September 18, 2008 in Sports

Hilarity ensues as UW makes bold move

Long, costly search turns up guy already there

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Associated Press photo

New Huskies AD Scott Woodward served nine months as interim.
(Full-size photo)

So after 10 months of academia-grade navel gazing, a $75,000 fee to a headhunter, untold faculty/administrative search committee hours on the clock, the expense of personally interviewing more than a dozen candidates and, of course, a $500,000 payoff to not come to work made to the previous athletic director he’d hired, University of Washington president Mark Emmert made his move Wednesday.

He hired the guy already filling the AD’s job on an interim basis.

Now tell me – why wouldn’t Washington taxpayers want to give such a smart and thrifty shopper $150 million to redecorate his crumbling football stadium?

Not since Capt. Renault discovered gambling on the premises of Rick’s Café Americain has there been such a shock as Emmert ending the most glacial AD search in history by, in essence, not doing anything. The official replacement: former UW vice president Scott Woodward, who served as the temp since Emmert ran Todd Turner back to the land where all players get juice boxes and Rice Krispy treats after games.

And Emmert bristled when it was suggested that Woodward was hired simply to do what Turner wouldn’t: Fire Tyrone Willingham.

“That would be a bad reason to hire somebody,” he spat. “You don’t hire somebody to deal with one issue.”

So he threw Woodward another – convincing the Legislature to hand over that $150 million in tourist tax dollars to jumpstart the Husky Stadium makeover.

There was high hilarity to be found in Wednesday’s announcement – and not when Emmert opened by joshing that, “We’ve decided to take the entire endowment and buy Washington Mutual.”

And you thought vaudeville was as dead as Husky football.

No, it was funnier still when Shecky Emmert did his darnedest to convince everyone that there was no shortage of takers for the job he spent 10 months telling Woodward he couldn’t have.

“There were people in all walks of life in athletics all very anxious about this opportunity,” he insisted.

Eager, he probably meant. But anxious was correct.

Let’s see. First order of business is firing the football coach. Second is panhandling the state for stadium money that will send taxpayers into a tizzy. If the tax cash isn’t forthcoming, that will double – at least – the amount to be squeezed out of boosters bummed by on-field failures.

Oh, yes, and then there’s working for a jock-centric president with a hair trigger on his pad of pink slips, to say nothing of the presence on campus of Woodward, who’s already been doing the job for almost a year and who Emmert obviously regards as Mr. Fix It.

Who wouldn’t want this gig?

“This was a very easy choice,” Emmert said.

Wow. How long would a tough choice have taken?

“We’re into a year of searching for a law dean and nobody’s opined that the law school is falling apart,” Emmert sniffed.

Well, when moot court draws 67,000 paid customers, then we’ll be all over that, too.

For all of this, Woodward is hardly unfit for duty and may well have been the best guy all along, not that it mitigates the odious nature of his assignment.

Beyond the Willingham issue, seeking a tax bailout to make up for the negligence of the stewards who preceded Emmert and Woodward in maintaining Husky Stadium is still the most misbegotten notion to come from Montlake since Don James quit on his players because he didn’t like Pac-10 justice.

Were these same King County tourist taxes used to build Safeco and Qwest fields? Absolutely. And that there’s a fine football stadium in Seattle already built with those funds is the perfect reason not to extend the tax to rebuild this one.

Besides, this is the school that for decades has bragged of its self-sufficiency in athletic funding. Now it feels entitled to a handout – and is aghast that any of its fellow state schools should begrudge them, even though they’ve always been told not to drink at that trough.

“The only thing we’re going to ask for,” Woodward explained, “is (funding for) seismic, health and safety, ADA (American with Disabilities Act) and things that are the basis of this whole facility – which is a state facility.”

So, of course, booster money can’t be expected to pay for that stuff – only for the goodies.

This isn’t a good idea any time, but it’s especially bad now with the economy in its frightful state and essential projects suffering, to say nothing of taxpayers – yes, even tourists – screaming for relief. The argument against doing the same for the Sonics was the NBA’s broken financial model, but skyrocketing coaching salaries – and willy-nilly buyouts – along with frills like $28 million indoor practice facilities argue that college athletics is even more out of control.

Well, maybe not everywhere. Down the road here at Eastern Washington, the football team was obliged to play an extra game against a Big 12 opponent for a fat guarantee to cover an unpaid pledge to their recent stadium improvements.

Perhaps Woodward would care to book some similar no-return big payday games for his team, just as a show of good faith. But then would come the calls for his head, and Emmert doesn’t have time for another search.

He has a law dean to hire.

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