Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The bottom line
My mailbag ... How incensed was I about Indiana's firing of Gerry DiNardo with two years and $1 million left on his contract? Well, in addition to ranting about it here, I also sent a letter to IU president Dr. Adam Herbert.
...I am uninterested in giving to the Alumni Association, IUSF, the library, the School of Journalism, the Varsity Club, the athletic department and any other Indiana University-related endeavor until further notice....[N]othing warms my heart more than seeing IU fire Gerry DiNardo after just three years on the job (and he had a short recruiting year his first season), and two years left on his contract. As unfair a decision I believe it was, it was even more fiscally irresponsible. Just how many coaches and ADs have been fired over the past seven years with significant money left on their contracts......I had high hopes when you came in as IU President, and I still hope you can lift the sagging academic reputation of the school. But when you allow an athletic department to swallow as much money as it does, I have to wonder.....I hope you and Greenspan find that special football coach that will lead Indiana to the promised land of the Motor City Bowl, because nothing is more exciting than a bunch of university boosters spending Christmas Eve in Detroit. As your athletic director expected bigger miracles from DiNardo than Notre Dame's Kevin White expected from Tyrone Willingham, let me recommend a Franciscan Friar or a Carmelite priest......P.S. I enjoyed watching my wife's alma mater make the Sweet 16 in both men's and women's basketball. While her school's football team needs some work, they're no worse than Indiana. Her school at least had the good sense to swallow the athletic department into the university's control. Costs are down. And Vanderbilt doesn't get public money.
Well, I received a response from Curtis Simic, the president of the IU Foundation, the school's fundraising department yesterday. I thank him for responding, but he has some flawed logic. Among the highlights:
...What is indisputable is the fact that attendance last fall at all football games was the lowest since 1962, homecoming drew only 22,000 and the average home game attendance was 28,000. Athletic income is driven by football and basketball revenues, so something had to be done to improve those figures...
Attendance has been down since Bill Mallory has been head coach, but figures have never been this dismal. I agree something has to be done. Here's a solution:
- Ease alcohol restrictions around Memorial Stadium. With a better "party atmosphere" surrounding football games at IU, more students, alumni, IU fans and opposing fans will be more likely to attend games when they don't have to worry about excise police.
- Become friendlier with fraternities and sororities. As it is, fraternities have to dance around a zillion rules that didn't exist when I was there when entertaining alumni. Alumni get uncomfortable with all kinds of rules because they'd just as soon not be liable for any rule breakage. Thus, they'll prefer to stay home
- Hold six major concerts at IU in the spring and summer. No one uses the football stadium from March until August, when Bloomington is gorgeous. You could put a major concert in there, charge $75-$100 a pop, and fill the stadium. Ticket prices for football games average $30 at IU. The concerts could bring in almost as much money as football games.
There. Now that I solved that problem, let's read on:
It is unfortunate that you think IU's academic reputation is "sagging." It is not a generally-held belief. National rankings are elusive at best, but we seem to be doing fairly well in most areas. We are aware that competition is constant and hard work goes into just "holding our own" in some fields.
To start with, Simic's contention that my belief is not "generally-held" is laughable. Generally? What does that mean? It's a vague term, because he has nothing to back it up. Ahh, he mentions national rankings. I did some research, and found the 2005 U.S. News and World Report's college rankings. U.S. News and World Report's rankings are "generally" regarded as one of the leading indicators of a college's reputation.
Let's see where IU ranks in the Big Ten, minus University of Chicago, which still belongs to the CIC, the Big Ten's academic arm. National rankings are in parentheses:
- (11) Northwestern
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We are no. 11 nationally in Fulbrights. Over the past three years, we've had two Rhodes Scholars, four Nobel and two Pulitzer prizes, and 17 fellows of the National Academies of Sciences. The Kelley School [of Business], Music School, SPEA [Public and Environmental Affairs], Education and many COAS departments (and the School of Journalism) consistently rank among the best in the nation. The list goes on.
OK, fair enough. But it's a bottom-line business, isn't it? IU is the worst university in the Big Ten. It's a good thing the academic types do such meaningless work compared to the athletic department. Otherwise, they'd all be fired.
Let me also add that the football team beat two ranked opponents, including one on the road. The football team was on national TV several times and players this year earned Chevrolet Player of the Game, or whatever honors ESPN and ABC give out. Experts like Brent Musberger, Lee Corso and Mike Gleason have said great things about Gerry DiNardo's program. Indiana was ranked in the top half of Division I by the Sagarin Ratings. Over the last five years, IU has produced three NFL Pro Bowlers, a Heisman Trophy finalist, a Silver Football winner, and an NFL offensive coordinator. Indiana led the Big Ten in scoring in 2001. By those standards, Indiana's football program is as wildly successful as the university.
