The hiring of Oregon’s new Athletic Director Pat Kilkenny – who will take over when outgoing Athletic Director Bill Moos’ largely successful 12-year tenure ends on March 31 – has produced a variety of responses ranging from great excitement and a revitalized feeling to skepticism, doubts and even some outrage.
Kilkenny, the 55-year-old former CEO of Arrowhead General Insurance Agency out of San Diego, has donated nearly $6 million to various causes for Oregon athletics and brings a successful business background to Eugene, having built Arrowhead into an organization with written premiums of nearly $1 billion per year.
He has worked to nestle himself alongside student fans, interacting with them at home games in The Pit, and just yesterday he announced he will pay for tickets and a charter bus for students traveling to watch the Ducks play in the NCAA tournament in Spokane, Wash. this weekend.
Kilkenny is expected to revive Oregon’s plans to build a new basketball arena, which carries a $200 million price tag and will replace the aging McArthur Court. The plans stalled under Moos due to a lack of funding.
Yet some question the decision, expressing concern about Kilkenny’s lack of athletic director experience – or even a college degree – and the continuing perceived imbalance between athletics and academics this hire reflects, some of the University’s top faculty say.
“It’s out of the box, sure,” University President Dave Frohnmayer said of the hire. “But Oregon’s used to doing things in a sometimes visibly, unorthodox way. But did we make a good choice? Boy, I’m happy with it.”
Some on the academic side say this hire is the last in a long line of questionable practices favoring athletics.
“The business of letting a major fund raiser become the force of the athletic department is just the last straw,” 25-year professor Tom Givon said. “They go ahead and take this guy who has nothing to do with us – nothing to do with us. It’s just a money bag. Excuse me, but I’m sick of seeing money bags creating this place into an athletic empire.”
The Search Process
Following the announcement of Bill Moos’ buyout and resignation in November, Frohnmayer compiled a search committee headed by Allan Price, the vice president of University advancement and including seven others who were assigned the task of scouring the country in what Price termed “an aggressive search process.”
The committee compiled 50 to 100 names after extensive, exploratory conversations with people in the NCAA, every conference commissioner, sitting athletic directors of nearly every major program in the country, sports business associations and various coaching associations, Price said.
Both long-term options and short-term options were considered and compiled, Price said, and then presented to the president in a three and a half hour meeting in early February. The long-term options included people with extensive athletic director experience including sitting athletic directors and the short-term were those who “would come in and accomplish a specific set of agenda items” defined by Frohnmayer in part from an oral report of the athletic department’s status given by Ted Leland, the former Stanford athletic director.
The report noted the immediate need for a new basketball arena and the need to reestablish connections with some significant donors.
Price said Kilkenny’s name emerged during the course of the process as a very serious possibility for the short-term option after it was recommended by sources inside and outside the athletic department.
Among those solicited for nominations was former University President and current president of the NCAA, Dr. Myles Brand. Frohnmayer neglected to say whether Kilkenny was on the list of nominations Brand supplied and Brand declined to comment for this story.
The search committee did not make recommendations following the meeting with the president; instead they simply provided options and information in which Frohnmayer eventually selected Kilkenny as his choice to guide the department.
“I think when the president decided that the near-term option was the route he wanted to go, that Pat certainly was perfectly situated for that,” Price said. “I can’t imagine a stronger candidate.”
Richard Sundt, associate professor of art history, who, like Givon, was one of 92 faculty to sign the letter citing an imbalance of academics and athletics that appeared in The Register-Guard on Jan .14., says he was surprised by the hiring.
“I thought we were looking for a full athletic director that would be a long-term thing, not just a two year thing, that he would have all the credentials you need to be an athletic director,” Sundt said. “I thought there were a lot of irregularities in the (search) process. My gut feeling is that it was kind of a predetermined thing in the mind of the president that Pat Kilkenny was probably going to be the person.”
Frohnmayer, who said the feedback of the hiring has been 10 to 1 positive, said neither he, nor Kilkenny, considered Kilkenny a candidate until late in the search process and that Kilkenny had to “be drafted” – meaning he did not apply for the position.
