The Illinois AD Search

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#802      
Kramer
Mike congrats for defending your profession, as we all should.

My point is I don't feel it gives a whole picture of the process. See TomB's post on how a search committee works. I never said one word about skewing it to favor an Illini fan - you presumed that. I wanted a better understanding of the process.

QUOTE=miketherevelator;1169492]http://www.chicagotribune.com/sport...director-search-committee-20151204-story.html

Here's her article from yesterday. Facts from a to z. She could've said her opinion was it's crazy they took a solid month from firing Thomas to putting together the search committee. That they took a month to do anything after firing Thomas. But she didn't. Have you ever read a story short of a PR release from a university that detailed the differences between this and one in the private sector? Have you ever read a story about a private sector search committee and how it differed from a university sports search committee? No, because it's not relevant.
And my own personal opinion, having been a reporter/writer for much of my adult life and knowing how these things go, is that she got her Cubit info from sources who did not want it to happen. In other words, disgusted sources who hoped to cause an uproar that would stop it from happening. They got their uproar, but clueless will always march on.
Again, you guys want Shannon Ryan to do the university's job and it ain't gonna happen.[/QUOTE]
 
#804      
Deleted member 10676
chief, i know you felt the need to rant, so have at it.
but yes, you did use salacious and you did answer a post of mine that dwelt specifically with Ryan's story about the search committee.
I did get a laugh out of 'lunatic fringe' btw. My dad used to call me that many years ago.
 
#805      
Deleted member 10676
Kramer said:
Mike congrats for defending your profession, as we all should.

My point is I don't feel it gives a whole picture of the process. See TomB's post on how a search committee works. I never said one word about skewing it to favor an Illini fan - you presumed that. I wanted a better understanding of the process.
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Kramer, my apologies for presuming.
 
#807      
Second and Chalmers
chief9 said:
so she just tells everyone Matt Wheeler is an Ag Professor
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AND A FACULTY ATHLETIC REPRESENTATIVE!!!!!!

AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS HERE?

Listen, you can say you don't expect kid gloves coverage all you want, but that is exactly what you expect, end of story. That is what every Central Illinois paper has given the Illini since time immemorial, no different than what happens at every small town paper for every Big State U. When your sports section is dependent on access to a college athletic department for content, that is just the way things are. A big city paper where colleges are below the fold is a different animal.

And I know that we're at a low ebb of interest here which means that only true believers, Movement Illini if you will, are left around here, but even those folks need to be able to see that Shannon Ryan could be a college sports beat writer for the rest of her natural life, and what has transpired at Illinois the past week will never be approached as the singular, unquestioned most humiliating embarrassment of organizational mismanagement of an athletic department. This is a historic story of ineptitude. Ryan would be irresponsible to her readers not to reflect that. To report on an unremarkable group of stakeholders making up a committee in a "hey, maybe Illinois is getting it's ducks in a row!" tone would be a false narrative and an irresponsible choice.
 
#808      
mattcoldagelli
IlliniJim20 said:
Sorry Matt, didn't mean to sound personal. I meant that more in the argumentative sense. As a respected poster, i feel you normally argue well.
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It's ok! If the reaction to Ryan's reporting is any kind of metric, I have some of the thickest skin on the board, it seems.

This guy might be the sports-savviest animal science professor in the country, but the fact remains he's still doing something else for his day job, and that something is not at all related to sports, fundraising or politicking. I think it's totally fair to notice that and point that out, especially considering our Athletic Department has been a national laughingstock since August. We lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.
 
#809      
Second and Chalmers
mattcoldagelli said:
This guy might be the sports-savviest animal science professor in the country, but the fact remains he's still doing something else for his day job.
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Right.

And by the way, if you want to reveal what a sharp character this guy is to the Chicago market, I have no doubt Shannon Ryan or Herb Gould or whoever would be happy to sit down with him and discuss the search and the plans at Illinois going forward.
 
#810      
Kramer
It is a committee and they make recommendations right? They don't actually hire.

Maybe he's Matt on the IL board. Or he's scanning all the fan boards to see what they should do.
 
