Originally Posted by
StrayDawg
I have lived in Las Vegas for almost 15 years, and this coaching hire has easily been the biggest clown show I have seen during that time. Even worse than the idiot politicians. The AD might be fired soon, and if she isn't, then her contract will not be renewed when it expires in December. She extended the contract of a football coach (Bobby Hauck) only to fire him the next season and leave the school on the hook for his buyout. She extended Dave Rice as basketball coach last year, only to cave in to pressure from two or three boosters and fire him halfway through this season. Another buyout. Stacey Augmon was an asst. coach and everyone wanted him to be the interim coach after Rice was fired, but she opted for another assistant who only had two years of head coaching experience at the high school level because that coach was close friends with a big booster.
The rumors have been swirling that Rick Pitino would be fired at Louisville, and UNLV put together a package that would pay him $4 million/year, but he is staying at Louisville. So, when they began their "coaching search" to replace Rice, they contacted Mick Cronin at Cincinnati. They offered him a package that would have paid him $3 million/year, but he turned it down and stayed at Cincinnati. They then interviewed two other candidates before hiring Beard. Finally someone noticed that every coach they interviewed uses the same agent as the UNLV AD (Tina Kunzer-Murphy). She essentially used her agent as a search firm. And, her agent used it to his advantage by using the UNLV interviews as leverage to get raises for his clients at their schools. The result was that UNLV didn't get the guys they targeted, and they looked really bad getting turned down so many times. Several prominent coaches were interested in the job, but none of them were interviewed.
The Nevada Board of Regents changed their rules this year, saying that any university contract over a certain amount of money (I can't remember the exact amount right now) must be approved by the regents before the contract is signed. When UNLV agreed to terms with Beard, his contract was going to average $1 million/year, so the regents had to approve it at their next hearing, which wasn't held until two weeks later. That prevented Beard from recruiting or hiring assistants during that time because he was not officially the coach. Signing day was this past Wednesday. The UNLV president broke protocol by signing Beard to the contract before it had been approved by the Regents, which pissed them off. So, when the regents finally had their meeting, they were mad at the president, but instead of chastising him, they had what basically amounted to a two hour trial for Chris Beard, and Beard was sitting there getting grilled by these idiots. One regent told him he was lucky to get the job, another told him that he didn't deserve the money. Just a bunch of grandstanding by a few bozos hoping to run for office one day. At the end of the hearing, they held a vote on Beard's contract and it was only approved by a vote of 9-4. I have never heard of an incoming coach, who had done nothing wrong, being treated that way so publicly, so I wasn't surprised when he bolted a few days later.
Marvin Menzies (New Mexico State) was the other finalist for the job when they hired Beard, so they moved pretty quickly to hire him after Beard left, and nobody is excited about the Menzies hire. George Karl was fired by the Sacramento Kings, and he wanted the UNLV job, and wanted a salary of $2 million, but they refused to pay it. So, they were going to pay $4M for Pitino and $3M for Cronin, but they wouldn't pay $2M for Karl. As his assistants, Karl was going to hire Augmon, John Welch (a former Tarkanian assistant at UNLV and Fresno, and has been on Karl's staff ever since), and he was somehow going to involve Tim Grgurich, Tark's right hand man during the glory days. He was basically going to put the band back together and I think he could have done really well. But, that would have made too much sense, so they hired Menzies instead and claimed that it was because they didn't have time to go back to the boosters and raise the $2M for Karl's salary.
In the meantime, several players have declared for the NBA draft, or asked to be released so they can transfer to another school. The recruits who were committed are now in limbo, and a few of them will likely go wherever former assistant coach Ryan Miller goes. So, for several weeks, they have had no coach, no recruits, and only about 5 players on the team for next season.
The whole process has made the president, AD and Board of Regents look like a bunch of absolute fools. They deserve every bit of it.
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