Experience not necessary
Missing from Oregon’s athletic director job description and requirements posted online is the need for prior athletic director experience.
Though Kilkenny was involved in various athletic organizations in the San Diego area, he does not boast any direct athletic director experience – his strong point being his business background.
“You would think you’d want your athletic director, first of all, to have a background in college athletics because there are just so many issues that are involved other than purely financial ones that athletic directors need to be aware of regarding NCAA rules and regs,” said Peter A. French, author of Ethics and College Sports: Ethics, Sports and the University.
Frohnmayer said two other schools, Michigan and Purdue, both made similar hires.
While Moos, who has aided Kilkenny’s transition, said the hire is untraditional, he believes Kilkenny’s familiarity with Oregon through philanthropy and having attended the University from 1970-73, will help him ease in to the department, which was certainly a priority for Frohnmayer and the search committee.
Moos added that the hardest part for Kilkenny will be learning “how the business is different.”
“When you’re working in higher education, there are parameters and there are restrictions,” Moos said. “You’re always in the public eye.”
Also not in the job description, but many assumed it implied, was the need for a college degree. Kilkenny attended the University for three years but left school early after receiving a job offer to sell life insurance that required him to travel often.
“Bottom line is I’m disappointed I didn’t finish it, mostly in myself,” Kilkenny said. “But I don’t think I’m a worse person or a worse manager because of that. I think it’s unfortunate that President Frohnmayer kind of has to defend me on that front. I’m a little embarrassed over it.”
Said Frohnmayer: “The truth is, in the school of hard knocks, he’s performed at the graduate level. Let’s give the guy a break here. A degree is a proxy for what you should learn.”
Many faculty, including philosophy professor Cheyney Ryan said they assumed “that you have to have an undergraduate degree to be a coach in the program.”
According to multiple newspaper reports, former Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Tice was turned away from the head coaching vacancy at the University of Minnesota because he lacked a college degree required for all university administrators.
“I think it’s just common sense if part of your job is saying something’s important, it’s probably useful that you have done it yourself,” Ryan said.
Jan Boxill, the director of the Parr Center for Ethics and senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of North Ca
rolina and editor of the Sports Ethics: An Anthology, said Kilkenny’s lack of a degree means his word could hold less weight when it comes to academic-related issues.
“He’s basically not in position to say ‘stay in school,’” Boxill said. “For most people, to be an academic adviser…they have to have a Master’s Degree. Yet now you have somebody over them that doesn’t have even a B.A.? His credibility with students will be reduced as well as with the University.”
Frohnmayer said Kilkenny’s lack of a degree was not a factor in the search process.
“I will absolutely accept responsibility if a student athlete looks at me and says ‘well, you didn’t do it,’” Kilkenny said. “I’m going to say it was a mistake I made. I wish I had a chance to do it over again. It’s just something I have to live with.”
Precedents
A commonly used example of a precedent when discussing the hiring of Kilkenny is Bill Martin at the University of Michigan, who is in his seventh-year in the department after assuming the position with no prior athletic director experience, though he did serve on the U.S. Olympic Committee.
But the situations with Martin and Kilkenny differed in at least a few respects: Martin was hired on an interim basis, later becoming athletic director after leading the department out of a tumultuous state, and he was not considered a major booster to the athletic department, which, French believes, is very problematic.
“It’s very questionable to have a booster become your athletic director on the grounds that boosters tend to be obviously involved in the financial side of college sports, which itself is one of the trickiest and ethically dubious parts of the college sports scene,” French said.
Boxill said there is unusually high potential for a concern with a major financial supporter overseeing the entire department.
“On the surface, one would have to look at whether there’s a conflict of interest there,” Boxill said. “There are so many rules about what boosters can and can’t do and now he’s blurred that distinction perhaps.”
Frohnmayer believes coming from the very compliant insurance business speaks volumes about Kilkenny.
“The insurance industry…is one of the most regulated industries in the United States,” Frohnmayer said. “If there’s anyone who comes in with experience with how to keep a program clean, ethical, on the straight and narrow, it’d be someone with Pat’s background.”
