University of Massachusets Athletics
The Last Minute
The Last Minute
 |  Bill Strickland is the interim Athletic Director at the University of Massachusetts. |
This column appeared in the May issue of the Maroon & White.
Bob Marcum's announcement that he will be retiring from UMass effective June 14 was a bombshell that will be felt throughout the UMass community and beyond. For those people close enough to the campus and the athletic department to actually know what they are talking about, this is sad news. As I've said before, a UMass is lucky to ever get a Bob Marcum, because if it wasn't for the jailbird ex-president at South Carolina, a Bob Marcum would never be available to a Division I-AA school. He is one of the most well known and well respected A.D.'s in the business, a person who is considered nothing less than an equal by people like Roy Kramer (Southeastern Conference Commissioner), Doug Dickey (Tennessee A.D.), and DeLoss Dodds (Texas A.D.) and has been a mentor to the likes of Lew Perkins (UConn A.D.) and Gene DeFilippo (Boston College A.D.)
Of course, sports raising passions the way they do, everybody is an expert and everybody can do the job better than the athletic director. Many of the same things that are said about Bob are said about my former boss, Jake Crouthamel at Syracuse, and I'd like to know what kind of measuring stick someone is using to even try and intimate that Syracuse does not have a successful athletic program. Still, the majority of what you hear and read from the chat room know-it-alls is "fire Crouthamel," "fire [football coach Paul] Pasqualoni," attendance is down because "they don't know how to market," and on and on ad nauseam. Sound familiar?
If you are one of those cheering the imminent departure of Bob Marcum, I've got news for you. You will come to rue the day that the man walks out the Mullins Center door for the last time. Could any reasonable person dispute that the last 10 years have been the greatest decade in the history of UMass athletics? Yes, John Calipari, Elaine Sortino, Mark Whipple, Pam Hixon, the rest of our amazing coaching staff, the dedicated support staff and the thousands of athletes that chose to come here despite our subpar facilities deserve a lot of the credit, but the guy who was directing it and the glue to the whole operation has been Bob Marcum.
You want to talk about the student-athlete and the balance between academics and athletics? When Bob got here in 1993, the percentage of student-athletes achieving a 3.0 grade point average for the semester was under 27 percent. Now it is routinely over 40 percent, and Boyden Building, Mullins Center and McGuirk Stadium all have received new (though certainly not state-of-the-art) academic centers. Since the Atlantic 10 started giving out All-Academic Awards, UMass has led the conference every year but one. Athletically, we have just won our sixth A-10 Commissioners Cup in the last eight years, including titles when Virginia Tech was in the conference and should have been dominating because of its Division I-A football resources. Yes, we have slipped in the Sears Directors Cup over the last few years after reaching peaks during Bob's early years when the rankings first began (to the misinformed, there was no Sears Cup prior to 1993-94). But anyone without an agenda would understand the difficulty of holding our spot during a five-year period in which budgets were frozen and then cut, and during a time when I-A football schools have been pouring resources into their women's sports to catch up with Title IX requirements. Even the way the cup rankings are determined has been altered, giving a disproportionate number of points for national championships at the expense of NCAA appearances.
Some will say that Bob deserves none of the credit for the basketball teams' Final Four appearance. Yet, if it wasn't for Bob Marcum securing John Calipari with a lucrative and innovative contract, Calipari would have in all likelihood left to become the head coach at St. John's. Just think about that and think of how far-fetched that would have been in the 1980s. The head coach at UMass turning down an opportunity to go to a Big East power, the third-winningest program in the history of college basketball, because in his mind UMass was a better job. And Bob Marcum had nothing to do with the Final Four?
Bob's reputation was a major factor in his ability to become the first Atlantic 10 Conference A.D. ever to land a Big East basketball coach when he pulled the coup of hiring Steve Lappas, the sixth-winningest coach in Big East history. This comes within a three-year period of him hiring Mark Whipple as football coach, who proceeded to win a national championship in his first season, and Don Cahoon, whose energy and work ethic have brought in two straight dynamite recruiting classes as the hockey program takes aim at a move up the Hockey East ladder. The addition of Marnie Dacko as women's basketball coach is just another feather in his cap.
