The Illinois AD Search

mattcoldagelli said:

Jiro? More like HERO, amirite guys?


Seriously, though, great work in this thread.

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I appreciate the sentiment. I just don't think it's rocket science here. Of course, no candidate is a lock to be great, but you have to put yourself in the best position for success. And to me holding out hope that the Div III grad will turn out to be a home run is anything but putting yourself in the best position to succeed.

As always at Illinois, the real question is "what is success in the minds of those making the decisions".

My definition of success - win. Period. Hence my list of priorities and examples of the types of guys I'd go after.

What's the admin's definition of success? Saving money? Keep athletics off the front page of the newspapers? Don't upset the perception of our academia? Win?
What's the donors that have influence definition of success? Scotch with the AD? Back slapping sessions in a private suite? Access to the AD? Saturday pancake breakfasts in orange sweater vests with the AD? Win?

I don't doubt that these groups are looking for success. I really don't. How they define success is the more relevant question.

frankfortillini said:

Someone got paid a lot to build those slides. I bet that was a nightmare to get approved - I can't imagine the meetings and review process - lol!!

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Maybe that's all they've actually done so far? Maybe it took them over a month just to define those slides and get them approved through a committee. It probably took 3 weeks after Korn Ferry was selected to form the Slide Committee To Define What an Ideal AD Looks Like. Maybe the real search is just beginning now?

Or maybe those slides haven't been approved and someone on the committee that came before Korn Ferry but after the big donors failed at pulling weight leaked the slides out of spite.

I'm only kidding. Kind of. Ok maybe I just scared myself in to thinking the above is really a possibility with this clown show we have in charge.

IlliniOX08 said:

Maybe that's all they've actually done so far? Maybe it took them over a month just to define those slides and get them approved through a committee. It probably took 3 weeks after Korn Ferry was selected to form the Slide Committee To Define What an Ideal AD Looks Like. Maybe the real search is just beginning now?

Or maybe those slides haven't been approved and someone on the committee that came before Korn Ferry but after the big donors failed at pulling weight leaked the slides out of spite.

I'm only kidding. Kind of. Ok maybe I just scared myself in to thinking the above is really a possibility with this clown show we have in charge.

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Well, we know they are the result of FOIA, so bolded isn't the case, haha. And the blacked out parts have an actual timeline, apparently.

Every time I see a post from Jiro I find myself nodding in agreement and suddenly hungry for a mcrib!

LurkLongandProsper said:

Also:

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Wow, I thought I had encountered some extreme managementspeak consultantese drivel in my days but that goes beyond anything I've ever seen. Harking back to my corporate internal audit days, let me see if I can translate this into English:

Potential Critical AD Competencies ("Skills"):

Strategic planner who can get...............Good communicator
people to agree

____________________________+__________________________

Likes to use tech stuff...........................Problem solver


... and that's being pretty generous. That lower right box in particular comes within a nose hair of being complete gibberish.

Granted, if you want to draw up the tool kit on your true north craft skills, you need to add value on your stretch targets and bake-in an end state vision for your critical path going forward. Otherwise, the environmentals could blow down your burning platform before you even pulse check your knowledgeware. Net-net wise, I mean. It's all low-hanging fruit.

JiroDreamsOfMcRibs said:

You are correct, and to be blunt about things, this is what we are likely staring at.

• Our head football coach is 14th out of 14 Big Ten schools in terms of pay.
• Our head basketball coach is 9th out of 14 Big Ten school in terms of pay.
• If we end up with Whitman, like it appears, can you envision him getting more than $400K? I can't. I'd imagine he gets his salary doubled up to ~$300K, maybe as high as $350K. Which would make our AD 14th out of 14 Big Ten schools in terms of pay.

To be really clear, I am not arguing that Cubit or Groce or Whitman deserve more money, I am arguing that those positions need to paid more money.

