The "Climate study" that I've been talking about on my website for over a month now is basically a top-down stripping of the entire department to figure out exactly what's wrong with it. It's like we have a 1990 Chevy Camaro that's been beat to **** in the past few years and we need to take it all apart and rebuild it.
It's not going to be fun, but it's necessary. The study itself is almost done, but the decisions based off the study will play out over the next couple months. What will result is a streamlined athletic department that has (hopefully) all the right people in place, or at least eliminates the wrong ones from their positions.
Several problems have been created over the past two decades since we made the jump in 1990. I'll give you guys a brief rundown of the issues up to today. I'm also including a couple good things to tie up any loose ends in the story.
- 1990. The department moves to Division I, despite requests from the faculty senate to postpone the move upward a couple years so they can identify and fix the facilities problems. I have a copy of that senate meeting's minutes from 1988. The faculty overwhelmingly supported a move to D-I (much to my surprise), but did not want to make that move until they built a new basketball arena, baseball stadium, and explored football. The wanted the program to use the move to D-I as a way to raise the money for the facilities, but the program went ahead and moved up despite a lack of real facilities.
- 2001. Chancellor Nancy Zimpher goes to the state and secures funds to build the Klotsche Center Pavilion on campus. It's something that will go a long way toward fixing our issues - training space, strength and conditioning space, locker rooms for most teams, offices for athletics - but despite pleas from the athletics director, the new facility only accounted for those things. Bud Haidet wanted to raze the entire facility and build completely anew, but Zimpher didn't push for it. Instead of having a facility like a super version of the Kress Center, imagine the Kress if it had no basketball arena, no practice courts and no new natatorium. Basically, it was half a facility.
- 2003. Due to Bruce Pearl's suggestion, Bud agrees to move home games from the ancient, on-campus Klotsche Center arena (built 1976 on the cheap) to the downtown U.S. Cellular Arena. Milwaukee signs a deal that is extremely pro-Wisconsin Center District, and the lease is for roughly $500k annually with $2 off of every ticket sold. Milwaukee is quickly in the red.
- 2006. The Panthers move into the new Klotsche Center Pavilion, which is a state-of-the-art facility but as I said lacks the amenities to be a real boon for the program. The structural deficit grows as Milwaukee's only revenue sport, men's basketball, has to dig out of a $500,000 hole just to save itself. Men's basketball still has to support the rest of the department.
- 2006. Following a second straight year with victories in the NCAA Tournament, Milwaukee is in danger of losing a coach again. Jeter is interviewed by Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard, a friend from Madison. Pollard's offer ($400k) is matched by Bud Haidet, and Jeter stays. Each year until he retires (07, 08, 09), Haidet signs Jeter to a one-year extension, so his contract expires in 2016.
- 2007. Chuck Lang, the second in charge of the department and head of finance, leaves for a similar job at San Diego State. The university hires no replacement, but does for associate AD Deanna D'Abbraccio, who leaves to be AD at Mount Mary, a women's school, on Milwaukee's northwest side. Kathy Litzau is promoted to that position from her job as volleyball head coach. It will be three years before a replacement is hired for Lang.
- 2008. Bud Haidet announces his retirement, and plans to find a replacement quickly begin. A search and screen committee (that I'm on) picks from a small pool of candidates (88) because they limit the pool to those who have worked in intercollegiate athletics. Prominent businessmen with no sports ties are cut out.
- 2009. George Koonce is hired by a university with big eyes. He's a former Packer with a lot of charisma and he's a quick riser. Koonce shows fairly early on that he does not have the ability to lead an athletics program, and he has little interest in fundraising, the reason he was brought on. Koonce spends much of his time at games and events with his eyes buried in his Blackberry. In this time, the only corporate sponsorship Koonce brings in is a $15,000 deal with Johnsonville Brats.
- 2009. Koonce's inability leads several employees to need to pick up the slack. However, due to the fact that many in the department were used to performing at minimum capacity, several things fall through the cracks. Koonce begins butting heads with employees, with a rift growing in the department between Koonce supporters and those who were loyal to the way Bud Haidet ran things (Jeter is in this group).
- 2009. Koonce fires Jon Coleman from the men's soccer team for lack of success, but also because of allegations from students regarding verbal abuse. He is replaced by Chris Whalley. No one is disappointed in these events, although the soccer community overwhelmingly pushes for an alum to take the reins. Of the five candidates, Whalley is the only one who didn't attend UWM.
- 2010. Koonce finally gets the green light and hires Charlie Gross, the long-awaited replacement for Chuck Lang in finance. Gross immediately begins accounting for the department, snipping and preparing the budget to be downsized. It's a process that takes over a year.
