he has no control over who actually fills the seat. No matter. Tarkanian had used up his last benefit of the doubt. The end came a few months later. The Las Vegas Review-Journal published a snapshot on May 26, 1991, of three UNLV players in a hot tub drinking beer with Perry. Eleven days later, Tarkanian announced his early retirement. At the end of last month, the federal Organized Crime Strike Force subpoenaed UNLV for any records involving Perry.

JERRY TARKANIAN IS LIVid. The topic is money and his celebrated reluctance to part with it. “I’m not cheap! That’s not true at all! Sure, if I go out with boosters, the boosters buy. But when I go out with coaches, I pay for everything!” Tarkanian pauses. His voice deepens ominously: “Who says I’m cheap?”

“Anybody who knows you,” I reply. “Friends, family . . . but they point out you’re not cheap with your children.” And Tarkanian’s friends emphasize that he always tries to grab the check. They’re just quicker and more determined. “That’s right!” Tarkanian snaps. As for Piero’s, Tarkanian says: “I provide a service . . . autograph pictures . . . shake hands. It helps business.”

Tarkanian says he earns $350,000 to $400,000 a year. His UNLV salary is $208,000--making him the state’s highest-paid official. Another $50,000 comes from television and radio shows and a newspaper column. He gets 10% of any postseason tournament money. He leases a souvenir store at the airport. He does commercials. Taco Bell paid him about $20,000 a few years ago to put 16 of its logos on the lucky towel he chews on during games. “Yeah,” he agrees, “sometimes I do stupid things for money.”

Topping the list is Tarkanian’s involvement with Royal Reservations in the late 1970s. He was listed as a vice president in 1976 with a five-year contract. The company sold tickets to shows in Las Vegas hotels. “They wanted to get a ticket booth at the airport and thought they would have a better chance if I was part of their company,” Tarkanian says. But airport officials decided against a ticket booth. Tarkanian stayed on, but says he “felt funny getting paid for not doing anything.”

Tarkanian says his uneasiness grew when a friend on the Nevada Gaming Commission, among others, warned him to get out because of reports about the president of Royal Reservations, David Bliss. Tarkanian did in December, 1977. The following year, Bliss was accused of bribing a top county official but received immunity for his testimony. Five years later, he was fined $10,000 and placed on five years’ probation for lying to a federal grand jury investigating skimming at mob-influenced casinos.

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In a telephone interview, Bliss said: “I gave Tarkanian $100,000. I gave it to him to come (to Las Vegas). It was a gift for him to come here. I gave it to him over a year’s time.” Asked if the $100,000 was part of Tarkanian’s salary, Bliss replied, “Whatever you want to call it. I gave him $100,000, that’s all I know.”

“He’s full of it,” counters Tarkanian. “He’s a liar. I didn’t even know him until I’d been here four years. I made $2,500 a month for about two years.”

A former business associate of Bliss recalls: “Dave was griping all the time because Tark bugged him for his money every month and wasn’t doing nothing, but Dave was stuck with him.”

Danny and Lois understand Bliss’ anger. “My father does stupid things for small amounts of money,” says Danny. “I think it’s because my father came from a Depression-era family.”

Jerry Tarkanian was born Aug. 8, 1930, in Euclid, Ohio, the second of three children. He has an older sister and younger brother. His parents were Armenian refugees from the Turkish pogroms of the early 1900s. They ran a neighborhood grocery store, and lived above it with another family. At night, Tarkanian says, his father worked in a foundry. He died of pneumonia when Jerry was 11. His mother remarried when he was 13, and the family moved to Pasadena. Tarkanian discovered basketball. His friends were athletes. “We had a closeness in Pasadena that was unbelievable,” Tarkanian says.

An older boy, Victor J. Weiss (pronounced Weese), would become “my dearest friend,” he says. Both went to Pasadena City College and then separated. Tarkanian went on to play guard on the Fresno State basketball team, married Lois Huter in 1956, and began coaching. Weiss became an entrepreneur. He operated car dealerships, owned a stable of boxers, was seen with the late Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom. Weiss drove a burgundy and white Rolls-Royce, wore a diamond pinky ring and was known as a big spender. Weiss said in 1979 that when he and Tarkanian “were at Pasadena City College we were considered two of the most unlikely to succeed. Now I’m a millionaire and he’s the winningest.”

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At that time, Weiss was representing Tarkanian in secret negotiations to coach the Los Angeles Lakers for Jerry Buss, who was buying the team from Jack Kent Cooke. Weiss met with Buss and Cooke at the Beverly Comstock Hotel in June, 1979, to draft a contract. Weiss put the contract in his briefcase and left to call Tarkanian. The call was never made.

Weiss was found dead in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce two days later. He had been shot twice in the back of the head. He still wore his diamond ring and gold watch. Only the briefcase and perhaps some cash were missing. The media quickly learned of the Laker deal. Tarkanian says his friends and supporters in Las Vegas asked him to stay. “It was a matter of loyalty.”

Though Weiss’ murder is still unsolved, its motive soon became apparent. “He wasn’t a millionaire and didn’t own a car agency,” says Detective Leroy Orozco of the Los Angeles Police Department. “Even the Rolls wasn’t his. It was leased. Weiss was a gofer for the car agency. He owed a lot of money to the mob in Vegas--between $60,000 and $80,000. They used him to launder money--a bagman between here and Vegas. We have information he helped himself and they killed him.”

Tarkanian recalls his shock: “We thought Vic was a highly successful businessman. That’s why I wanted him to represent me. He was a close and loyal friend and nothing can change that.”

