Always-Optimistic Robinson Rolling the Dice With a Woeful UNLV Program

LAS VEGAS — News flash: Charismatic, past-his-prime, snack-loving celebrity with sideburns chooses desert oasis to revive career.

Hey, it worked for Elvis, why not John Robinson?

Viva Las Rebels.

At first, the Dec. 3 announcement that Robinson had accepted the football coaching position at the University of Nevada Las Vegas struck many as absurd.

But the more you chewed on it, as Robinson had, the more you realized:

No, wait, this was perfect.

Where else but Vegas?

“Robinson returns to coach Notre Dame” had no chance of happening.

“Texas El Paso names Robinson coach” would have been panhandle pathetic.

But “Robinson takes Strip by storm” . . . now, there’s a roll-of-the-dice risk befitting a man and a town.

Vegas as metaphor can be tragi-comic, and Robinson’s sojourn may end up another snuffed-out cliche on the highway of jilted dreams.

But should he turn this moribund program around in three years, the projected timetable, Robinson’s Las Vegas arena entrances and exits might be trumpeted to a real-time score of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Again . . . it worked for Elvis.

“If someone sent you out and said, ‘Pick five schools that could go from nowhere to somewhere,’ this would be one of those places,” Robinson says in his second-story office at the Lied Athletic Complex.

Nowhere to somewhere, rags to riches, boom or bust--pick your favorite Las Vegas mantra.

UNLV finished 0-11 in 1998, has lost 16 consecutive games and has not won a road game since 1994. The school has two measly conference titles in 31 years.

If ever a program needed a face lift and a tummy tuck, this was the place.

And if it’s true that most comebacks are calculated, there are certainly strong undercurrents in Robinson’s stream. You need something to come back from, after all, and Robinson had been dragged through Rams Park and Heritage hell.

In two stints at USC he went 104-35-4, shared a national title in 1978 and was 4-0 in the Rose Bowl before being ousted in 1997 by Athletic Director Mike Garrett after going 12-11 his last two seasons.

He returns as the sixth-winningest coach in college football among those still active.

Robinson is also the winningest coach in Rams’ history, but he was finished in 1991 after finishing 8-24.

If you’re keeping score, that’s two pink slips at his last two stops.

“I don’t know many coaches that stay a long time where it ends very well,” Robinson explains. “It’s part of the business.”

Robinson, who turned 64 on July 25, refuses to be drawn into the psychology of his return.

“I’m a guy who likes to coach,” he says.

He does admit he came back for the money.

“Damn right, like every other guy in the world,” says Robinson, who, unlike every other guy, signed a three-year contract worth $350,000 per season. “I need to work. My copper mine in Africa didn’t come through. We could have retired, but I would have been counting pennies to retire at this age. My wife [Linda] is 50, she’s going to live a long time.”

Robinson also denies, as some speculated, that he lost his desire to coach at USC.

“I have probably through my career been more involved on the practice field than most head coaches,” he says. “Most of the people who said those things never went to practice. But hey, that’s part of losing. If you don’t win, or don’t do as well as somebody said you should, those are the criticisms.”

For what it’s worth, longtime observers say Robinson has never been more animated at practice.

Jason Thomas, the prized quarterback recruit who transferred from USC to UNLV, has a theory about his coach’s newfound enthusiasm.

“At 0-11, you can’t coach like you’re 10-1,” Thomas says.

Don’t try to get into Robinson’s head about any of this.

That he chose to coach again at a school only a five-hour drive from USC’s doorstop is intriguing to us, insignificant to him, he says.

Never mind that Robinson is recruiting head to head against USC in the fertile Los Angeles talent basin; that he beat out USC and Oregon State for receiver Nate Turner, or that he is asking Thomas, Robinson’s last great USC recruit, to be the cornerstone of this turnaround.

Robinson refuses to play, at least in the public arena, the redemption game against Garrett, who fired him via message machine, or so the story goes, prompting a Robinson end run in which he called his own news conference and won public sympathy.

Robinson says Garrett served as no motivation for his return. Robinson says he has not spoken to Garrett or USC President Steven Sample since his departure.

“It’s not an interest of mine,” Robinson says. “It’s not part of my life. I move on. They move on. The memories of the guy before usually last three days and seven hours. Everybody moves on.”

No axes to grind, no points to prove, no ulterior motives?

“You’re talking paranoia now,” Robinson says.

Turning UNLV into a winner would be a thrill, he says, but there would be no private toasts to bygone villains.

“There’d be great joy,” Robinson says. “I’d say, ‘We did it!’ I’d hug all the players. It would be fun to get a call from Marcus Allen and him saying, ‘Coach, I saw the game, nice going.’ That’s what the joy is.”

Robinson hates even more talk of his legacy, questions that a failed final stint at UNLV would distance him further from those 1970s USC salad days.

Robinson: “People who dwell on the past, be it real good, good or great, somehow become unhappy--’I should have got more credit, the statue wasn’t big enough at City Hall.’

