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The Illinois AD Search
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Deleted member 569417
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And then there would be two competing descriptions of what happened next.
1. Mike Thomas swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. His concern for making the department more modern and more public facing was brought forward without sufficient interest in or concern for the people paying for it. He was a cold fish in a job that demands a backslapping good old boy. Therefore it's natural that in the event of the failure and embarrassment that Tim Beckman brought that he would be left on an island and important donors would want him gone. Only revenue sport success could have bought him approval with his attitude and he didn't deliver it.
2. Ron Guenther's unusual degree of hand-holding of his Loyalty Circle over the course of multiple decades created a totally unreasonable set of expectations in terms of what sort of access, perks, attention, and control they would get for the amount of money they were spending. They saw themselves as special flowers and expected to be treated as such. When Mike Thomas brought a modern, real world attitude to the department, there were important figures, including Guenther himself, who threw a temper tantrum and worked in bad faith to undermine Thomas' administration.
In any event, Phyllis Wise was having none of these complaints, but when she was ousted Tim Killeen and Barb Wilson were much more receptive, and the rest is history.
What happens next in terms of who is hired and how the department is led in the future will go a long way in revealing which of those two interpretations is the more accurate. We can be sure that the pendulum will swing back toward the Guenther direction. If it lands somewhere in the middle, that could be great. If it swings all the way back, well...
1. Mike Thomas swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. His concern for making the department more modern and more public facing was brought forward without sufficient interest in or concern for the people paying for it. He was a cold fish in a job that demands a backslapping good old boy. Therefore it's natural that in the event of the failure and embarrassment that Tim Beckman brought that he would be left on an island and important donors would want him gone. Only revenue sport success could have bought him approval with his attitude and he didn't deliver it.
2. Ron Guenther's unusual degree of hand-holding of his Loyalty Circle over the course of multiple decades created a totally unreasonable set of expectations in terms of what sort of access, perks, attention, and control they would get for the amount of money they were spending. They saw themselves as special flowers and expected to be treated as such. When Mike Thomas brought a modern, real world attitude to the department, there were important figures, including Guenther himself, who threw a temper tantrum and worked in bad faith to undermine Thomas' administration.
In any event, Phyllis Wise was having none of these complaints, but when she was ousted Tim Killeen and Barb Wilson were much more receptive, and the rest is history.
What happens next in terms of who is hired and how the department is led in the future will go a long way in revealing which of those two interpretations is the more accurate. We can be sure that the pendulum will swing back toward the Guenther direction. If it lands somewhere in the middle, that could be great. If it swings all the way back, well...
The way things are currently going, I've got a bad feeling, that pendulum is going to swing all the way back, and get locked in place, for a long time.
The way things are currently going, I've got a bad feeling, that pendulum is going to swing all the way back, and get locked in place, for a long time.
Truth be told, its not like it's going to make a damned bit of difference on the football side for a long, long time. The damage is done there. And on the basketball side, it looks like we already have the kind of renovation that RG would never have been willing or able to deliver.
Yeah, I would also add that Mike Thomas was a competent, efficient manager - he got a lot of things done. He also got the Assembly Hall project completed and I have no doubt he would have upgraded the football facilities. In the end he didn't have the skill or the vision to sell an A+ football or basketball coach and that's about all that matters. I'm still scratching my head as to how he ever hired Beckman and why he didn't turn him loose sooner. Most of us knew we were in trouble the first time we heard him say "lasagna!"
Yes. The post by GHD painted a far too rosy picture. This is far more accurate unfortunately.
In fairness to MT, I think he underestimated just how difficult hiring would be here in both revenue sports. From budget constraints to how the jobs are viewed in the marketplace, he inherited a very difficult situation.
If we swing all the way back the other way, probably by hiring someone like Tom Michael, then I fear we are all in for a lot more of what we have already had to suffer through.
I'm as big of an MT supporter as you'll find, but there's no need to try to forgive him for choosing Tim Beckman. There were many other vastly superior coaches who would have taken the job, two of which were even interviewed by MT, and he still placed a massive bet on someone who couldn't have possibly seemed up to the task in a sit-down interview.
It was a colossal blunder which negated so much of MT's good work and proved to be his undoing in the end.
I think Mike Thomas hired Tim Beckman because of who came to bat for him. Remember, he talked to Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel (with whom Thomas is friends), and Mike Gundy, all of whom must have given Beckman a glowing recommendation.
I've always thought those guys coming to bat for Tim must have been what swayed Mike to hire him. Obviously, it looks silly in hindsight, but it's hard to blame Mike for listening to them at the time. These guys have all had other assistants go on to have success; we just got the rotten apple of their tree unfortunately.
