As "compromise names" with "qualified resumes" emerge (Nunez), we need to stop debating the "merits of this guy vs. the drawbacks of that guy".
From a pure resume standpoint, Jurich is the best candidate and has accomplished the most.
But to the old guard of the BOT, he represents an Alpha who will become the most powerful person on the campus, and someone who will build an independent power base. The only prior comparable that UM has is Sam Jankovich, and we have Emeriti Trustees who were around for the Jankovich years, so let's not act like this is ancient history.
I am going to post a link to an ESPN article FROM FOUR YEARS AGO. If any of us can Google it in 5 seconds, then it is just as easy for an old guard Trustee to read this and get scared about letting Jurich take UM into the future.
I'll also cut-paste some relevant lines, for the "Cliff's Notes" crowd.
Short summary, this is NOT the UM BOT saying "we want a puppet". This is the old guard saying "we don't want an Alpha Jankovich that will eclipse our power".
Enjoy (or not)...
Former Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich leveraged big deals and big-time basketball to build the university into a sports powerhouse, only to watch it burn amid charges of excess, exploitation and corruption.
www.espn.com
The morning after the FBI's announcement, Dr. Gregory Postel, the interim president, removed not only Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino
but also athletic director Tom Jurich, one of the state's most powerful people. Over the past 20 years, Jurich had built a sports empire on top of a midlevel commuter school near the Ohio River, transforming the campus and infusing a genteel Southern city that lacked a professional team with the excitement of big-time sports.
Jurich was so successful generating money that "I wished I could turn them upside down and shake out their pocket change for the academic side," says Thomas B. Byers, a professor emeritus in the English department.
Jurich is a man of average height, but even at 61,
he carries himself with a pugnacious, intimidating intensity. Charming and warm one minute, he is sometimes defensive and suspicious. As athletic director, Jurich rarely texted or used email, fearful it could be used against him. "Why have more fodder for people?" he says.
"You know how I communicated with people? I picked up the phone, and I went to their face." Since the university began digging into his records, he says, "That's the question I get most: 'How do you conduct business?' Well, I think we conducted it pretty **** good."
Louisville's athletics budget then was $16.5 million. Jurich embarked on an ambitious growth strategy that would solve Louisville's Title IX problems and build up nonrevenue sports such as swimming and soccer while ensuring that the basketball and football teams were successful enough to support the enterprise.
The strategy required prodigious cash; by this year, Louisville's athletics budget was up to $104.5 million. "He treated his donors like investors," says Jurich's friend Larry Benz, a member of the Louisville Athletic Association, which oversees the department. Jurich built $280 million in arenas, playing fields and athletic offices by convincing rich people of the facilities' vital importance.
"I can give $5 million to stem cell research and it's gonna help stem cell research," says Dr. Mark Lynn, an optometry-chain owner whose name adorns the soccer complex. "I give $5 million to a soccer stadium and it's gonna help everything." Lynn says sports bring the school visibility.
Waldron, the sports marketing director, calls
Jurich "probably the finest leader I ever worked for," pointing out that he promoted women inside and outside the department. "He's a feminist, really," she says.
MUCH OF THE athletic department's finances was shrouded in secrecy, hidden from the Louisville Athletic Association and the board of trustees. Two former trustees told Outside the Lines that they were unaware of large real estate transactions involving the athletic department and the Louisville Foundation, the school's endowment, which raises money for education and research.
Dawn Heinecken, a professor who sits on the athletic association board, says
the board learned about the Adidas deal "after it was announced publicly. That was the first I heard about it."
James Ramsey, who was president of both the university and the foundation, resigned last year amid allegations that he mismanaged endowment funds. Ramsey and Jurich had a close working relationship:
Ramsey, in secret, approved additional compensation that earned Jurich an average of $2.77 million annually over the past seven years and approved several real estate transactions that benefited the athletic department. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Jurich's perks included tax "gross-ups" -- meaning the university paid some of his taxes -- membership in three country clubs and premium seats at the Kentucky Derby.
