From that article:
“It was our last game, and I wanted to win it,” Augmon said last week. “Looking back now as a grown man, if you ask me where I think the program would be after 25 years, I thought we would be at a better place at this point.”
A series of blunders, including bad hires and rules violations, led to the decline of one of the game’s most exciting programs. Playing for Jerry Tarkanian was as much a mission as it was a college basketball experience.
The university may be on the verge of making yet another program-stunting blunder. On Jan. 10, Athletic Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy and the university’s president, Len Jessup, fired Coach David Rice 17 games into the season. Then, in a move bizarre even by U.N.L.V. standards, the administration skipped over Augmon and named the third-year associate coach Todd Simon the interim head coach.
The decision to pass over Augmon comes when many black coaches are complaining about their shrinking numbers even as the dependency on young black recruits escalates. Is it really a good look for U.N.L.V. to marginalize a candidate with credentials as impressive as Augmon’s?
Kunzer-Murphy said that as a woman, she was sensitive to the perception of a qualified minority candidate being overlooked.
“It was not an overnight decision,” she said. “It was done respectfully, and there was a reason.”
At the time, Kunzer-Murphy said Simon had “intangibles” that led to his being named the interim coach.
Intangibles?
Years ago, the Dodgers executive Al Campanis used the word “necessities” to describe what he thought black candidates lacked as they pursued managerial jobs in baseball.
