Schoffel: It's way past time for FSU Athletics to get strong leadership

Last week was a good one for many employees in Florida State's athletics department.

On Monday, athletics director David Coburn informed them they would be receiving back pay from furloughs and salary reductions during the coronavirus pandemic.

That had to be an incredible early holiday present for the employees, who had no idea it was coming. And for Coburn, it must have been a fantastic way to begin his faster-than-expected farewell tour.

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Over the last three-plus years, it has been Coburn's job to get FSU's finances in order. At first, he was tasked with reining in some of the liberal spending under former A.D. Stan Wilcox. And then he had to try to keep the department afloat during the height of the pandemic -- when football games, the NCAA basketball tournament and other money-making endeavors were canceled or scaled down.

That often meant tough decisions that made Coburn largely unpopular. Jobs were eliminated and frozen. Travel was restricted. Furloughs were instituted, and salaries were reduced. It was a bleak couple of years, even though some sports were still able to find success on the field.

So for Coburn, being able to inform the employees who remain that they will be getting some of their money back had to be a tremendous feeling.

And, as it turns out, it will be one of Coburn's final acts for the department.

Just a couple days after making that internal announcement, reports surfaced that FSU was already initiating contacts with candidates to be Coburn's replacement. By Sunday evening, Warchant learned that the university was closing in on the hiring of Louisville athletics director Vince Tyra for the position.

Life comes quick.

On Wednesday, Coburn put out a statement that he would be retiring by the end of the academic year but would be willing to step aside sooner if his replacement was found. It may have taken all of four days (at least publicly).

FSU's deal with Tyra isn't yet official, of course, and who knows how it will all play out? Louisville's Board of Trustees has called an emergency meeting for this afternoon to discuss "personnel matters," and there is speculation that an agreement could be reached to keep Tyra in place there. Or they could agree to let him walk.

We'll just have to wait and see.

We also will wait to pass judgment on whether Tyra is the right hire for FSU.

On the surface, there are some things to like: He has a strong business background, he made a splashy hire when he lured men's basketball coach Chris Mack away from Xavier, and he seems to be aggressive when it comes to fundraising and facilities planning.

At the same time, he's similar to Coburn in that he didn't come up through a typical athletics background. He was a baseball player in college at the University of Kentucky, but the vast majority of his professional experience has come in private equity firms and other business ventures. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that background, but it would give FSU a second consecutive athletics director with limited long-term knowledge and relationships in the collegiate space. Which could be a challenge considering the landscape of college athletics is changing by the minute.

But as I said earlier, now is not the time to judge that prospective hire. We'll have plenty of time for that.

What we can do right now is recognize how exciting this time should be for the people who make up FSU's athletics department, and what that could mean for the future. (And not just because of the back pay the employees are receiving.)

For the first time in nearly 15 years, this athletics department has a chance -- assuming new President Richard McCullough makes a good hire -- to have real leadership and power emanating from the athletic director's office.

That's the hope, anyway.

And it has been a long, long, long time coming.

I don't say that to be disrespectful to Coburn or either of his two immediate predecessors. For a variety of circumstances, FSU hasn't had a strong athletics director with a clear vision -- and the authority to execute it -- since the height of Dave Hart's tenure in the mid-2000s.

Beginning with the final few years of Hart's run, when he was neutered to some degree by then-president T.K. Wetherell, FSU's athletics department has been hampered by both a lack of leadership and by constant back-room arm-wrestling between different powers that be.

For those who haven't been around or who weren't paying attention, I feel the need to share a brief, "How We Got Here:"

When Wetherell finally pushed Hart out in 2007, he brought in Randy Spetman to run the department from Utah State. Spetman was a nice enough guy with a military background and a squeaky-clean image, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Florida State at the time. But it also was apparent to everyone involved that he was put in place to do Wetherell's bidding.

Wetherell was a former FSU football player who had a strong interest in athletics, and he wanted to be the person calling the shots. That's a president's prerogative. But it doesn't do much in the way of empowering the person sitting in the A.D.'s chair, which meant many people simply bypassed Spetman and went directly to Wetherell with their issues. So Spetman was seen as little more than a caretaker for the department.

It didn't take Wetherell's replacement, Eric Barron, long to determine that he needed a different and stronger A.D. in place. Barron came from a strong academic background and didn't have much desire to be involved in athletics, at least not on a day-to-day basis. He wanted to take the approach of Wetherell's predecessor, Sandy D'Alemberte, and hire a strong athletics director like Hart.

What he did was hire someone who looked great on paper -- former Notre Dame and Duke administrator Stan Wilcox -- but who also failed to take real control of the department from a leadership standpoint. Shortly after Wilcox was hired, Jimbo Fisher went and won a national championship in football, which made him feel like he should be the second-most powerful person on campus. And Andy Miller was still running Seminole Boosters, a position he had held for four decades.

So for most of Wilcox's tenure, he was in a constant three-way battle with Fisher and Miller -- who didn't see eye-to-eye on much of anything -- and it was up to former President John Thrasher to settle all the disputes. Like Spetman, Wilcox took a lower and lower profile in the department as his tenure marched on. So much so that employees would grouse about not seeing him in person for weeks or months at a time.

Then came Coburn, who was hired on an interim basis when Wilcox left for the NCAA in 2018. As mentioned earlier, everyone in the building knew why Coburn was there -- he was a short-timer whose primary goal was to get the budget back in order. Which he has apparently done well, if the department has come up with the funds to give employees their back pay.

But in the end, Coburn's tenure was not unlike what happened with Wilcox and Spetman before him. Because of the circumstances of his appointment, he largely has been seen as a guy doing his job ... who just happens to have the big corner office on the fourth floor of the Moore Athletics Center.

Coburn wasn't viewed by many of the rank and file as their leader. As the person whose vision they worked to pursue every day they walked into the office.

The employees just came in each day -- like they have done for the last 15 years -- put their heads down and handled the work in front of them. And, for the past few years, hoped that they wouldn't be furloughed or laid off.

That's not the way great organizations operate.

Great organizations have missions. They have leaders with passion and purpose, who provide inspiration for people to challenge themselves to be better.

That's where innovation comes from. And that's what Florida State's athletics department has lacked for a really long time.

It might not have affected the play on the field, but it has permeated everything else.

In some ways, however, as the calendar flips to 2022, FSU could finally be poised for that to change.

Now that Seminole Boosters operates more in line with the athletics department -- and not as a separate entity with its own reporting structure -- a new A.D. should be able to avoid some of the power struggles that have hampered progress in the past.

And now that there is a new president in McCullough and a new Board of Trustees chairman in Peter Collins, perhaps there will be a willingness from the Westcott Building to not get overly involved with the day-to-day running of the department. To let an athletics director establish himself or herself as the person running the show.

If Vince Tyra is the guy, let's hope he's the right guy.

But whoever is next to sit down in that corner office, let's hope that person has the ability -- and is given the leeway -- to provide the people who make up that department the leadership they need and deserve.

Contact managing editor Ira Schoffel at ira@warchant.com and follow @IraSchoffel on Twitter.

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