THANKSGIVING AFTERnoon, Piero’s is packed. The clientele are underprivileged children. Proprietor Glusman buys everybody’s meal this day, as he did last Thanksgiving. Tarkanian arrives after morning practice to autograph pictures, shake hands. He hurries into the kitchen. Piero’s is cooking a turkey for him to bring home. Tarkanian prowls the kitchen, sampling the food.

Local politicians and boosters serve the children. A judge tends bar. The mood is upbeat, but just barely. These are Tarkanian people, and the feud between their coach and Maxson has turned ugly. “I think back over the 13 years I’ve been here and I can’t remember anything this nasty, this vicious,” says Jeff German, an investigative reporter and columnist for the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

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Tarkanian reigned supreme when Maxson--short and trim, with chipmunk energy--was hired in 1984 from the University of Houston to change UNLV’s national image from sharks, rebels and sin city to that of a campus with actual books and teachers. Basketball, Maxson states, was “peripheral” to academics. The Tarkanians grew uneasy. “I told Jerry,” his wife recalls, “to be careful with Maxson. I didn’t trust the man. I think he prefers you wouldn’t be here. He wants to have his own coach. But you know Jerry. Trusting, non-judgmental . . . Tark the Tuna.”

When the 1980s ended, UNLV had 225 new professors and seven new buildings and had increased its attendance from 10,000 to about 20,000 students. Proclaims Maxson: “I’m just as focused on academics as Coach Tarkanian is on basketball.”

“It became a battle of egos,” says Glusman, who has publicly accused Maxson of conspiring to destroy Tarkanian, a charge Maxson calls “ridiculous and insulting.” Glusman also has accused the university of involvement in leaking the photograph of the three players in the hot tub with Richie the Fixer. Glusman offered a $10,000 “reward” to anyone who could identify the photo source. He raised it to $30,000 last month.

Even after Tarkanian announced his resignation, Glusman and other supporters claim the “Get Tark” crusade continued. Once in September and twice in October, a university attorney, Brad Booke, ordered campus police to scale the gym rafters with a video camera and crawl behind a duct overlooking the basketball court to try and catch Tarkanian’s staff conducting an illegal practice. Two officers were needed each time because of the high-wire danger involved. Their effort begged the question: Just how serious is an illegal practice? So serious that UNLV proposed to dock the team one regular practice. Outrage was the public reaction to the secret taping.

Maxson fervently denies prior knowledge of the videotaping. “I did not know,” Maxson states, pacing the floor during an interview.

“Can you look me in the eye and say that,” I ask, trying not to sound serious.

Maxson freezes, whirls, leans across the table, knuckles white, voice deepening with each word: “I DID NOT KNOW!”

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Booke publicly apologized for secretly taping the coach. Tarkanian held forth: “The tapes won’t show anything . . . just a conditioning class.”

Two days before Thanksgiving, the university Board of Regents had released one of the tapes. It could not have come at a worse time. In less than 48 hours, Tarkanian will coach his final home opener. The tape furor is an added pressure and distraction Tarkanian’s untested team can ill afford. The opponent is Louisiana State University with 7-1 Shaquille O’Neal, considered the dominant center in college basketball. Mob bookies have picked LSU to win by eight points.

Tarkanian is reminded of the above while he nibbles turkey in Piero’s kitchen. Surely, it is suggested, winning Saturday would be particularly sweet. Tarkanian answers with finality: “Every game is important. I never ask my players to win--just to do their best every game.” Case closed.

The game is a near sellout, 17,436. The stands are awash in scarlet and gray. A computerized cartoon shark swims across the message boards. A stuffed 16-foot great white shark hangs from the ceiling. Spotlights crisscross the arena with shark silhouettes. A huge banner hangs from the upper tier: WELCOME TO TARK’S SHARK TANK.

LSU’s starting five are introduced. The arena goes dark. The loudspeaker booms: “NOW, YOUrrrr RRRunnin’ RRREBELS!!” Spotlights sweep the court as cheerleaders dance to the UNLV fight song. Fireworks burst overhead in sync with the letters: U-N-L-V. UNLV’s starting five are introduced under a single spotlight. The announcer pauses dramatically: “And now, the winningest coach in the history of college basketball . . . JERRRRY TARKANIAN!!” The shark himself is in the spotlight, hands in his pockets, humbly staring at the floor as the standing ovation continues for several seconds.

The first half ends with the Rebels leading 33-27. Tarkanian chews his good-luck towel only once. The second half is a blowout. UNLV wins 76-55. Tarkanian opens his postgame press conference with: “In my wildest dreams I didn’t expect this.”

Later, at a boosters’ dinner, Tarkanian stands to give his usual five-minute pep talk. He speaks for nearly 30 minutes. “My hands never get sweaty before a game,” he says. “Never. But my hands were sweaty tonight.” He’s hugging his cellular. It rings. The boosters laugh. Tarkanian grins sheepishly and quips: “That was Maxson calling to see if maybe I drowned coming over here.” The boosters titter nervously. Lois shakes her head to caution Jerry. “I’m tired of not talking about it!” he rasps angrily.

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He accuses Maxson of trying to “destroy” the basketball program and demoralize the players. “Even those kids were made to look like bad guys.” His voice softens: “You know what Dale Brown (the LSU coach) told me as the game ended? He’s never seen a team play so intensely in an opener. Our kids just weren’t going to lose.” He pauses. “There’s no deeper sense of loyalty from us to them, and them to us.”

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