Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which wonders how we got here. People are holding a clock, or a calendar, against the … athletic director? I get the need to wring hands about how long a football or basketball coach will stay. I even get the need to act similarly about the A.D., but I thought I was weird and once again interested in things that may only interest me.
Not so. And so I ask, “When, or how, did this happen? Here?”
How is it that as soon as Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby agrees to become the new commissioner of the Big 12 Conference that his WVU counterpart Oliver Luck, whose name was connected to the Big 12’s top spot, is thought to be a candidate to replace Bowlsby? No, seriously, not just in crazy corners for conversations like ours, but even on the left side of the country where one finds and covers the Cardinal.
Really, would you have considered this 15 or 10 or even five years ago? It’s one thing for Don Nehlen to be coveted by South Carolina and Rich Rodriguez by Alabama, for John Beilein to eyeball Indiana and North Carolina State and for Michigan to want Beilein. It’s wholly understandable to wonder and worry about those men, even annually.
But is it not odd that you fret, or you expect others to fret, about an athletic director staying on the job?
I say yes, and not just because who sat in the chair previously. But this is the nature of the job now and I suppose everyone better get used to A.D. hirings as a niche. The job has become a news-maker and a headline-writer. They hire and fire coaches, they leave and join conferences, they speak on issues and on national platforms, so on and so forth. They need to have juice and move the needle and basically be to the athletic department what the president or chancellor is to the university. They’re separate entities and college sports are now enterprises, money-making ventures that fund other parts of the athletic department and do wonders to benefit the school.
It’s a CEO, CFO and/or COO position now and you need someone who is as much an executive as an ex-jock or ex-coach.
Luck’s been here for not quite two years, but, man, he’s handled a bunch already and in a public, transparent and mostly impressive manner. For that alone — for the conference maneuvering and the personnel decisions and the ways to find revenue for a self-sustaining athletic department — you’re bound to hear his name. A.D. has become a publicized position now and the way the media works almost insists we speculate about who goes where next. Who knows, this could become a regular thing.
And let’s be honest with one another: Luck’s name is going to get some traction with Stanford. His son was a decent football player there. One daughter plays volleyball in Palo Alto and another will be a freshman there in the fall. That place, obviously, means something to the Lucks. And he’s at least recognizable over there while possessing a pedigree that fits with the Stanford pedigree — education and legal background, corporate experience, etc. Luck also knows the Pac-12 commissioner, Larry Scott, and they can match notes on running professional sports leagues/teams.
This is not to say it’s going to happen. Stanford is Stanford. It’s (arguably?) the best athletic department in the land. You put together the top five A.D. jobs in America and Stanford ought to be on that list. Certainly Luck would be anywhere from flattered to excited — you say “He’s an alum!” and I say “It’s Stanford.” — but just as certain, Stanford could quite simply have a pick of candidates. And, again, Luck has been doing this for 23 months.
No one knows where this is headed. Not yet, at least. I cringe when I see Luck’s “non-denial denial” critiqued because it’s just so soon. I talked to Luck yesterday and he wasn’t even sure Bowlsby was the guy for the Big 12 — and do with that what you will: Luck is so plugged in at Stanford, so friendly with the Cardinal higher-ups, that he didn’t know the A.D. there was set to run his school’s new conference.
Still, I wonder if he even had time, somewhere between Phoenix and Wheeling and Parkersburg, to put 2 and 2 together and then craft the appropriate response to premature inquiries. Sometimes “No comment” is boring, but it’s meant to say just that.
And the follow up? When I told him that some people might interpret his remark to mean that he’s interested or at least not dismissing the idea out of hand, he said, “Yes, I know, but that’s all I want to say.” Provocative, perhaps, but pretty simple, I say. I really don’t think you’re going to pull Luck off his track. Some people say what they think. Luck thinks what he says. Let’s give it time before we fire up the polygraph.
My hunch is he’s just rolled up his sleeves here. Say what you will about what he’s already accomplished, but getting WVU into the Big 12, getting the football program back on the right track, doing the things he’s done thus far put together just a part of the puzzle. His athletic department is in a tricky financial situation right now with all the money due to different parties, and there’s so much more work to be done to ensure success in the Big 12 and in football and to see through things he’s started or is set to start. I have questions about whether he wants to leave that all unsettled. It’d would put the Mountaineers in a really difficult spot and craft a very different legacy.
I leave you with this: As far back as February, Luck was pressed on his interest in the Big 12 job and he replied, almost uniformly, “I’m very happy with what I’m doing. We have lots to do here yet.”
Now I just wonder when WVU, or any school, starts to put buyouts in the A.D. contract.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice …
NostroMackus:
I envision a difficult 2012 for the football Mountaineers. They will lose to Marshall and never get another chance for redemption. The bus will break down on the way back from Washington, D.C. The offensive staff will be blinded by Maryland’s uniforms and unable to effectively function. They will be the first team to lose 11 games in a single Big 12 season. And they will once again fail to beat Syracuse.
Continuity!
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