Somewhere on the Kansas University campus today, 15 or so people will meet and discuss candidates for the KU athletics director vacancy.
At least I think a meeting is scheduled.
The chancellor’s advisory committee is operating under such a shroud of secrecy that no one will even confirm a meeting will take place.
Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff? To prevent candidates’ names from leaking. Apparently no one in college athletics is more vulnerable to leaks than an athletics director.
If a coach is courted by another school, it’s usually OK with the fans and boosters because it means he or she is in demand. In the coaching fraternity, this is called “feathering your nest” because, if you stay, you almost always receive a pay boost.
But if an athletics director is sought by another school, it is not OK with the fans and boosters because it sounds like he or she isn’t happy and wants to bail. It’s particularly difficult if that AD is involved in a fund-raising project at the time.
For example, East Carolina AD Mike Hamrick has been linked to the Kansas opening, yet has denied interest. Is it because Hamrick is currently trying to raise money for a new ECU baseball stadium? Or is he truly not interested in returning to a place where he served as an assistant AD back in the early ’80s.
My guess is if Hamrick were offered the Kansas post, he’d take it. But, of course, he doesn’t know if he’ll be offered the job. How could he?
There are only so many AD openings at schools affiliated with major conferences and often it’s a case of being in the right place at the right time.
Take Rick Dickson, the current AD at Tulane. Dickson created an impressive portfolio while at Tulsa and Washington State, but he’s been at the New Orleans school for just two years and would damage his professional standing by bolting the Bayou after a short stint.
I was surprised to see the name of Deborah Yow come up in speculation, not because Yow hasn’t done a stand-up job at Maryland but because moving to Kansas would be a parallel move at best. And on Tuesday afternoon, she sent word through a university spokesman that she has been approached but wasn’t interested.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t perceive Kansas as a place for someone currently entrenched as a major-college athletics director. History is on my side.
Bob Frederick, whose 14 years as Kansas AD will officially end on Saturday, came here from Illinois State, a school with Division One basketball but with I-AA football. Another former Kansas AD, Jim Lessig, had been head man at Bowling Green, another mid-major.
Monte Johnson, Frederick’s predecessor, wasn’t even in athletics. He was a banker and land developer. Wade Stinson, another former Kansas AD, was in the insurance business. Kansas had two ADs in the ’70s Clyde Walker and Bob Marcum who had been assistants at other schools when they were hired.
To complete the list of men who headed Kansas University’s athletics program over the last 50 years, Dutch Lonborg came here in 1950 after 23 years as men’s basketball coach at Northwestern.
In other words, in the last half century, Kansas has never hired an athletics director who was making a parallel move.
Will that trend change this time? It could, but I doubt it.
It’s seems most likely that Kansas will concentrate on acquiring someone who has been successful on a lower level like Hamrick, Allen Bohl of Fresno State, Doug Woolard of Saint Louis or Wayne Hogan of Montana.
Hogan’s name surfaced recently. He spent 18 years as an aide at Florida State and has presided the last six years over one of the nation’s best Div. I-AA football programs.
The key words in the Kansas search are “success” and “football.” Frederick’s successor can’t have one without the other. KU football fans from the north bowl to the luxury suites need someone who’ll offer them hope.
Kansas is looking down the barrel of its sixth straight sub-.500 football season. The Jayhawks haven’t been that low for that long since World War II.
Winning football. Kansas needs it. And the new AD has to provide it.