And, really fans like me are the real idiots here. Why in the world would I expect great, or hell even average, results when our University budgets the least amount of money in the Big Ten for our football coach? Or AD. Or the bottom tier in basketball. Groce is the 9th highest paid coach in the Big Ten and guess what results we have seen the last 4 years? About 9th place. What kind of wizardry is this?!?

I'm dying for someone at the University of Illinois to walk in and say "We are done trying to save money and hope we find a home run hire. We want to be one of the top 3 basketball programs in the Big Ten. MSU and OSU pay their head coaches >$3.5M. If we want to be one of the top 3 basketball programs, we will scour the earth to find and hire a coach worthy of that pay and has proven success. If we have to overpay to get that person, so be it."

And the worst part of this? By trying to go cheap and save money, we end up losing more money in the long run. Payouts for fired coaches. Attendance dwindling as the programs continue to suck. Apathy. That's why I don't feel at all embarrassed about suggesting Illinois pay Ian McCaw >$1M. Honestly, I'd go as far as $2M if needed. Why? Because in 4 years after he fixes the football program and we are making bowl games and the attendance goes from 20K a game to 60K a game, and the money from the donors is rolling in because OMG we're winning at football... NO ONE would look at Ian McCaw's $2M as excessive when we make 20x that more a year because the programs are winning.

If we want to actually change things here we need gamechangers. Gamechangers are expensive. Can you get lucky and find a gamechanger on the cheap from Division III? I guess it's possible, sure. Is it likely? It is not.

But, again, this is what we'll likely we're looking at.

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How much the coaches are getting paid and where that ranks among peers has zero correlation to where they've finished so you can stop trying to make that connection.

JiroDreamsOfMcRibs said:

I appreciate the sentiment. I just don't think it's rocket science here. Of course, no candidate is a lock to be great, but you have to put yourself in the best position for success. And to me holding out hope that the Div III grad will turn out to be a home run is anything but putting yourself in the best position to succeed.

As always at Illinois, the real question is "what is success in the minds of those making the decisions".

My definition of success - win. Period. Hence my list of priorities and examples of the types of guys I'd go after.

What's the admin's definition of success? Saving money? Keep athletics off the front page of the newspapers? Don't upset the perception of our academia? Win?
What's the donors that have influence definition of success? Scotch with the AD? Back slapping sessions in a private suite? Access to the AD? Saturday pancake breakfasts in orange sweater vests with the AD? Win?

I don't doubt that these groups are looking for success. I really don't. How they define success is the more relevant question.

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Hoping a DIII AD turns into a home run is just the same as assuming someone who's been a right hand man at a power 5 school as you suggested you would look for earlier actually knows how to run the job on their own.

You can sit there and suggest that simply throwing money at an AD from Baylor or tcu will make them want to come to Illinois all you want but I doubt that severely.

Jreed322 said:

How much the coaches are getting paid and where that ranks among peers has zero correlation to where they've finished so you can stop trying to make that connection.

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Good idea. Let's just keep throwing minimal money at "under the radar guys" and hope that works out. It's been working swimmingly thus far.

Jreed322 said:

Hoping a DIII AD turns into a home run is just the same as assuming someone who's been a right hand man at a power 5 school as you suggested you would look for earlier actually knows how to run the job on their own.

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You take Division III guy, I'll take the right hand man at Alabama or Ohio State every day. And I'm pretty certain, my school will beat yours more often than not.

You can sit there and suggest that simply throwing money at an AD from Baylor or tcu will make them want to come to Illinois all you want but I doubt that severely.

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Well then, we should not even try because you don't think it could happen. Let's simply "Be what we are".

Let's not even try, because we are so so bad, and bad schools need to know their place! And our place is not to try and break out of the losing. Just like Wisconsin. Or Florida. Or Oregon. Or dozens of other programs that didn't listen to defeatist fans that complained when they tried being more than losers.

It's an insane mentality that is so pervasive at Illinois. It's just mindblowing.

