This column originally appeared in College Football News on September 30, 2010. It's worth revisiting now that Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith has quite convincingly added himself to the list below:
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Athletic Directors – The Bad Eggs
Third in a Four Part Series Exploring the Role of Athletic Directors in College Sports
As established in a companion piece during this series, the larger realm of the athletic director is cloaked in shades of gray. ADs often have to play hardball and act in a cutthroat way to improve the financial bottom line at their schools, moral standing aside. However, while the large majority of ADs are caught in a difficult in-between spot, a few members of this group stand out as nakedly nasty or noticeably noble. Let’s take a closer look.
The theme that repeatedly emerges in college sports – just as it does in American society at large – is that bad behavior is too often rewarded, while good behavior isn’t encouraged enough. This is true in the world of the Division I-A athletic director. In some cases, though, it’s not so much the fault of the AD, as it is the fault of the university hierarchy that employs suspect individuals unworthy of this important position.
Under this immediate banner falls Rice University. This is a prestigious and acclaimed academic institution where one would like to think that values matter; however, the Owls tabbed Rick Greenspan as their AD this past March. Who is Mr. Greenspan? Why, he’s the guy who tabbed Kelvin Sampson as Mike Davis’s replacement as the Indiana men’s basketball coach while serving as the AD in Bloomington. Hiring a basketball coach is the most important thing an Indiana athletic director can do, and not only did Greenspan whiff with Sampson, he then exhibited a manifest lack of vigilance in policing his ethically-challenged coach. Greenspan failed profoundly in his most important tasks, as a selector and as an overseer. This is a man who – at the very least – should be out of the athletic directing game for a few years, but instead, he gets an immediate re-entry into a position of power at Rice. Some honchos at a lauded academic powerhouse in Houston should be ashamed of themselves for rewarding bad behavior, just like CNN hiring Eliot Spitzer (or any of a million other instances we see in American culture, journalism, infotainment, and entertainment).
The above example, one must repeat, involves a poor administrative decision that put a shamed athletic director back in power. Moving forward, here are examples of athletic directors – other than Mike Garrett and Damon Evans (who have been written about at great length) – who might have seemed like decent hires at the outset but have proven themselves to be inadequate on the job at their respective schools.
Gerald Myers of Texas Tech deserves to be on a Bottom 10 list of FBS athletic directors. He hired Bob Knight, and presided over a very messy divorce from Mike Leach, which highlighted an athletic department that’s high on vindictiveness and low on oversight. It’s impossible to look at Myers’ body of work and claim that the Tech program is advancing either on-field or off-field. Not hiring Ruffin McNeill as the new head football coach represented a missed opportunity to maintain some semblance of continuity within the football program while winning over a fractured roster of rightfully shaken players following the feud between Leach and the family of Craig James.
Pete Boone of Ole Miss hasn’t covered himself in dust and glory in Oxford. He tossed out David Cutcliffe, and we’ve all seen how well that move worked. Ed Orgeron was an embarrassment, and Houston Nutt – though a good coach – made a hash out of a very talented team last season and then soiled what was left of his good name by grabbing Jeremiah Masoli in a moment of dire need. On the basketball side, coach Andy Kennedy got himself immersed in a nasty run-in with a cabbie, considerably damaging his own reputation. One more outburst or ugly incident involving Kennedy will seriously damage the Rebel basketball program. Perhaps things will improve on the gridiron and the hardwood in the coming years and lend needed stability to Ole Miss sports, but it’s not a certainty. By any reasonable measure, Boone has absorbed a lot of punches in recent years, and rightly so.
Mike Hamilton of Tennessee doesn’t offer a very attractive record in Knoxville. He moved aggressively to cut short Phil Fulmer’s legendary career in favor of America’s most uncredentialed, shameless and accusatory coach, Lane Kiffin. As a reward for Hamilton’s misplaced confidence, Kiffin – after getting the NCAA on Tennessee’s tail – sped out of town when Pete Carroll bolted USC for the NFL. The police blotter has remained active in both the UT football and hoops programs, and Hamilton has been forced to play defense throughout his tenure. Derek Dooley as an emergency replacement for Kiffin does not inspire confidence, despite double-D’s clean living and solid recruiting. Kiffin has already done quite a lot of damage to the program… and to Hamilton’s reputation. Moreover, all those unpleasant episodes preceded the bailout from a commitment to play neighboring North Carolina in football. And oh, how about Bruce Pearl and that basketball program, Mr. Hamilton?
Steve Pederson of Pittsburgh should be on this list. Actually, there’s nothing wrong with Pederson’s tenure at Pittsburgh, but shame on the University of Pittsburgh for hiring the man who axed Frank Solich and conducted himself with an utter lack of dignity at Nebraska. Yes, we’re still tracking you and remembering you, Mr. Pederson. You’ll never be able to escape that disgrace in Lincoln.
Robert Giannini of Southern Mississippi hasn’t pushed the right buttons in Hattiesburg. It’s okay that he hired Larry Eustachy a few years after the drink-loving basketball coach embarrassed himself at Iowa State. Eustachy paid his price and is rehabilitating his career in Conference USA, and that’s alright. It’s football that gave Giannini’s stature a black eye, when he fired Jeff Bower following the veteran football coach’s 14th consecutive winning season. What does Giannini think his program is supposed to do? Make BCS bowls? That was one of the worst coach firings of the past 15 years, and it’s on Giannini’s head.
Paul Krebs at New Mexico is another AD that deserves to be docked for his performance. Football coach Mike Locksley – dogged by a sexual harassment charge that was later dropped – punched one of his assistant coaches last season. That’s intolerable behavior for a well-compensated leader who doubles as one of the state of New Mexico’s highest-paid employees. Locksley should have been gone, but he’s still on the job, and Krebs loses his credibility with that move.
Lisa Love of Arizona State must be included in a collection of bad athletic directors. First, she allowed former football coach Dirk Koetter to keep troubled (and talented) tailback Loren Wade on the squad. That was enough of a controversy in itself; we can be (somewhat) generous and say that both Love and Koetter deserved the benefit of the doubt to that point. But when Wade murdered teammate Brandon Falkner in March of 2005, Koetter should have received an immediate pink slip, if only to cleanse the moral rot and psychological carnage surrounding the program. Yet, Koetter coached through the 2006 season, with the team remaining fractured over an unending quarterback controversy involving Rudy Carpenter and Sam Keller. Love gets some points for hiring basketball coach Herb Sendek, but her handling of all things Dirk Koetter was, is, and will be, a profound disgrace in the desert.
