AD's are judged on the winning the coaches they hire do. JP's had a great plan, raised a lot of money, and sold a ton of tickets by selling nothing more than hope, simply hope. Problem is he f'd up the football hire because simply put the guy didn't win and universally wasn't liked by the boosters because he had the personality of cardboard.
The product in the department isn't fine. You can't say that if you've watched fb and bball at all. the icon of isu athletics, the only coach he's hired who's won on a national scale just left us for a worse program. he retained bf but what else was he going to do. And when Minnesota (their coach could retire anytime) or Wisconsin (they haven't been winning as expected) comes calling, our other successful coach, the VB coach will be out there door as well same as our gymnastics coach, and our wrestling coach. now he doesn't have the money to fund those sports enough becuase his plans called for him to sell hope in football, which would translate to success on the field, which would become money on saturdays and booster donations, which then could be used to support the dept including those other sports. unfortunately his hire of chiz was a disaster and he's left trying to sell hope to those that have none.
I've watched both of them plenty, and yes, it is just fine.
ADs are judged on far more than the winning the coaches they hire do.
Firstly, he has made very responsible hires in the coaches he has hired. It's inconceivable to me that anyone would argue otherwise with any sort of valid position.
You want to fire the guy because the guys he hired didn't turn moribund programs around instantly? Nevermind that the Big XII got considerably better in the last couple years than it had been before the football coach was hired. Or that the basketball team had to basically start from scratch.
Quite frankly, ANY athletic department has to make money on football. It's the biggest cash cow in D1 sports. If you don't focus on football, you're losing money. Basketball isn't even close in terms of revenue generation. On one hand you say that he has sold football based on hope, but on the other you say he hasn't done enough to make money? Which is it? How do you expect him to make money? Bake sales?
At any rate, there is much more to it than just winning and losing. ISU's athletic department is, from all appearances, clean, and well run. We don't have felons on our football team. We don't have massive academic fraud going on. From what I can tell, we don't have basketball players smoking pot on chartered flights while the coach road trips his way to away games stopping whenever he gets thirsty.
I, for one, am happy with the athletic department as a whole. I'd love to see more winning on the field/court, but I'd rather hold my head up high and not have to read about our players getting arrested, or our program being investigated by the NCAA every month on cbssports.com.