JiroDreamsOfMcRibs said:

You take Division III guy, I'll take the right hand man at Alabama or Ohio State every day. And I'm pretty certain, my school will beat yours more often than not.

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Personally, I kind of like the approach that would lead to selecting Whitman over the generic right hand man. Relying too much on checking the boxes like "turned a program around" is how you end up with Beckman-like hires. You get so wrapped up in their previous success and the glowing recommendations of the well respected people above them that you can forget to ask the actually important questions. Questions like, why was this person successful, and does this person have the tools to be successful in this situation? A more in-depth look at Beckman should have turned up that his success was highly tied to his assistants and that he was unlikely to be successful without them. Instead he was seen as the guy who turned Toledo around after a point shaving scandal.

To an outsider, Whitman seems to have those underlying tools to be successful, and he may even be extremely gifted in those areas if some personal accounts are to be believed. That being said, going from DIII to Power 5 is like going from high school to the major leagues. There's a reason not many guys do it. And, from that vantage point, it's impossible to view him as being a home run hire. He may ultimately be the right man for the job, but you really have to trust that the people in charge know what they're doing. I'm not sure we can say that.

It also goes without saying that we could have had him months ago in time to make a football hire.

JiroDreamsOfMcRibs said:

You take Division III guy, I'll take the right hand man at Alabama or Ohio State every day. And I'm pretty certain, my school will beat yours more often than not.

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Jiro is on target. A short list of right hand men who have become successful ADs at P5 schools includes Dave Hart of Tennessee (was assoc AD at Alabama), Jeremy Foley of Florida (was Fla assoc AD of business), Mark Hollis of Michigan St (was MSU assoc AD), Shane Lyons of West Virginia (was deputy AD at Alabama), and Dan Radokovich of Clemson (assoc AD at LSU, then AD at Georgia Tech).

To get a feel for the enormous gap between where Josh is now and D1 Power 5, the football program he oversees lost to Hendrix, Centre, and Berry this year. In their biggest game of the year on senior day against the University of Chicago, they drew 1,300 -- roughly half the crowd of the Normal Community-Normal West game this year.

I sincerely hope he's Illinois' AD some day, but I believe he needs to show success at an NIU or SIU type school first.

joe4304 said:

Jiro is on target. A short list of right hand men who have become successful ADs at P5 schools includes Dave Hart of Tennessee (was assoc AD at Alabama), Jeremy Foley of Florida (was Fla assoc AD of business), Mark Hollis of Michigan St (was MSU assoc AD), Shane Lyons of West Virginia (was deputy AD at Alabama), and Dan Radokovich of Clemson (assoc AD at LSU, then AD at Georgia Tech).

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I know this was just a short list, so maybe some other good examples, but to be fair...

• Dave Hart was AD for 12 years at Florida St. prior to his Alabama gig. And as you noted, Radokovich was also a P5 AD prior to going backwards. So don't think they should count.
  
• Lyons just got hired at WVU last January, so hard to really judge yet if he's been a successful hire.
  
• No doubt Foley overall has been a success, but he was a Gator lifer when he finally got the opportunity, so they knew what they were getting. And he wasn't perfect surviving the hiring Ron Zook (though the firing was spot on) and possibly the inability to maintain Donovan.
  
• And agree, Hollis is arguably one of the best out there. But he also spent almost 9 years as an associate AD at the school and was also a very well known commodity.

By the way, both Foley and Hollis are alums of their schools and benefited from having the previous AD retire rather than be fired.

Still, to your point, I don't know if there's even ever been a DIII AD hired into the same role at a P5 school. Now we know that there have been P5 AD hires who didn't even have assistant AD experience - Morgan Burke (Purdue), Fred Glass (Indiana), and Patrick Hobbs (Rutgers) - so it's not unprecedented to bring in folks with even less experience than a Josh Whitman. But they definitely haven't been as successful as Foley or Hollis.