How about the recognition of UMass's long and outstanding athletic tradition? Before Bob Marcum, the previous administration thought it was too political and too much of a headache to keep the UMass Athletic Hall of Fame going. Two short-lived attempts to sustain it, one in the late '60s and one in the early '80s, had been swept under the rug and the Hall had been dormant for 15 years. Now it is a thriving event, in my opinion the best event we have as a department. Recognizing those who have achieved has always been a primary objective with Marcum. The Hall of Fame and the new Board of Directors for the Varsity M Club are just two examples.
Nobody has been a bigger advocate for the students on this campus. It is not always recognized here that the students-not the faculty, not the staff-are the primary customers at this institution and that their quality of life has been neglected. When the new student recreation facility gets built on this campus, every student will owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Marcum. Yes, this facility will benefit athletics, but Bob has said since day one that this facility is first and foremost for our students.
Besides that project, Bob has been instrumental in overseeing the Garber Field artificial turf, the new softball/soccer complex, and the soon-to-be built new outdoor track. All of this at a University that had built exactly one new facility for athletics in the previous 30 years.
Frankly, I don't have enough space to even begin to cover everything that Bob Marcum has accomplished here. So let me try and address some of the criticisms.
There will always be those people who think Bob shouldn't have hired Bruiser Flint, just as there will always be those people who think Bob shouldn't have let Bruiser go. There are still people out there who don't like the priority point system, but donor systems are a reality in this day and age of college athletics, and we could never have gone from $60,000 to a million dollars in contributions without it. The cutting of the sports was painful and will always be controversial, but most rational people can see that an athletic department with a budget this small, with no I-A football and no significant endowments, should not be operating the third -largest public athletic department in the country. The ability to support 29 sports was done with smoke and mirrors made possible by a basketball program that was at a pinnacle. You cannot budget based on the expectation that your one positive revenue program will always be at the pinnacle.
You can debate the merits of the criticism all you want, but you cannot get away from the facts, and the facts are that the positives overwhelmingly outnumber the negatives. From an academic standpoint, from an athletic standpoint, from an exposure standpoint for the University, the Bob Marcum era goes in the books as the finest decade in the history of UMass athletics.
To my mentor, to my friend, I wish you the very best in your "retirement." Somehow I doubt the grass will be growing under your feet. Thank you for everything you have done for me, for this department and thank you for everything you have done for UMass. They may never know what they had until you are gone.
Bob Marcum's announcement that he will be retiring from UMass effective June 14 was a bombshell that will be felt throughout the UMass community and beyond. For those people close enough to the campus and the athletic department to actually know what they are talking about, this is sad news. As I've said before, a UMass is lucky to ever get a Bob Marcum, because if it wasn't for the jailbird ex-president at South Carolina, a Bob Marcum would never be available to a Division I-AA school. He is one of the most well known and well respected A.D.'s in the business, a person who is considered nothing less than an equal by people like Roy Kramer (Southeastern Conference Commissioner), Doug Dickey (Tennessee A.D.), and DeLoss Dodds (Texas A.D.) and has been a mentor to the likes of Lew Perkins (UConn A.D.) and Gene DeFilippo (Boston College A.D.)
Of course, sports raising passions the way they do, everybody is an expert and everybody can do the job better than the athletic director. Many of the same things that are said about Bob are said about my former boss, Jake Crouthamel at Syracuse, and I'd like to know what kind of measuring stick someone is using to even try and intimate that Syracuse does not have a successful athletic program. Still, the majority of what you hear and read from the chat room know-it-alls is "fire Crouthamel," "fire [football coach Paul] Pasqualoni," attendance is down because "they don't know how to market," and on and on ad nauseam. Sound familiar?
If you are one of those cheering the imminent departure of Bob Marcum, I've got news for you. You will come to rue the day that the man walks out the Mullins Center door for the last time. Could any reasonable person dispute that the last 10 years have been the greatest decade in the history of UMass athletics? Yes, John Calipari, Elaine Sortino, Mark Whipple, Pam Hixon, the rest of our amazing coaching staff, the dedicated support staff and the thousands of athletes that chose to come here despite our subpar facilities deserve a lot of the credit, but the guy who was directing it and the glue to the whole operation has been Bob Marcum.