I've always thought those guys coming to bat for Tim must have been what swayed Mike to hire him. Obviously, it looks silly in hindsight, but it's hard to blame Mike for listening to them at the time. These guys have all had other assistants go on to have success; we just got the rotten apple of their tree unfortunately.
$3m in revenue comes from student fees and has remained flat since then. Big Ten and sponsorship revenue has increased about $10m from its 2010 levels.
For the university-backed loans we've taken out to finance facilities improvements, relatively stable revenue streams "seem" to have grown to support servicing them.
In both the Gunther and Thomas administrations, I don't think we can consider the DIA poorly run from a financial perspective.
We finally had a guy in MT that understood marketing.
Guenther was ignorant to that side of the business and instead was only concerned with cost cutting. You can't win in this industry, given our peers, with that mentality.
If we go back to that, we are in for long, long suffering.
TheSecretWeapon
- ILLINI NATION!
"if asked" is an equally important part of that statement. I have a feeling that this administration would shy away from even talking to him given his public statements thus far on the issue.
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"I’m hearing that George is still in play as the next athletic director. From people who would know."
I'd love to be wrong but I don't see this story having legs. You see this a lot when there is an organizational impasse, somebody with a bit a weight starts feeding a friend in the press a version of the story they wish was happening in hopes is stirs the pot, maybe lights a fire under someone. It's like Reggie Dunlop in Slap Shot using Dickie Dunn to plant the BS story about the franchise moving to Florida. Meanwhile the actual owner sees it as nothing but a big tax write-off. A fictional example about a professional team in a different sport but there are a lot of parallels between Illinios and the Charlestown Chiefs.
Second and Chalmers - You are on fire in this thread. Most of your posts have been spot on with what I know to be going on in the department. Your point about Guenther running a little private club nailed it. And your point about Thomas' undoing due solely to his hiring of Beckman is spot on too.
I fear we are on the edge of going through a dry spell the likes of which we've never seen. (maybe on par with the slush fund era - I wasn't there for that)
Depending on the AD hire, support could dry up from the "fat cat" class and horrible on field results for the two core sports have drained the fanbase of their willpower to continue supporting the team - financially and otherwise. Plus, the combination of Incompetence and Indifference at the university leadership level is just the cherry on top of the crap sundae.
Barring a home run hire at AD that can unite and excite everyone (and hire a competent FB coach) this is going to be a LONG SLOG.
I doubt Rick George is coming here.
That said he was never contacted by anyone official. We all took him saying that as a nice way of turning us down. But no, the events that have transpired since then have made it clear he was never actually contacted.
That said he was never contacted by anyone official. We all took him saying that as a nice way of turning us down. But no, the events that have transpired since then have made it clear he was never actually contacted.
This is a good summary. If we could somehow blend the "back-slapping" personality and fundraising ability of RG with the marketing mindset and just a bit of the "coldness" of MT, I think we'd be in a pretty good spot.
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but one thing I will say in defense of RG is that I can't really complain about his hiring choices at the time. His problem was that he stuck with them for too long. I'm not old enough to know the details behind Tepper's hiring, but I'm not sure if that was his or Mackovic's decision. But looking at Turner, Zook, Kruger, Self, Weber - all of them were good hires at the time and led us to some level of success. If I recall, it's also not like we were the only suitor for any of them at the time either. RG's problem was that he was too emotionally tied up in his coaches and he stuck with them too long. Even if he didn't hire him, it was clear after 1994 or so that Tepper wasn't going to cut it, given what he did with the talent he had. Turner should've been gone in 2003, Zook in 2009, and Weber likely in 2010 or 2011. One thing RG did well is advocating and selling coaches on how they can succeed at Illinois. Clearly MT wasn't able to do the same thing. But MT was much better at the marketing and overall fan outreach aspect, especially beyond the top level donors.
A return to certain aspects of the RG era isn't a bad thing necessarily. We need those big donors to be happy, just not completely running everything.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
With complaints for both Guenther and Thomas holding on to coaches too long, is this a systemic issue? Is the university pushing for athletics to avoid buyouts? Or just a coincidence that both ADs kept coaches too long?
TownieMatt
CU Expat
- Chicago
This is the biggest reason I'm not against the two year deal for Cubit. I believe the AD position to be more important than the football coach. Letting the new AD make the final decision for the football program will help us attract top candidates, including George.
That's some garbled reasoning if I've ever heard it.
The roster Bill Cubit will hand to his successor after next season will have absolutely no meaningful chance at success for AT LEAST the next two years after that. Period. That is the bomb we placed in the program on Saturday.
Frankly, I think a section of our donor base (specifically an elegantly mustachioed section, it seems) has gone completely off the deep end on this George thing. I guess we'll see. But if George walks in mere days too late to save the horrible damage we've done, it would be a cruel, twisted irony for everyone involved, including him.
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