Go

joe4304 said:

Jiro is on target. A short list of right hand men who have become successful ADs at P5 schools includes Dave Hart of Tennessee (was assoc AD at Alabama), Jeremy Foley of Florida (was Fla assoc AD of business), Mark Hollis of Michigan St (was MSU assoc AD), Shane Lyons of West Virginia (was deputy AD at Alabama), and Dan Radokovich of Clemson (assoc AD at LSU, then AD at Georgia Tech).

To get a feel for the enormous gap between where Josh is now and D1 Power 5, the football program he oversees lost to Hendrix, Centre, and Berry this year. In their biggest game of the year on senior day against the University of Chicago, they drew 1,300 -- roughly half the crowd of the Normal Community-Normal West game this year.

I sincerely hope he's Illinois' AD some day, but I believe he needs to show success at an NIU or SIU type school first.

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I have a boss that is pretty good. His right hand man is not. Things are getting done and the boss will probably move up the ladder soon. If his right hand man takes over, we are in trouble.

Being a right hand man can be good. But it also can be bad.

JiroDreamsOfMcRibs said:

You take Division III guy, I'll take the right hand man at Alabama or Ohio State every day. And I'm pretty certain, my school will beat yours more often than not.

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Well you literally have zero way of proving this and I'm not even sure how you can say this with any certainty at all. L

Well then, we should not even try because you don't think it could happen. Let's simply "Be what we are".

Let's not even try, because we are so so bad, and bad schools need to know their place! And our place is not to try and break out of the losing. Just like Wisconsin. Or Florida. Or Oregon. Or dozens of other programs that didn't listen to defeatist fans that complained when they tried being more than losers.

It's an insane mentality that is so pervasive at Illinois. It's just mindblowing.

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Why do you continue to make up arguments that aren't there? Just to argue with yourself? I didn't say we shouldn't try. Im just saying you're acting like simply throwing money around is the simple answer to fix this. We've tried throwing money at big name coaches before and it didn't work. Does that mean it will always end that way or with an ad? Nope, but pounding the table saying "just pay up!!!" is ignoring all the other factors that go into someone maybe choosing to come here. But it's the easy criticism right now so I guess have at it.

AutoPoster 3000 said:

Wow, I thought I had encountered some extreme managementspeak consultantese drivel in my days but that goes beyond anything I've ever seen. Harking back to my corporate internal audit days, let me see if I can translate this into English:

Potential Critical AD Competencies ("Skills"):

Strategic planner who can get...............Good communicator
people to agree

____________________________+__________________________

Likes to use tech stuff...........................Problem solver


... and that's being pretty generous. That lower right box in particular comes within a nose hair of being complete gibberish.

Granted, if you want to draw up the tool kit on your true north craft skills, you need to add value on your stretch targets and bake-in an end state vision for your critical path going forward. Otherwise, the environmentals could blow down your burning platform before you even pulse check your knowledgeware. Net-net wise, I mean. It's all low-hanging fruit.

Click to expand...

Now I have coffee all over my keyboard. Well done, sir.

Amazes me that when people say things like this (or that nonsense in the slides) they are somehow convinced that they're "communicating".

The problem with trying to put Whitman in a box is everything he's done to this point in his career has shown he's not in that box. Hes excelled at everything he's done outside if the NFL.

This could also be me totally making this up but I thought that I read somewhere his athletic budget is larger than. Some low D1 schools.

Has Illinois ever paid anything other than the run of the mill going rate for any of its big time coaches or an ad? They have paid big $ but it's my like they have ever been out in front of the $ train in an attempt to change the dynamic.

JiroDreamsOfMcRibs said:

You are correct, and to be blunt about things, this is what we are likely staring at.