#811      
URH Snyder 490
TomB said:
Of the eight people on the committee, 2 are players (past of present), one is a coach, two are DIA employees. How much more of an athletic representation should there be?
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Gee, I dunno, maybe more representation from the two sports that drive all of the revenue in addition to Mike Bass? I specifically mentioned that it would be great to have a Colangelo type but you seem to have ignored that.


TomB said:
Oh, and the chair has been involved in the athletic department for the last fifteen years.

As for why no basketball or football representatives, think about it:

1) These are two high profile programs who have been underperforming. You certainly don't want Cubit or his staff having too much influence over hiring the person that decides if they keep their jobs. Ditto the basketball staff.
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Wasn't talking about the current staffs, thus the aforementioned Colangelo reference. And we don't want the current regimes because they're underperforming but it's fine to have the underpeforming members of the AD/leadership regime as part of the search committee?
 
#812      
TomB
A couple of notes about search committee chairmen. In my experience, being the chairman doesn't give you any more influence than any other member. The decisions are all group decisions and the chariman's vote doesn't cary any more weight.

Nor do any kind of parliamentary procedure apply in which topics cannot be discussed without the chairman putting them on an agenda.

Basically, the chairman does all the paperwork. It's administrative, for the most part.

My recent experience is that the person who will supervise the person hired is not allowed to be the committee chairman. I'll keep silent on merits of that rule.

For reference, I did a search on athletic director search committee Michigan. I was looking for the Michigan search committee, but found this from Michigan State's search committee in 1999:
EAST LANSING, Mich. - The following individuals have been named to the search committee to recommend candidates for the position of director of athletics at Michigan State:
Chair, Roger Wilkinson, vice president emeritus for finance and operations

Shelley Appelbaum, associate athletics director

Samuel Baker, director of Employee Relations

Molly Brennan, alumna, Rhodes scholar and former student athlete (track)

Chuck Erbe, coach, women's volleyball

Ronald Fisher, director of Honors College, professor of economics, former member of Athletic Council

Robert Holland, associate professor, Large Animal Clinical Sciences and Food Safety and Toxicology, former member of Athletic Council

Harriette McAdoo, professor, Family and Child Ecology

Leah Nilsson, track and cross country team member and president of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee
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http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/1999/search-committee-for-director-of-athletics-at-msu/

From the same search, here is Michigan't 17 member search committee from 2000. Note who the chair of the committee was:
Chair of the committee is James S. Jackson, the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and professor of health behavior and health education in the School of Public Health. Jackson also is director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, director and senior research scientist of the Research Center for Group Dynamics, and a faculty associate with the Institute of Gerontology.

Committee members are: Paula Allen-Meares, dean and professor, School of Social Work; Lloyd Carr, head football coach; Philip Hanlon, professor of mathematics; Denise Ilitch, president, Olympia Development Inc.; Ethan Johnson, student, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA); Richard Katcher, member of the Athletic Development Advisory Board; Mark Lambert, coordinator of aquatic events, Athletic Department; John Matlock, assistant provost and director, Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives; Marcia Pankratz, women's field hockey coach; Marissa Pollick, president of the "M Club," attorney and shareholder, Butzel Long; Ashley Reichenbach, student, LSA; Suellyn Scarnecchia, associate dean for clinical affairs in the Law School and clinical professor of law; Timothy Slottow, associate vice president for finance; James F. Stapleton, president and CEO, B & R Consultants; Beverly Ulrich, director and professor, Division of Kinesiology, and research scientist, Center for Human Growth and Development; and B. Joseph White, dean of the School of Business Administration and the Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Leadership in Management Education.

Gary Krenz, special counsel to the president, will staff the search. Nominations
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http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/3338-search-committee-appointed-for-athletic-director

I'm not sure who is on Michigan't current search committee, but I know that Hackett is on it and it is chaired by the University president Schlissel.

My point is that the makeup of our search committee is not unusual. Neither are the qualifications of the chair. There is a lot to complain about in how things went down: the timing of the Thomas firing, the nature of Cubit's contract, the administrators who gave statements that confirm that Cubit's hire was "Not Ideal" and a "real" decision will be made by a new AD (Kowalczyk, Wilson). That one bugs me because it publicly undermines Cubit, which is not productive. But the makeup of the search committee is really not one of them. This committee compares favorably with the committees other schools put together.
 
