March 29, 2011 - 8:16pm
Before You Were Here: Reining in the Athletic Department
BY PETER NOORANI
Imagine if football coach Rich Rodriguez's contract wasn't cleared by University President Mary Sue Coleman when he was hired in 2007? Before 1995, the Athletic Department could do just that.
Steps were taken to centralize the Michigan Athletic Department in 1995, tying it more closely to the rest of the University.
A Sept. 15, 1995 article in The Michigan Daily reported that the University was in the process of centralizing the Athletic Department. The plan, according to then-University President James Duderstadt, was to “bring the Athletic Department in line with the rest of the University operations.”
After a string of press conferences throughout the summer of 1995, the University began drafting changes to its bylaws, under which “the Athletic Department’s business contracts would be controlled by the University’s financial officers,” according to the article.
The change was prompted by an incident the previous fall. The Athletic Department had negotiated a contract with Nike without the regents’ approval, Regent Andrea Fischer Newman (R–Ann Arbor) told the Daily at the time.
“I think this is an effective way to deal with it,” Newman told The Daily at the time. “What it does is provide a coordinated checking system — a reporting link up into the executive officers.”
In addition, in June 1995, the Daily reported that officials at the Athletic Department had bought out former football coach Gary Moeller’s contract, costing a total of $386,026, without informing the regents or University officials.
At the time, Chief Financial Officer Farris W. Womack and General Counsel Elsa Cole were part of a committee working “to incorporate business aspects of the Athletic Department with the University’s financial division,” the article reported.
Joe Roberson, the Athletic Director at the time, had reportedly contributed to the drafting of the bylaw changes, which were to be introduced in October 1995 for further discussion among the regents.
“There have been meetings on how things would change in the future, which Joe Roberson was at,” Cole told the Daily at the time.
Duderstadt explained in an interview with the Daily at the time, “If the Athletic Department wants to negotiate a contract with a radio station, it will go through the chief financial officer, the general counsel and, if it’s large enough, to a (Board of Regents) vote,” according to the September 1995 article.
