Kohn Smith, Utah State's head basketball coach, isn't feeling particularly smug these days, but maybe he should be. With all the dirt on the University of Nevada-Las Vegas basketball program appearing daily in newspapers
across America, Smith looks like Jeanne Dixon. He called it a long time ago.Or had you forgotten? Few remember that three years ago Smith had the guts to say that something was wrong with the UNLV program. For that, he was reprimanded, castigated and eventually punched.
But, if anything, Smith has been vindicated by the events of the past few months.
"I haven't paid much attention to it," says Smith. "But as I look back on it, the same (Las Vegas) writers that vilified me are now writing what I said then. At the time they were saying, `How can you say that?' Now they're writing almost exactly what I was saying."
Just don't expect Smith to say it again. "I'm a pretty cautious guy nowadays," he says.
He wasn't three years ago.
It was 1989 and Smith was a rookie head coach at Utah State, making his first tour of the Big West Conference. His first trip to Las Vegas turned into a 22-point loss. Afterward, Smith and his players were standing in the tunnel of the Thomas & Mack Arena when the UNLV players began filing past them.
"That's what got me, all those guys getting in their fancy cars, dressed like a million dollars, and we're waiting for a cab," he recalls. "On top of that they taunted our guys. Look what we've got. That made me angry."
A few days later, 48 hours before a rematch with UNLV in Logan, Smith teed off on the Rebels. Referring to UNLV's blowout loss to Louisville the previous day, he told reporters, "I think it's always good that (they lose). I'm not real big on their whole operation."
Just hours before the start of the rematch, reporters asked Smith to elaborate. He never hesitated. "Let's get them (the Rebels) on a polygraph test," he said. "Let's go through their academic background, their class attendance, their grades, where they've been, what they're doing now. We can look at their summer jobs compared to ours. We can get out the tax statement, if you want. Let's see what kind of cars they're driving; let's see how they were recruited, if anything was given to them illegal."
After the game - a tense 26-point Aggie loss - Smith and UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian had words as they walked off the court. "I wanted to be your friend," said Tarkanian.
"Yeah, sure you did," replied Smith.
"I did," said Tark, "but I don't anymore. No more! No more!"
Imagine the audacity of Smith taking on UNLV and Tarkanian. No one outside the NCAA had done such a thing, even though the university and its coach have long carried an outlaw image. Now here was this rookie coach - this upstart newcomer - challenging the league kingpin. Tarkanian of course was indignant.
"His comments are so ridiculous . . . I don't know who he thinks he is," he said.
But if anyone thought Smith would backpedal after the game, in the face of rising controversy, he was wrong. Smith continued his attack: "Do we have one set of rules for UNLV and one set for everybody else?" he asked reporters. Referring to the fancy clothes and automobiles, he asked, "Where do kids from their backgrounds get the money to pay for these things?"
In the days that followed, the Big West Conference publicly reprimanded Smith, but privately every coach in the league except one told Smith that he was right. They just didn't want to say so publicly.
"The university got on me, but they had to," says Smith. "They also said `We know you're right; you just probably shouldn't say that."'
Smith apologized, but only for going public; he never retracted his statements. "I just said exactly what I saw," says Smith. "If I regretted anything, it was from the standpoint of the school and the players, who took the brunt of it when it should have been all me."
The following year, the USU-UNLV game in Las Vegas was followed by a full-scale brawl, during which one UNLV player struck Smith. There was never any doubt what precipitated the fight.
Smith eventually apologized to Tarkanian himself. "I said I shouldn't have said those things publicly, and I shouldn't have really," says Smith. "Those things are taken care of by the league and by athletic directors - or they should be."
But of course that hasn't been the case until lately. In the meantime, the UNLV problem has continued to bother Smith.
"I think all of us (league coaches) suspected things," he says. "You heard a million things."
Asked to be more specific, Smith says, "I really can't talk about it."
He is, after all, a pretty cautious guy nowadays.