You want to talk about the student-athlete and the balance between academics and athletics? When Bob got here in 1993, the percentage of student-athletes achieving a 3.0 grade point average for the semester was under 27 percent. Now it is routinely over 40 percent, and Boyden Building, Mullins Center and McGuirk Stadium all have received new (though certainly not state-of-the-art) academic centers. Since the Atlantic 10 started giving out All-Academic Awards, UMass has led the conference every year but one. Athletically, we have just won our sixth A-10 Commissioners Cup in the last eight years, including titles when Virginia Tech was in the conference and should have been dominating because of its Division I-A football resources. Yes, we have slipped in the Sears Directors Cup over the last few years after reaching peaks during Bob's early years when the rankings first began (to the misinformed, there was no Sears Cup prior to 1993-94). But anyone without an agenda would understand the difficulty of holding our spot during a five-year period in which budgets were frozen and then cut, and during a time when I-A football schools have been pouring resources into their women's sports to catch up with Title IX requirements. Even the way the cup rankings are determined has been altered, giving a disproportionate number of points for national championships at the expense of NCAA appearances.
Some will say that Bob deserves none of the credit for the basketball teams' Final Four appearance. Yet, if it wasn't for Bob Marcum securing John Calipari with a lucrative and innovative contract, Calipari would have in all likelihood left to become the head coach at St. John's. Just think about that and think of how far-fetched that would have been in the 1980s. The head coach at UMass turning down an opportunity to go to a Big East power, the third-winningest program in the history of college basketball, because in his mind UMass was a better job. And Bob Marcum had nothing to do with the Final Four?
Bob's reputation was a major factor in his ability to become the first Atlantic 10 Conference A.D. ever to land a Big East basketball coach when he pulled the coup of hiring Steve Lappas, the sixth-winningest coach in Big East history. This comes within a three-year period of him hiring Mark Whipple as football coach, who proceeded to win a national championship in his first season, and Don Cahoon, whose energy and work ethic have brought in two straight dynamite recruiting classes as the hockey program takes aim at a move up the Hockey East ladder. The addition of Marnie Dacko as women's basketball coach is just another feather in his cap.
How about the recognition of UMass's long and outstanding athletic tradition? Before Bob Marcum, the previous administration thought it was too political and too much of a headache to keep the UMass Athletic Hall of Fame going. Two short-lived attempts to sustain it, one in the late '60s and one in the early '80s, had been swept under the rug and the Hall had been dormant for 15 years. Now it is a thriving event, in my opinion the best event we have as a department. Recognizing those who have achieved has always been a primary objective with Marcum. The Hall of Fame and the new Board of Directors for the Varsity M Club are just two examples.
Nobody has been a bigger advocate for the students on this campus. It is not always recognized here that the students-not the faculty, not the staff-are the primary customers at this institution and that their quality of life has been neglected. When the new student recreation facility gets built on this campus, every student will owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Marcum. Yes, this facility will benefit athletics, but Bob has said since day one that this facility is first and foremost for our students.
Besides that project, Bob has been instrumental in overseeing the Garber Field artificial turf, the new softball/soccer complex, and the soon-to-be built new outdoor track. All of this at a University that had built exactly one new facility for athletics in the previous 30 years.
Frankly, I don't have enough space to even begin to cover everything that Bob Marcum has accomplished here. So let me try and address some of the criticisms.
There will always be those people who think Bob shouldn't have hired Bruiser Flint, just as there will always be those people who think Bob shouldn't have let Bruiser go. There are still people out there who don't like the priority point system, but donor systems are a reality in this day and age of college athletics, and we could never have gone from $60,000 to a million dollars in contributions without it. The cutting of the sports was painful and will always be controversial, but most rational people can see that an athletic department with a budget this small, with no I-A football and no significant endowments, should not be operating the third -largest public athletic department in the country. The ability to support 29 sports was done with smoke and mirrors made possible by a basketball program that was at a pinnacle. You cannot budget based on the expectation that your one positive revenue program will always be at the pinnacle.
You can debate the merits of the criticism all you want, but you cannot get away from the facts, and the facts are that the positives overwhelmingly outnumber the negatives. From an academic standpoint, from an athletic standpoint, from an exposure standpoint for the University, the Bob Marcum era goes in the books as the finest decade in the history of UMass athletics.
To my mentor, to my friend, I wish you the very best in your "retirement." Somehow I doubt the grass will be growing under your feet. Thank you for everything you have done for me, for this department and thank you for everything you have done for UMass. They may never know what they had until you are gone.