By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

It was altogether fitting that the press conference to announce Fresno State's self-imposed basketball sanctions was held not much more than a 3-point shot away from the new arena that rises on the Bulldogs' campus.

For the two sites are inextricably linked by the scandal that will keep the 20-6 Bulldogs out of at least this month's Western Athletic Conference Tournament and the NCAA or National Invitation Tournament bids they might have otherwise qualified for.

It was the win-at-all-costs push to build the arena that brought aging Jerry Tarkanian — and the miscreants who followed — back to his alma mater. The administration wanted a new, state-of-the-art arena, the citizenry wanted Tarkanian and the school sold its soul to make the marriage in 1995. Then, it closed its eyes and ears to the goings-on until the outcry could no longer be ignored.

Gary Cunningham, the athletic director the administration forced to hire Tarkanian, didn't need a crystal ball to see what was coming, and bolted months before the first basketball game.

Indeed, anybody who knew anything about the trouble that has seemed to dog Tarkanian wherever he has gone, understood from the beginning it would be a race to see which would materialize first: NCAA sanctions or new arena.

It looks like the sanctions will win, but only by a matter of months. The NCAA Committee on Infractions is scheduled to hand down penalties in the next two months for a laundry list of violations — academic fraud, payoffs by agents, extra benefits, etc. — that took place during the Tarkanian era. Tarkanian has not been directly implicated and has denied knowledge of the violations.

Fresno State's self-imposed penalties are a desperate attempt to soften the severity of the blow the NCAA is preparing to level. The thought is that by the Bulldogs slapping their own wrist — a loss of scholarships and a one-year post-season ban — the NCAA might not take away even more scholarships or post-seasons.

Of course, if justice were to be served, it would be the Fresno administration, from president John D. Welty on down, that would bear the brunt of the sanctions for what the NCAA likes to call a "lack of institutional control" — not this year's Bulldog players and coaches.

Welty brought in Tarkanian and it was his administration's years of only occasionally disturbed somnolence that allowed things to get out of hand.

Too bad the WAC and NCAA can't sentence them to a stay in the pillory in front of the new arena when it opens in November.