Martin said he believes Kilkenny’s lack of a college degree and Kilkenny’s status as major booster are non-issues.
“All I can say is you have somebody who was extremely successful in the business world and many of those skills are transferable to a major athletic department,” said Martin, who added that Kilkenny’s hire didn’t surprise him and that the lack of an athletic director background, at least in his experience, can be overcome. “As long as the president can always pull the plug, I don’t see a problem.”
The business-first approach and hiring successful businessmen for major athletic departments concerns Boxill.
“The problem with that is, even though we say athletics is a big business, athletics on campus is supposed to fit the educational mission,” she said. “My concern is that if you have someone who doesn’t understand the depth of the constituents here, because it’s the student-athletes who are affected and the coaches, and if you run it like a business, my worry would be, how is that going to affect the constituents?”
An arena-driven hire
Kilkenny termed the new arena his “pet project.” He’s already donated $1.5 million to the project for planning and development, but funding stalled elsewhere stalled under Moos, primarily due to the lack of contribution from prominent donor and former Nike CEO Phil Knight.
Frohnmayer cited “problems in the relationship” between Knight and Moos as one possible factor for Knight’s reluctance to donate to the project. Moos called the project out of reach for his tenure.
“The project’s been stalled too long,” Frohnmayer said. “Where there have been donors who have been disaffected, (we need) to bring them back in the fold. The short-term agenda is really so important that focusing on someone who can come in quickly…turned out to be a preeminent consideration.”
Leland’s report to Frohnmayer noted the need for a new basketball arena, which carries a $200 million price tag, but could take the athletic department from a self-sustaining operation to a self-sufficient one.
Frohnmayer and Price both noted that Kilkenny’s status as a donor could aid in his ability to fund the project.
“People will give to a charitable cause because Pat Kilkenny said you should do it,” Frohnmayer said. “It’s a good thing.”
Now the question becomes whether Kilkenny can get Knight to buy into the project.
“I like and respect Phil a lot,” Kilkenny said. “I think we’ve been mischaracterized as close friends because we just don’t know each other that well. But there isn’t anything I know about Phil Knight that I don’t like.”
He added: “I don’t think it’s fair to focus on Phil for every major gift. I don’t want to have an athletic department that looks to him first and everyone else second. If he wants to do it, how great would that be?”
But the fact remains – Knight is a huge piece missing from the puzzle, which raises the question for some around campus of just how much this hiring was meant to appease Knight?
“Obviously, Phil’s been one of the University’s, historically, most important donors both for athletics and academics and we want him to feel engaged with the University and feel that we’re on the right track both academically and otherwise,” Frohnmayer said.
Sundt said: “It looks to me what we have hired is a person to do just one thing and that is to get Mr. Knight to contribute $235 million or whatever,” said Sundt who also questions whether Oregon needs such a lavish arena to be “a venue for Nike to celebrate its sports.” “It looks like a one-track thing.”
Professor Givon said: “That’s what we care about. We see a conspiracy between the administration and Phil Knight and whoever glorifies support of athletics.”
Oregon State Athletic Director Bob De Carolis said that, given Oregon’s need to get the arena started, Kilkenny made sense.
“If the short-term goal is to move the arena forward and if he’s able to not only make sure Phil Knight is involved with the process but other people, I think that’s a good thing,” De Carolis said.
Others expressed concern of hiring an athletic director with a potentially narrow focus.
“If you’ve got someone who is a booster and is prepared to take on the building of an arena, then why not appoint that person to that specific role as a sort of development officer?” French said. “Why make them athletic director, which has all kinds of other obligations and expectations. That’s the kind of thing that I would think would be more responsible to do. It just simply strikes me that this one thing may be taking priority over all other obligations of an athletic director.”
Price said nearly every option was considered during the search process.
Perceptions of hire
Did Kilkenny, having contributed to the buyout of Moos’ contract, essentially pay for his job? Are the donors now running the department?
Perhaps the greatest drawbacks of Kilkenny’s hiring were perception issues those involved have had to deal with, Price said.
“If anything, it was a caution because obviously that issue was going to be raised,” Price said in regards to the buyout, noting that Kilkenny was not a potential replacement when it transpired. “We all felt like that was such a separate issue that, despite what might be a perception problem, there was no fact problem.
