SEATTLE — Todd Turner said his resignation, which was announced Tuesday, was a “mutual agreement.”
The University of Washington athletic director was not, however, happy with the way things turned out.
“I’m disappointed,” said Turner, who will remain the athletic director until Jan. 31, 2008. “I’m disappointed that I am not the fit that the university feels is necessary.”
Fit. That was the word university president Dr. Mark Emmert used repeatedly when asked about Turner’s resignation. Emmert insisted that the resignation was not forced by pressure from boosters that were unhappy with Turner. Turner’s resignation also had nothing to do with the decision to retain Tyrone Willingham as the football coach after a 4-9 season, Emmert said.
“There will be a number of folks that want to somehow integrate this with the decisions around coach Willingham and that’s not the case at all,” Emmert said. “I’m completely comfortable and confident that our decisions around coach Willingham and look forward to him being our coach next fall.”
So just what was it? Emmert said there was no singular reason, but rather finding the right fit for the school.
“For me, this is a question of a fit,” Emmert said. “For Todd as well. Is this the right for him at this stage in his career? And we concluded that it would be better for the university and the program to make a change.”
Turner will stay on through next month, though he says he won’t be involved in any major decisions since he won’t be accountable for them down the road. After that, the school will launch a nation-wide search for a new athletic director. Emmert said no definite timetable has been established, but that he hopes to have a hire made by spring. Scott Woodward, the school’s vice president for external affairs, will fill in as acting athletic director after Turner’s departure.
And while Emmert said Turner’s resignation was not related to the situation surrounding the football team and Willingham, Turner said that recent events did factor in his decision.
“I can’t speak for Mark, but I can tell you for me it did,” said Turner, who added that he and Emmert spent a couple of weeks discussing his future prior to Tuesday’s announcement. “It was enlightening about where our society, culture and support group have gone in their expectations about what constitutes a quality program on a campus of higher education.
“Believe me, that does not say winning isn’t important. Dr. Emmert and I are in complete agreement about that. But, you know, the message our students hear, our coaches hear, our leadership hears from general run-of-the-mill fans is that all they care about is how many games we win.
“I have to look at that after 32 years of doing this and say, ‘Wow. Is this really what we’re all about? Have I been that naive all this time? Have I spent all my time working on the student-athlete experience and trying to create better lives for people in the proper place in higher education when all I should have been worrying about was how many games we’d won?’ Why didn’t I go to the NFL if that is what it was about?”
Ultimately, the controversy played a role in Turner’s decision to leave.
“I don’t think there was any one thing,” he said. “It just came to the realization that there was too much controversy in the air. It’s taken a lot of the fun out of it for me. It’s made it very difficult on the president and, you know, I’m at a point in my career where I don’t have to be an athletic director to be happy or be successful.”
Emmert said the school will fully fulfill the remaining year and a half on Turner’s contract.
When Turner was hired in June of 2004, he inherited an athletic department tarnished by scandal. The football program was struggling to find stability in the wake of Rick Neuheisel’s firing after gambling allegations, and the softball team was dealing with a drug scandal involving the team doctor.
“Todd has done a remarkable job of bringing integrity and character into this program,” Emmert said. “Todd has done a very, very good job of fixing all of that.”
The biggest challenge for whoever replaces Turner will be an aging football stadium that needs work. There has been speculation that Turner was struggling to raise money for the stadium renovation project, but both Emmert and Turner said that was not the case.
“The fact is the funds flowing into athletics this year have been pretty darn good,” Emmert said. “We haven’t really had any major fundraising campaign for the stadium, so that has yet to be seen.”
Turner spoke at length about the stadium renovations, pointing out that the project is “being done backwards” because of the Sound Transit project that will start construction around the stadium late next year or in early 2009.
“It has gone exactly as planned,” he said of the stadium project. “So, “if there is disappointment on our progress on that, I’ve just got to say to you it was by design. These projects are enormous projects that take a lot of time to do. … These things do not happen overnight.”
A few Washington coaches spoke with the media about Turner’s resignation, though Willingham, who is out of town recruiting, was unavailable. Women’s crew coach Bob Ernst said he was not surprised, noting that college athletics is a high-risk business and that for as long as he has been around (he came to Washington as an assistant coach in 1974) “nothing surprises me any more.”
Jim McLaughlin, whose volleyball team won a national title in 2005, is sad to see the athletic director go.
“I don’t know what to make of it at this point,” he said. “All I can think about is Todd’s support for our program. He helped us and we got better. We’re grateful to him right now.”
Men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar said he was surprised by the news, and said it was disappointing to see him go.
“Todd was a very good leader and a very good mentor to me,” said Romar, who in August signed a contract extension to stay at Washington through the 2015-2016 season. “I thought during his time here he did an excellent job of helping the University of Washington and its athletic department. I do understand that tough decisions have to be made at times. I’m going to always be a fan of Todd Turner and his family… It’s always tough when something like this happens.”
Romar said the mood in a meeting this morning with Turner and the school’s head coaches was one of disappointment.
Turner seemed to share that disappointment with his coaches, even if the decision to leave was, as he said, mutual.
“I think it’s not so much what changed in my eyes as what changed in (Emmert’s),” Turner said when asked what had changed since his hiring. “I’m the same person I was when I came here. I have 32 years of experience in Division I athletics at five universities. My knowledge of the intricacies of managing athletics is, at least from an experiential standpoint, as strong as anyone’s that I know of. That’s really a product of my age as much as anything else.
“But I’m the same person with the same values — and maybe even some improved management skills — that I was when I was hired 31/2 years ago. And if the university has moved away from that as far as what they need for someone in this position, then that’s something that’s not my decision. I can respect it even if I disagree with it.”
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com/huskiesblog.
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