Guenther was asked to stay longer despite intending to retire due to the chaos in the upper administration after the Clout List scandal, that brought in Mike Hogan as UI President who was by all accounts a shoot first and ask questions later wrecking ball determined to "modernize" the operations of the UI System, pushing through both good ideas and bad ones with no care for internal stakeholders and politics, which anyone who knows about Universities can tell you is going to trigger huge revolts, as it did here.
Thomas was Hogan's handpicked guy, and he came to the DIA in the same spirit, out with the old, in with the new, don't care to hear opinions, out of the way.
The DIA Thomas inherited was in desperate need of radical change, and frankly in the end Josh Whitman has benefitted from a lot of unpopular modernization Thomas did that Whitman got to come in with clean hands over.
But anyway, Hogan basically got himself fired within about two years, leading to another round of upper administrative chaos, which eventually led to the endless and seemingly aimless process (including "not ideal") which led to a happy ending with Whitman.
Killeen-Jones-Whitman is the most stable leadership situation we've had, possibly ever? Hard times for the higher ed industry and the college sports industry, UI included, but we have smart capable people at the helm.