“I’ve got good friends I see, with parallel careers, and I’ll say, ‘You had some of the best times, how can you say you got screwed?’ I never could understand that. It was never part of my life. So doing this has nothing to do with anything else I’ve done.”

Others, though, have staked their careers on writing a happy ending for Robinson.

“His legacy is on the line,” Thomas says.

Jeff McInerney, one of the USC assistants fired in the Robinson purge, is Robinson’s defensive coordinator at UNLV.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” he says. “When we got fired at SC, it was a hard thing for the man. It was a bad, vindictive firing. Mike Garrett set it up. It was a rotten thing. On purpose. A called shot.”

McInerney is working overtime to make sure Robinson’s reputation is restored.

“Why do you think I’m recruiting my [behind] off?” he said.

Leaving Los Angeles

The Robinson-UNLV marriage was typical Vegas: a quickie, drive-through job.

After the school fired Jeff Horton following an 0-11 season, Las Vegas Sun sportswriter Steve Guiremand assembled a list of possible candidates.

Guiremand, formerly a Los Angeles-based writer who covered Robinson at USC, asked UNLV Athletic Director Charles Cavagnaro if he was considering the former USC coach. Cavagnaro didn’t think Robinson would be interested.

Guiremand called Robinson. He was interested. Guiremand wrote a column, Cavagnaro saw it, and Robinson was hired.

The new coach liked the setup from the start.

While the place appeared a dead end from a distance, Robinson saw unlimited potential.

“They’ve just had a woeful experience and wanted to change it,” Robinson says.

The program had nowhere to go but up, and if he failed, Robinson figured, well, who hadn’t?

He knew he could get recruits to visit--”You got a school there too?”--and admissions standards are less stringent than those he faced at USC.

The city suits Robinson’s tastes--bright lights, great restaurants--and was the ideal setting for his brand of football populism, so much so that Robinson and wife Linda sold their Laguna Niguel house and purchased a home here.

Robinson wants to rekindle the excitement former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian brought the city--less the NCAA inquiries. Robinson has strained his vocal cords on the rubber chicken circuit, regaling Rotarians with yarns of yore, and is raising money almost as fast as George W. Bush.

“I’m marketing director and fund-raiser,” Robinson jokes. “I’m doing a lot of things.”

Recruiting among them.

Tom Lemming, the respected recruiting analyst, ranked Robinson’s first class No. 1 in the first-year Mountain West Conference.

It won’t help much this year. UNLV was picked to finish last in both the coaches’ and writers’ poll at the recent MWC media day. Not a single Rebel player was named on the 25-man preseason all-conference team.

Horton left Robinson with a lounge act.

“If we get anybody hurt, there aren’t many solutions,” Robinson says.

If You Build It . . .

Hey, maybe they will come.

Thomas, from Compton Dominguez High and considered one of the top L.A. prospects in a decade, is the kingpin, although he has to sit out this season after transferring from USC.

Thomas says it’s only a matter of time before UNLV stops the laugh track on its program.

“The guys he’s bringing in now are going to raise some eyebrows,” Thomas says of Robinson. “This is Vegas, it’s not like the backwoods. This town could take off. Once it’s rolling, the sky’s the limit.”

Among Robinson’s recruiting plums is tailback Jeremi Rudolph, a transfer from Southwest Mississippi Community College. At Apopka High in 1995, Rudolph finished second to Daunte Culpepper in Florida’s “Mr. Football” voting. Peter Warrick, the Florida State All-America receiver, finished third.

Rudolph was set to attend Florida State but did not qualify academically.

What attracted Rudolph to UNLV?

He ticked off the list of backs Robinson has coached.

“Eric Dickerson’s in the Hall of Fame,” Rudolph says. “Marcus Allen, he’s going to be there. He’s coached two Heisman winners. If I can’t learn from him, I can’t learn from anybody.”

Although Robinson signed a three-year contract, he says he’s preparing for a five-year run. He hopes to have the corner turned by 2001, Thomas’ second season at quarterback.

This year, though, figures to be drier than dirt.

“Yeah, we’re scared,” Robinson admits. “But I was scared when I went to SC, went to the Rams. That’s part of the game. But that fear is the intriguing part of trying to do it.”

Robinson says his health is good, save a sore right knee that recently required minor surgery.

“The biggest thing age is to me is, my right knee is sore,” he says, holding an ice pack on the knee.

Robinson has the town in a tizzy, no doubt, and he’s making promises again. The streets are adorned with billboards proclaiming, “It’s a New Game.”

Of course, Robinson’s “Return to Glory” optimism ultimately backfired on him the second time around at USC.

But this is a different town, a new deck of cards.

Here, win six games and you’re king of the casino.

Still, questions remain that not even Robinson can answer.

How long will it take? And how long can he take it?

“I’m out preaching like an evangelist right now,” Robinson says. “It’s not so much what the people’s reaction is, it’s, ‘Am I willing to keep going?’ Because if I do, we will win. We will become what I say we will, if we persevere.

“I am convinced of that.”