• Our head football coach is 14th out of 14 Big Ten schools in terms of pay.
• Our head basketball coach is 9th out of 14 Big Ten school in terms of pay.
• If we end up with Whitman, like it appears, can you envision him getting more than $400K? I can't. I'd imagine he gets his salary doubled up to ~$300K, maybe as high as $350K. Which would make our AD 14th out of 14 Big Ten schools in terms of pay.

To be really clear, I am not arguing that Cubit or Groce or Whitman deserve more money, I am arguing that those positions need to paid more money.

And, really fans like me are the real idiots here. Why in the world would I expect great, or hell even average, results when our University budgets the least amount of money in the Big Ten for our football coach? Or AD. Or the bottom tier in basketball. Groce is the 9th highest paid coach in the Big Ten and guess what results we have seen the last 4 years? About 9th place. What kind of wizardry is this?!?

I'm dying for someone at the University of Illinois to walk in and say "We are done trying to save money and hope we find a home run hire. We want to be one of the top 3 basketball programs in the Big Ten. MSU and OSU pay their head coaches >$3.5M. If we want to be one of the top 3 basketball programs, we will scour the earth to find and hire a coach worthy of that pay and has proven success. If we have to overpay to get that person, so be it."

And the worst part of this? By trying to go cheap and save money, we end up losing more money in the long run. Payouts for fired coaches. Attendance dwindling as the programs continue to suck. Apathy. That's why I don't feel at all embarrassed about suggesting Illinois pay Ian McCaw >$1M. Honestly, I'd go as far as $2M if needed. Why? Because in 4 years after he fixes the football program and we are making bowl games and the attendance goes from 20K a game to 60K a game, and the money from the donors is rolling in because OMG we're winning at football... NO ONE would look at Ian McCaw's $2M as excessive when we make 20x that more a year because the programs are winning.

If we want to actually change things here we need gamechangers. Gamechangers are expensive. Can you get lucky and find a gamechanger on the cheap from Division III? I guess it's possible, sure. Is it likely? It is not.

But, again, this is what we'll likely we're looking at.

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I believe that I heard that we have the 2nd highest recruting budget though.

Saying we won't spend big isn't exactly accurate and definitely isn't the main reason established P5 administrators and coaches don't want to come here.

Anyone who fits that bill, including big time assistants, doesn't want to come here because they are already well paid, have options, and view us as a career graveyard. How much money the school will pay you individually is a separate issue from the school putting you in a position to succeed. In-demand candidates know the red flags:

1. Significant admissions hurdles compared to other schools
2. Instability above you
3. Facilities that are behind the competition

Everyone has a price, of course, and if we paid significantly over market we could land a Rick George, sure, but at 700k offering him even 1.1 probably isn't gonna cut it, not when they can easily bump him up to that range, and not when he is already sitting on piles of money and likes his gig.

Someone posted this very insightful forbes article interviewing school presidents about athletic success. The Butler pres had a great quote:

"I can only speak from four years of presidential experience. With two conference transitions, the loss of arguably one of the best college coaches in the country in Brad Stevens, and a $35m renovation of Hinkle Fieldhouse, my learning curve was steep. When I took over at Butler, we had just been to back-to-back Final 4’s and were riding an amazing wave of exposure for the university. Other schools often cite what happened to us as justification for their own spending on athletics. What they don’t realize is that my predecessors made a strategic decision in the 1990s to invest in basketball and only years later did we begin to see increased on-the-court performance and thus a great return on investment. Change happens slowly in academia, and it’s no different on the athletics side either."

This line of thinking is why MT did have some important fans (Downey, Colangelo) who believed he understood and was making progress in these areas. The AD can't wave a wand and change the admissions policies, these things are political in nature and require a consistent effort from the entire leadership group (BOT, Pres, Chancellor, AD) over time. Even the savviest ADs are rendered impotent without the understanding and support of those above them. With our current president and interim chancellor combination I'm not optimistic, but it all starts at the top and simply opening up the pocketbooks won't change that.

Jreed322 said:

We've tried throwing money at big name coaches before and it didn't work.