#813      
AutoPoster 3000
Pardon my nihilism but what difference does any of this make? A search committee is only as good as the people it's advising and, at this point, why should we have any confidence in them? We're either going to end up with one of the four or five names that have been circulating since November 9th (which will just highlight how wasteful and pointless all these delays have been) or the administrators in chief will draw too heavily on their backgrounds as academic deans and become fixated on irrelevant criteria, resulting in a head-scratching hire of someone who doesn't possess the qualifications that conventional wisdom says we need in our next AD. The chance that the end result is an obvious home-run hire of somebody none of us would have thought of on our own is basically nil.
 
#814      
dgcrow
AutoPoster 3000 said:
Pardon my nihilism but what difference does any of this make? A search committee is only as good as the people it's advising and, at this point, why should we have any confidence in them? We're either going to end up with one of the four or five names that have been circulating since November 9th (which will just highlight how wasteful and pointless all these delays have been) or the administrators in chief will draw too heavily on their backgrounds as academic deans and become fixated on irrelevant criteria, resulting in a head-scratching hire of someone who doesn't possess the qualifications that conventional wisdom says we need in our next AD. The chance that the end result is an obvious home-run hire of somebody none of us would have thought of on our own is basically nil.
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Yes. It seems that to a lot of school officials, the process is more important than the result.
 
#816      
IlliniBubba
miketherevelator said:
And my own personal opinion, having been a reporter/writer for much of my adult life and knowing how these things go, is that she got her Cubit info from sources who did not want it to happen. In other words, disgusted sources who hoped to cause an uproar that would stop it from happening. They got their uproar, but clueless will always march on.
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I figured that it was Kowalczyk or someone close to him that leaked the 2-year deal to Ryan. This was right after he went on the radio that day and said that he'd have a decision 24 hours after the NW game, and that it was a different scenario than what Minnesota faced, etc.

Then later that night he gets word that the 2 year thing is a serious idea with some legs, and he knows how bad of an idea it is. So he or someone close leaks it to the Tribune in the hopes that a public outcry will kill it, or at least persuade those making the decision to go for a 4 year deal. Unfortunately, we know the rest of the story after that. That's my theory at least - from his comments it seems that he was basically cut out the loop. But maybe I'm giving Kowalczyk too much credit though.
 
#817      
BZuppke
Well I think your theory makes sense. Kowalczyk's motives may also have included a desire to make the hire himself for selfish reasons (wanting to be the hero and make the permanent hire and to rehabilitate himself after the CSU firing). When they wouldn't let him do it, he also took his name out of the running for permanent AD. In this scenario it isn't so much an objection to the Cubit 2 year deal as it is the selfish motive. Just my theory.
 
#818      
IlliniOX08
Second and Chalmers said:
Is the fact that Barry Alvarez is a terrible AD and not a role model for what Illinois wants at all a truth we're ready to confront?

Not to say that that's Sean Frazier's fault, but it's high time Alvarez is placed into his proper context.
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What's the context of how Alvarez is a terrible AD? People working for him don't like him, the results of the program, or the fact that a couple coaches have left b/c they couldn't get admissions to lighten up?

Either way, Wisky's athletic program certainly doesn't have the clown show around it that Illinois' does. And NIU is run pretty well from that perspective also. If Sean Frazier isn't the guy, that's fine but from my perspective, he knows Chicago well enough now, he's had experience at big programs, and he's got more qualifications than Whitman or Michael.

I hope some more vetting is done on Frazier. Not saying he's the guy, but he's very interesting to me if it can't be George and/or Tiley.
 
#819      
BZuppke
I agree with this as to Frazier. Theoretically he brings a lot of Wisconsin connections to quality coaches like Dave Doeren and Dave Aranda et al. This is my concern with Tiley - quality guy to be sure but doesn't have the football connections that some of these other guys do.
 
#820      
EJ33
Tate mentioned on Saturday Sportsline that Tom Michael didn't attend the opening of the State Farm Center - likely because he's a serious candidate for AD and didn't want to take any questions about it.

Hiring Michael for AD would be almost as exciting as the Cubit hire. #stability

I'm guessing Sean Frazier for now. He's the best name I've heard outside of Rick George.
 
#821      
Deleted member 569417
If Tom Michael is hired, I am done forever with this small time bunch of yokels.
 
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