“When you look at what Pat brings to the table, it becomes clear his advantages vastly outweigh the concerns, especially because the concerns are really perception issues.”
Kilkenny said he contributed to the buyout after
Price and Frohnmayer approached him about the need for a change of direction within the athletics department but that he was “flattered” when his name surfaced as a potential candidate later on.
Frohnmayer said the buyout was “so transparently a matter of public of record that I hope no one would go down that road very far” of assuming Kilkenny paid for his job.
“That’s crap. Simple,” Frohnmayer said. “He didn’t have the slightest clue any of the time he’s been a donor. He didn’t have a clue he’d be asked. And I certainly didn’t.
“The fact that he had been part of Bill Moos’ contract buyout, that was an obvious sort of ‘will people think he tried to buy his way into this job?’ Absolutely not. But again you have to deal with perceptions.”
And the perceptions linger and could damage the credibility of the University, at least from the outside world, Boxill says.
“There’s three things you have to consider, whoever you hire, and that’s integrity, ethics and credibility,” Boxill said. “Has the University upheld every one of these? If they can, after investigation with a clean conscience, say yes, then that’s OK. On the face of it, I’d say it looks the conflict of interest would be an ethical one and the credibility, given that he was part of the buyout, seem a little strained as well.”
The hiring also raises the question of whether donors are now in control of the department.
“I don’t think the boosters are running it, I think it’s a recognition that in an era of dwindling state support for both academics and athletics that boosters have a significant role to play in the athletic department’s success,” said Paul Swangard, Managing Director of the Warsaw Center. “The idea that donors now have a bat phone to the athletic director is not really thinking through how this organization operates and, in a lot of respects, unfair to Pat who I think will lead this as he sees fit, not as the donors see fit.”
Moos believes given Oregon’s past record and the rest of the department being staffed with many professionals, there is no reason for concern.
“I’m sure the president’s as comfortable as I am that nothing of that type of behavior will go on,” Moos said. “We’ve got a reputation here at Oregon and we’ve built a wonderful program on integrity.”
De Carolis added, “As an athletic director, you just have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and make sure you’re doing the right thing and make sure you let those people know that (donations) come without any strings attached and if you can’t do it that way, then you don’t give.”
Sundt, however, remains disturbed.
“I am concerned that donors do seem to run the athletic department,” he said. “When you have what appears to be an arrangement of a resignation of Moos, who has done a good job, then you have Kilkenny buying him out, then he gets the job, there seems to be some kind of backroom dealing here.”
Athletics vs. Academics
Kilkenny’s hiring came nearly one month after 92 faculty signed a letter that appeared in the Register-Guard noting the imbalance between athletics and academics.
For some, the hire is further proof of that imbalance.
“Athletics represents the fact that Johnson Hall doesn’t have the focus right,” said Givon, who noted that Oregon was second rate when he arrived and is now fourth rate. “I’m not against athletics. I’m just against the disproportionate distribution of resources and attention.”
Said Sundt: “It could always be creative for financing athletics but never the same creativity goes into academics and that is really quite disturbing.”
Price refuted that claim by noting the many projects on campus funded entirely from private donations. He said the frustrations of the faculty represent a very real problem – one regarding a lack of state funding – but athletics and donors certainly aren’t to blame.
He noted that Oregon receives $3,000 per student in public support while the University of Washington receives $7,500 and the University of North Carolina receives $14,000 from the state.
De Carolis said balancing between academics and athletics is always a tough situation for athletic directors.
“That’s a dance everybody has to do,” De Carolis said. “But if that’s where the donor wants the money to go, then that’s where it’s going to go. I would challenge the academic side of the house to maybe get out and try to get those same dollars. We’re bringing 40,000 plus people in the fall. What are you doing to tap into that?”
A New Direction
Regardless, Kilkenny’s first month in office should not be short of excitement with important decisions awaiting and a new direction taking course.
“I’m really confident that we’re going to create a really special culture in the athletics department,” Kilkenny said. “I hope that we can integrate that within the rest of the University.”
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