- 2010. Koonce, with help from friendly members of the Student Association, pushes for a student vote to bring a $25 increase to the student segregated fees that will be entirely used to build a basketball arena. The news of this is broken by a handsome student reporter. The student fee wins in a landslide vote in one of the largest attended elections in SA history.
- 2010. Koonce, along with assistant Ricky Babcock and corporate sales manager John Stewart, begins a process to try and bring about a baseball stadium through Major League Baseball. MLB has a program that builds facilities in the inner city to try and bring more African-Americans into the sport. It would include summer camps for young kids that wouldn't just teach them how to play baseball but also get them interested in all the kinds of jobs that surround the sport, such as PA announcing, broadcasting, media relations, coaching, personnel and more. It is a major success in cities such as Detroit and Washington. The plan falls through when Koonce resigns.
- 2010. Allegations surface that members of the Student Association who supported Koonce's measure to add the $25 fee were taken, by Koonce, to his suite at Green Bay Packers games over the fall. These allegations are never substantiated, but once Koonce is gone several of these students, including Kyle Duerstein, attempt to torpedo the arena.
- 2010. The department rift grows under the leadership of Koonce. With the men's and women's basketball programs seemingly stagnant, Koonce wants both Jeter and Botham out. However, with a major structural and budget deficit, Koonce doesn't have the money to fire either. Instead, Koonce tells Jeter and Botham that he plans to fire each of their assistants and that he will pick one replacement for each. Any bball fan knows that one assistant per team doesn't work - even the lowest of low D-I programs have two assistants and a DOBO. The plan is for Jeter and Botham to quit, therefore allowing the program to move forward without having to pay their contracts (of which Jeter is on the docket through 2016). It's obviously a major dick move, and one that would blacklist the program in the coaching community. Bo Ryan is a very respected coach nationally, and Jeter is as good as a surrogate son to Bo. In the end, Koonce is forced on leave and eventually "resigns" due to rumors of painkillers. His time in Milwaukee is unfulfilling for either side; during his short stay, his wife Tunisia dies of breast cancer.
- 2010. Dave Gilbert, the head of the UWM Foundation, takes over the department in the interim because the leadership is not ready to replace Koonce. At the time, the university is missing a Chancellor, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, and Athletic Director. These are the top three people in charge of athletics. Carlos Santiago left as Chancellor to take over the Hispanic College Fund in Washington DC, but not before he fired Helen Mamarchev from VC for remarks behind closed doors in a staff meeting. Gilbert's interim position is to bridge the gap.
- 2010. Despite several months as a rudder-less ship, on the field the programs are doing well. Volleyball has gotten even better since Susie Johnson replaced Kathy Litzau, women's soccer became a nationally-elite program (finished top 15, would be top 10 in 2011), men's soccer was on the up-and-up having won each of their Cup matches (LeWang with NIU, Chancellor's with GB, Milwaukee with Marquette), men's basketball began a season that ended with the regular season championship and an NIT appearance, baseball won the conference championship, track and field continued to wipe the floor with everyone, swimming began winning titles, and tennis started to rise. Pretty much every program was moving up (except women's basketball, obviously).
- 2010. Michael Lovell, the new Dean of Engineering, becomes interim chancellor. The Dean job was his first in administration, and he was here for all of several months before taking the interim chancellor gig. Coming from the University of Pittsburgh, Lovell knew the blueprint for the kind of university Milwaukee should push to become, and he began putting those moves in motion. Lovell strikes everyone as someone who "gets it," and eventually has the interim tag ripped off.
- 2010. Lovell begins the process to hire a new athletic director and new Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs (we'll call is VCSA). The search and screen committee buildup for both is unchanged, something that I believe led to the committee picking the wrong person twice in a row for AD.
- 2010. The soccer programs, headed by Michael Moynihan and David Nikolic of women's soccer, have raised enough money to remake Engelmann Field to a fieldturf stadium. The end result is beautiful (one of only 5 fields like it in the western hemisphere), but the programs lost most of their home games to the road and neighboring Shorewood HS because the field is not ready when play begins. The construction crew is not given an exact date to finish, so the project takes three months longer than initially planned.
- 2010. Men's soccer starter Andrew Wiedabach quits the team. This is not announced and no reason is given.
- 2010. Michael Laliberte is hired as VCSA from Boise State University, and as the AD's immediate supervisor takes a major interest in athletics. He reportedly supports the push from alumni and donors to bring back football and he begins putting things in motion to establish the campus as more traditional with such things as a Greek Row (unfinished but coming).