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When?

mattcoldagelli said:

When?

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Sumlin?

Sumlin's rumored offer was nice but it wasn't anything any other program allegedly trying to be big time wouldn't have been willing to do. They weren't raising the bar just paying market rate.

Not wanting to read through a million pages to catch up where the search process is at. Could someone sum it all up succinctly at this point? Thx.

From a brief perusal, it looks like debates are ongoing here as to whether we should go big and ballsy in throwing big $$ at second-in-commands at big conference schools versus going for (gambling on?) small/smallest program guys with presumed/apparent potential to do well, with a preference(?) for Illini grads. A question I have is where would the big $$ come from, with the state being in the fiscal shape it's in? And even if the money somehow appears, can tossing that much dough for an AD be finessed through the probable political heatstorm it would raise?

Ulysses Everett McGill said:

Not wanting to read through a million pages to catch up where the search process is at. Could someone sum it all up succinctly at this point? Thx.

From a brief perusal, it looks like debates are ongoing here as to whether we should go big and ballsy in throwing big $$ at second-in-commands at big conference schools versus going for (gambling on?) small/smallest program guys with presumed/apparent potential to do well, with a preference(?) for Illini grads. A question I have is where would the big $$ come from, with the state being in the fiscal shape it's in? And even if the money somehow appears, can tossing that much dough for an AD be finessed through the probable political heatstorm it would raise?

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To answer the second part of your question, the DIA is its own department with its own funding. It does not rely on state funding, so in a sense that point should be moot.

No trying to be too political and hijack this thread, but the political climate of Illinois should have no bearing on this search and hire. Of course, that is not to say politicians will not get involved.

Ulysses Everett McGill said:

Not wanting to read through a million pages to catch up where the search process is at. Could someone sum it all up succinctly at this point? Thx.

From a brief perusal, it looks like debates are ongoing here as to whether we should go big and ballsy in throwing big $$ at second-in-commands at big conference schools versus going for (gambling on?) small/smallest program guys with presumed/apparent potential to do well, with a preference(?) for Illini grads. A question I have is where would the big $$ come from, with the state being in the fiscal shape it's in? And even if the money somehow appears, can tossing that much dough for an AD be finessed through the probable political heatstorm it would raise?

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There are plenty of rumors we are closing in on an Illinois guy for AD. Most people seem to think George or Whitman.

George at least has some BCS experience, but has not hired a coach iirc at Colorado yet. He has been super successful on the PGA scene and with the Texas Rangers. He obviously played football at Illinois and was a former staff member. Apparently the top donors want him and he is very well respected.

Whitman is kind of a boom or bust type. Only has been at two different D3 schools, but is a Bronze Tablet member, super super smart, great personality, clerked at some of the top law firms in the country, former Illini football player and had a cup of tea in the NFL. Younger guy who could be the fresh blood we need here, and if you want to take a chance on a guy who could be great he is the guy. Need to look a little deeper at his intangibles and project here.

Just a FYI but no worries about the poor fiscal standing of Illinois in this decision, it will be entirely funded by the athletic department by donor money.

What we need to consider and what needs to change is that the entire administration needs to make a commitment to winning, which means operating a little more in the gray, having admissions actually work with us on getting borderline kids in or to develop a program specific to set those kids up for success, and actually budgeting in a big time salary pool to get not only top notch head coaches but also a big enough assistant $$ pool to attract top notch assistants/recruiters.

I know the academia all want Illinois to be the "Harvard of the Midwest" blah blah, but they have to look big picture and understand that having a successful football and basketball program puts butts in the seats which results in extra ticket revenue, concessions, etc which directly can fund improvements in facilities etc. There have been studies on how successful athletic programs result in a major increase in general student population applications directly resulting in more competitive admissions if that is the main goal due to simple supply and demand principles.

Just my two cents... it seems way too simple and straight forward to me, but who the hell knows I am only a random message board poster...