Jurich pulled in far more than the $1.4 million base salary that ranked him among the highest-paid ADs in the nation. Including other compensation, he earned $5.3 million in 2016, which, as The Courier-Journal points out, was more than the budgets of the biology, English, history and math departments. Jurich and his wife have vacation homes in Clearwater Beach and in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Their son Mark, a former pro baseball player, was paid an average of $133,545 to work as senior associate athletic director for development. To circumvent Louisville's nepotism policy, most of that salary was paid by the Louisville Foundation. Earlier this year, before the Adidas deal was announced, Jurich's daughter Haley, who has experience in sports marketing, was hired by the company to serve as a liaison between Adidas and Louisville. (She was initially placed on administrative leave after the FBI scandal and is planning to move to company headquarters in Portland, Oregon.) Pitino was to make $7.7 million this season in total pay. He is suing the Louisville Athletic Association for more than $35 million, as well as Adidas, which terminated a personal services contract that was believed to pay him well over $1 million annually.
And let's not overlook THIS gem:
The athletic department's unfettered growth was undented by the scandals that occurred under Jurich's watch. Jurich refused to fire Pitino despite a string of public embarrassments, including Pitino's affair with a woman who was later sent to prison for trying to extort him, and "Strippergate," in which a Pitino assistant coach, over a period of four years, brought in dancers and prostitutes to entertain recruits at a university dorm. Louisville is appealing NCAA sanctions for Strippergate and if denied will be stripped of 123 wins, including its 2013 national title.
In 2013, Jurich retained a former assistant football coach, even after the NCAA had sanctioned the coach for receiving and handing out thousands of dollars while at the University of Miami.
Jurich sought to neutralize the scandals and shape the athletic department's image by controlling the local media, according to interviews with more than half a dozen journalists and media executives -- many of whom requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals from Louisville, even with Jurich gone. They described consistent and aggressive efforts to influence coverage, including abusive calls to radio talk-show hosts and executives by Jurich and his surrogates; threats to get advertising pulled from stations; and attempts to influence hiring and firing. Jurich denies he sought to influence advertisers or pressure the media. Nearly all of the media members identified Bob Gunnell, a public relations specialist, as Jurich's main surrogate and attack dog. The Louisville athletic department has a sports information group that employs 11 people, but contracts obtained by Outside the Lines show Jurich paid Gunnell's outside PR firm, Boxcar, up to $130,000 per year dating to 2014. Shortly after Jurich was fired, Gunnell cut ties with the university. He now represents Jurich personally.
The Adidas deal quadrupled the company's commitment to Louisville in cash and gear and was a huge bet on Jurich's vision. The average annual compensation of the 10-year contract was exceeded only by Under Armour's deal with UCLA ($18.7 million) and Nike's deals with Ohio State ($16.8 million) and Texas ($16.7 million) -- universities with at least twice Louisville's enrollment.
Waldron says she was oblivious to the recruiting negotiations that allegedly were taking place simultaneously between representatives of Louisville and Adidas.
The next day, Jurich was summoned to the office of Postel, the interim president, who he says asked him to resign. Jurich refused. Postel then handed him a letter informing him that he'd been placed on administrative leave, pending a decision by the board of trustees. The meeting lasted roughly 90 seconds, Jurich says.
On Oct. 18, Jurich was fired by a 10-3 vote of the trustees. His termination letter, delivered by Postel, was a two-page screed. Jurich had created "a culture of tolerance," Postel wrote, entered into secret transactions "for your own financial or other benefit" and
engaged in "willful misconduct demonstrated through ineffective management, divisive leadership, unprofessional conduct, and a lack of collegiality best characterized as intimidation and bullying that extends from student government to the University's senior leadership. This has caused substantial damage to the University."
For the record, I am in favor of hiring Jurich. He won't be at UM for 20 years and he doesn't need to build us from ground zero. But THIS is what the old guard of the BOT fears, a guy who is powerful and will build his own power base, possibly raising more money than the University raises for academics.
You don't have to agree or like it, but if the BOT can find a four year old article that confirms their worst fears...you can at least understand why they are being so adamant in this BOT Civil War.