- 2011. Rick Costello is hired as the new athletic director, coming here from Rutgers University. Costello was the only candidate who had been top dog, but he also had his hands in a lot of major projects while at Rutgers and South Florida. We thought it meant fundraising; turns out he was more of a numbers-cruncher.
- 2011. Costello and Gross begin systematically cutting the fat in the athletics department, and they bring the budget deficit to a close. The department can begin paying down the now enormous debt from our move to the U.S. Cellular Arena (up to about $8 million at this point).
- 2011. Men's soccer player DJ Alexander quits the soccer team in the middle of the spring season, but does not speak with anyone in athletics besides head coach Chris Whalley and assistant coach Benji Shepherd. Alexander transfers at the end of the semester.
- 2011. At the urging of the chancellor, the UWM Student Association's Segregated Fees Committee approves a major increase in funding to athletics. Full-time students were paying $77.75 per semester, but that number jumps to $109 in 2012-13 and eventually tops out at $119 in 2014-15. The university now looks like it's going to be able to pay down its structural deficit as well, with $1.9 million in new money coming in the 2012-13 school year. The department begins paying down the structural deficit.
- 2011. Several small decisions by the athletics program begin to add up. The men's soccer team schedules the Milwaukee Cup match with Marquette right up against Pantherfest, the concert at the Summerfest grounds that garners over 10,000 students attending. In other years, the Milwaukee Cup will have upwards of 3,000-plus in the stands. This year it only reached 1,200. Midnight Madness, despite being scheduled in mid-September when the Brewers had a 10-game lead in the division, goes right up against Game 5 of the NLCS. Over 1,000 attend and the event is a success, but many wonder what the crowd would have been if it were standalone.
- 2011. Rick Costello announces a study by an architectural firm to finally put together the plans for the basketball arena fund that has been collecting money since fall 2010. The study is unfinished and delayed at the end of 2011.
- 2011. Shortly after the first study begins, Costello spends $87,000 on an exploratory study to look into adding several sports to the program. Alumni and donors have put major pressure on Costello (and Koonce before him) to deliver football to the university, but the study also includes revenue sports in ice hockey and lacrosse. This study is delayed in 2012 and eventually canceled after Costello resigns.
- 2011. Men's soccer players, after consulting with alum and volunteer coach Martin Castro, decide to go to Rick Costello with complaints regarding the coaching of Chris Whalley. They contend that Whalley is verbally abusive, that he has used their grades to verbally reprimand them in front of the team, that he gives preferential treatment to English players (Whalley himself is English), and that he routinely used racial slurs regarding black players on the team and opposing teams. Robbie Boyd, one of the best players on the team, quits. Boyd is black.
- 2011. Women's soccer head coach Michael Moynihan and associate head coach David Nikolic resign to take the same jobs at Northwestern. Moynihan's mother is the namesake for Engelmann Stadium's new field, and Nikolic is an alum who has spent 16 years with the program. Of everyone in athletics, no one had stronger roots in Milwaukee than these two.
- 2012. Castro is contacted by Kathy Litzau, associate AD, and told that the AD has decided to push forward with Whalley as head coach of the soccer program. Castro conveys that this result is unsatisfactory, and the players will consider other options. Litzau leaves it at that. Castro, on behalf of the players, goes public with their complaints, garnering a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and on local news broadcasts. Whalley is suspended, as is assistant Benji Shepherd. Later, Whalley is fired and Shepherd reinstated - apparently Shepherd wasn't part of the complaints.
- 2012. Recognizing that there are major issues in the athletics program, Chancellor Lovell orders a climate study in which every employee in the athletics program is interviewed about all the issues in athletics. The plan is to identify and fix every issue conceivable in the program. All interviews were done under confidentiality and the process brought fruit.
- 2012. Sandy Botham steps out of the women's basketball program to take a job in the Alumni Association. Of all the programs, Botham's team is the one that has taken the biggest step backward, and
- 2012. Rick Costello's impending ouster is broken by PantherU under the premium subscriber section on April 14th, but doesn't become public until April 23rd. Costello resigns, and the university says that it plans to assess the way they plan to replace him before doing so.
What remains is several issues. For one, the rift created when Koonce was in charge still exists to some extent. People aren't happy with other people in the department, and relationships are petty.
According to their co-workers, several employees in the department are skating by with the least amount of work necessary to keep their jobs. Whereas Bruce Pearl went above and beyond to try and get people going to games, no one in the department seems to think above and beyond is necessary. For everything Pearl was, he was a hell of a salesman - lots of fans of the program are so because Pearl personally took an interest in making them fans. Even if it's not true, the people that talk would be making things up about co-workers.
We'll keep this timeline going on PantherU once other events turn up.