Woodling: Bohl’s driveway sad scene

By Chuck Woodling     Apr 10, 2003

Thad Allender/Journal-World Photo
Former Kansas athletic director Al Bohl directs his attention to a reporter's question. Bohl, fired Wednesday morning, addressed the media that afternoon at his Lawrence home.

I parked my car west of Inverness Drive on Wimbledon Drive and walked about half a block to the scene of the first news conference I ever have attended on a driveway in a residential area.

Kansas University athletic director Al Bohl, fired earlier Wednesday morning by Chancellor Robert Hemenway, had invited the media to hear his side of the story, and the media came in droves. What a scene. TV remote trucks parked along the curb, newspaper reporters clustered around Bohl, sticking tape recorders in his face, and neighbors rubber-necked like witnesses to an automobile accident.

Momentarily, Bohl sounded off, and what he said was much, much worse than an auto mishap. It was more like a train wreck. Bohl lambasted the most popular man in Kansas, calling Roy Williams hateful and vindictive and blaming the KU men’s basketball coach for his dismissal.

No telling how many people in the Sunflower State watched those remarks on the six o’clock news and went into shock. Surely, thousands upon thousands were enraged.

“After seeing that,” Eudora resident Phil Everley told me, “I think he’d better get a real estate agent and go back where he came from.”

Thad Allender/Journal-World Photo
Former Kansas University athletic director Al Bohl addresses a media throng outside his Lawrence home. Bohl's news conference started an hour after KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway announced Bohl's firing Wednesday afternoon

The smoke you smell is from the bridges Bohl set aflame late Wednesday afternoon with his misguided comments about Williams. Was Williams really the man most responsible for Bohl’s dismissal? Truthfully, Williams was just one KU coach who was oil to Bohl’s water. It’s just that Williams was the most high-profile coach who felt the school had made a mistake in hiring Bohl.

Not that any KU coach or administrator came right out and ripped Bohl like Bohl tore into Williams during his ill-advised news conference. Instead, KU coaches mostly damned Bohl with faint praise.

A classic example is this prepared statement from football coach Mark Mangino: “I’m sorry Al will no longer be with our athletic department. I wish him and his family the very best. Our athletic department must forge ahead collectively and always keep the best interest of our student-athletes the priority.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Mangino, incidentally, declined an opportunity to elaborate on his statement.

In retrospect, the best thing I can say about Al Bohl is that if he were a lawyer and I were charged with murder, I’d want him to defend me. Bohl’s enthusiasm and determination are admirable. But a college athletic director today has to wear many caps, and Bohl doesn’t need a large hat rack.

If Bohl had more vision, he never would have allowed his wounded pride to dominate his emotions and lash out at Williams. Those remarks are likely to haunt him the rest of his life and very well could prevent him from landing a job as a university athletic director again.

All in all, it was a sad scene on Bohl’s driveway. People who tend to want to lump everything into good or evil or paint everything in black or white already have categorized Bohl, yet he really is a good man. He isn’t, after all, the first man who has been forced, for whatever reason, to exceed the level of his competence.

From another angle, Hemenway’s firing of Bohl was poorly timed. By doing it now, it looks like a desperate attempt to keep Williams from jumping ship for North Carolina. Hemenway could have and should have fired Bohl two months ago. Yet the chancellor delayed because, it has been speculated, he didn’t want it to look like he had been influenced by the media, which at the time was in a Bohl feeding frenzy.

So where does Kansas stand today in the pantheon of college athletics? Well, if Williams leaves, KU will have no athletic director, no men’s basketball coach and a national perception so low you’d have to dig 100 feet under the Kansas River to find it.

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