grizindabox said:
OrgonGriz said:
Interesting posts all of them. I was listening to sports radio on way home yesterday and the topic was UM and how in the 90's and 00's they were a top dog program in the BSC and FCS and then they started to slide. They host said that UM lost site of what was going on around them. They relied on the we are UM bases for to long and before they knew it many programs had caught up and passed by leaving UM in catch up mode. UM is just getting to a point of serious relevance in the BSC and FCS again. The host said UM was not competitive on coach salaries and made a couple not so good coaching choices because of it. Facilities got tired and not on par with other programs.
Is this a future post about UM football?
While the radio host was probably correct about some things, and there are a lot of reasons for UW falling behind, paying coaches was not one of the issues.
UW problems started when the Pac 10 and NCAA imposed sanction on UW, which Don James felt were unfair, and he quit. Ironically in the late '80's UW was falling behind other programs, and risked being irrelevant because James recruited size instead of speed and couldn't compete. James started recuriting more for speed, hitting California harder and stealing recruits from the Cali Pac 10 schools, but in the end it was a local kid who brought down the program by accepting a free trans-am from a booster. Side note if Bill walsh had not been re-hired by Stanford in 1992 there most likely woudl not have been an NCAA investigation, UW would have remained a national power, and Oregon would likely still be a footnote in Pac 12 football.
When James quit UW promoted D-Cord Lambright to head coach instead of doign a national search. Lambright was popular with the boosters, but not a great coach, and not really able to recruit when Don's players left. Meanwhile UW had hired a new athletic director from USC, and after UW finished 6-6 with a loss to Air Force in the Oahu bowl she fired Lambright and brought in Rick Neuheisal from Colorado for a over a million per year, at the time making him one of the top 5 top paid coaches in the country.
Neuheisal wasn't a popular hire, partly because of his questionable ethics, and mostly because he was a UCLA guy and not a UW guy, so the boosters hated him The fact that it was Hedges, a USC girl, that hired him when she fired a UW guy just made it worse. But he did win, and within 2 years had UW back in the Rose bowl and #3 in the country. Then things started to fall apart. Players were getting arrested, RN had his gambling "issue" the boosters and local press hated him and took every step to get rid of him. Eventually he was fired (and later sued UW and won for wrongful termination), and Keith Gilbertson was promoted from OC to Head Coach.
I don't know what UW paid Gilbertson, but whatever it was, it was way too much. Gilby was a nice guy, boosters loved him. He was a Seattle area guy who had been a head coach at Idaho and Cal among others. He didn't have ethical issues like Slick Rick, but he also wasn't a good head coach and had trouble recruiting. His players didn't stay out of trouble either, and after a 1-10 season he was let go for the savior that would clean up UW, get rid of the criminals, and "win the right way", Tyrone Willingham.
Willingham, hired for $1.4 million per year, was of course a disaster, but at that point all of UW athletics was a disaster. Hedges (never popular with boosters or media in Seattle) was fired because of the RN and prescription drug scandals, the NCAA had just extended UW probation over the RN gambling (many feel that if UW had supported RN on the gambling issue in the first place the NCAA would have backed down, as it technically wasn't against the rules and he pre-cleared it) and the Seattle Times wrote monthly hit pieces about the program, and there was a strong sentiment to de-emphasize football at UW. Mark Emmert had returned to Seattle as the new president (now head of NCAA) and was determined to error on the side of cautious.
Willingham ran a clean program, and was doing things "the right way" but never won. He wasn't a good recruiter, and with USC rolling and Oregon building a Pro franchise in Eugene, plus Stanford making good hires, UW never had a chance. Eventually the boosters had had enough of losing, and TW, and demanded a change. Emmert hired Sarkisian for $2 million a year plus incentives.
Sark appears to have things headed in the right direction (Saturday could be huge for UW and Sark) but he needs to win more than 7 games per year. UW has a new stadium that would never have been built with Willingham, and the local boosters and media seem to support Sark for now.
Clearly the problem at UW was not the coaches pay, but rather making bad hires - hires that didn't have the proper balance between winning and ethics, and good relationships with the boosters, and the media. UW made bad choices that were popular with boosters, and it cost them. UW made choices that were not popular with the boosters and media, and it cost them. UW was not cautious enough about hiring coaches that would run a clean program and stay in NCAA good graces and it cost them. UW was too cautious about running a clean program to the point of not being competitive, and it cost them.
The real lesson is that you have to have good people who do a good job and are able to evaluate the people they hire, and not make the popular hire the boosters like, or the safe hire, but the right hire. yes there are some direct similarities to what has happened at UM here.
