Jen had a no-brainer hire of Eric Musselman and instead hires a guy who couldn’t take over for a coach who pees himself. She hired Jimmy without having any knowledge/oversite in making him successful…the John Donovan hire should never have happened because any competent AD would have put a stop to it.
The idea of her hiring anyone should frighten everyone.
So Jen’s supposed to be the expert on OC hires?
It was a questionable at best hire at the time and the disaster it turned out to be was a contributing factor in Jimmy getting rightfully fired
But having an AD overtly micro manage hiring decisions by her directs … that’s not how things work
I’m plenty critical of Jen but not in this regard … that’s 1000% on Jimmy
If an AD sees her staff member making a colossal mistake, you intervene. This is not difficult.
Intervene how?
Jesus Christ Teq.
It’s a simple question
I’m asking you to clarify as to not jump to conclusions
If I’m jumping to conclusions I’d expect you to say that if you were the AD you would have blocked and not signed off on the hire
If I'm running a business, and I see an employee making a terrible decision, I intervene.
So you’re going to micro manage your employees
It’s an approach
Making a hire that could crater an entire season = micromanaging
Sure buddy
With all due respect DJ, comments like this from you (and others) are ones where I just shake my head and sigh because this just isn’t how business is done.
Mr Anus gave a really good reason why what you and others are suggesting doesn’t work
Whatever
If UW was manufacturing widgets, I'd agree. They aren't, so I don't. Teq, you must be aware of "MBA Thinking" a short-hand description of extremely narrow group-think pathologies interjected into discussions where they don't belong. This is not a slam against people with an MBA, but typical of persons who know an MBA or two, and love to say shit like "We need to run this School District/Water Department or SDOT like a business." Bullshit. And a true MBA would recognize the massive differences and chasms immediately.
Couldn’t disagree more
When you don’t have structure, process, vision, goals, objectives, etc in place you get the UW AD with accountability to what? You get low bar results with minimal hurdles.
I’m not saying it needs to be the most complex organization … I’ve been part of very micro privately held businesses and far larger publicly traded companies. I despise bureaucracy… inefficient and slows people down
That said you have to have accountability and that’s where everything has fallen apart … make no mistake Jen doesn’t fire Jimmy unless her seat got really warm
There's no official one-true-template for the process. The point I'm making is that many organizations talk the MBA talk, but don't walk the walk when the time comes for it. The accountability needs to be real and tailored to the specific program needs. Obviously it was skipped in UW's case.
Couldn’t agree more
The thing about MBAs and really most degrees is that they don’t give you an answer key to your professional career … they give you skills and knowledge that you can leverage to adapt to the ever changing circumstances around you
The case studies that are given are great in that they give you a chance to apply learnings to a situation and see how you’d address the issues … but there’s no risk because those issues are done and resolved. The real test comes when you’re operating in real time trying to solve a massive problem and spit balling any and all possible solutions, making gut calls on imperfect data, and owning the decisions/outcomes associated with it
You learn way more in the real world than you do reading a book
MBAs dont give you shit besides maybe a promotion or a better job at another company
There are plenty of dipshit MBAs
I love my daughter. Very proud of her. She’s about to finish her MBA. She’s an idiot 81% of the time.
Does she live in Seattle? Im banging her if so
You're not Joe Biden. Knock if off.
Damn I was pretty convinced I was until your poast
Jen had a no-brainer hire of Eric Musselman and instead hires a guy who couldn’t take over for a coach who pees himself. She hired Jimmy without having any knowledge/oversite in making him successful…the John Donovan hire should never have happened because any competent AD would have put a stop to it.
The idea of her hiring anyone should frighten everyone.
So Jen’s supposed to be the expert on OC hires?
It was a questionable at best hire at the time and the disaster it turned out to be was a contributing factor in Jimmy getting rightfully fired
But having an AD overtly micro manage hiring decisions by her directs … that’s not how things work
I’m plenty critical of Jen but not in this regard … that’s 1000% on Jimmy
If an AD sees her staff member making a colossal mistake, you intervene. This is not difficult.
Intervene how?
Jesus Christ Teq.
It’s a simple question
I’m asking you to clarify as to not jump to conclusions
If I’m jumping to conclusions I’d expect you to say that if you were the AD you would have blocked and not signed off on the hire
If I'm running a business, and I see an employee making a terrible decision, I intervene.
So you’re going to micro manage your employees
It’s an approach
Making a hire that could crater an entire season = micromanaging
Sure buddy
With all due respect DJ, comments like this from you (and others) are ones where I just shake my head and sigh because this just isn’t how business is done.
Mr Anus gave a really good reason why what you and others are suggesting doesn’t work
Whatever
If UW was manufacturing widgets, I'd agree. They aren't, so I don't. Teq, you must be aware of "MBA Thinking" a short-hand description of extremely narrow group-think pathologies interjected into discussions where they don't belong. This is not a slam against people with an MBA, but typical of persons who know an MBA or two, and love to say shit like "We need to run this School District/Water Department or SDOT like a business." Bullshit. And a true MBA would recognize the massive differences and chasms immediately.
Couldn’t disagree more
When you don’t have structure, process, vision, goals, objectives, etc in place you get the UW AD with accountability to what? You get low bar results with minimal hurdles.
I’m not saying it needs to be the most complex organization … I’ve been part of very micro privately held businesses and far larger publicly traded companies. I despise bureaucracy… inefficient and slows people down
That said you have to have accountability and that’s where everything has fallen apart … make no mistake Jen doesn’t fire Jimmy unless her seat got really warm
There's no official one-true-template for the process. The point I'm making is that many organizations talk the MBA talk, but don't walk the walk when the time comes for it. The accountability needs to be real and tailored to the specific program needs. Obviously it was skipped in UW's case.
Couldn’t agree more
The thing about MBAs and really most degrees is that they don’t give you an answer key to your professional career … they give you skills and knowledge that you can leverage to adapt to the ever changing circumstances around you
The case studies that are given are great in that they give you a chance to apply learnings to a situation and see how you’d address the issues … but there’s no risk because those issues are done and resolved. The real test comes when you’re operating in real time trying to solve a massive problem and spit balling any and all possible solutions, making gut calls on imperfect data, and owning the decisions/outcomes associated with it
You learn way more in the real world than you do reading a book
MBAs dont give you shit besides maybe a promotion or a better job at another company
There are plenty of dipshit MBAs
Be fair. Most of those are from online schools nobody's ever heard of and not worth the toilet paper they're written on. Same with many PhDs and Masters. And many - probably most - wind up in DIE departments of organizations and government offices where there are no metrics, just anecdotal data and rhetoric to pretend they are actually being measured in any way, versus hooked up by friends and family.
There's a particular institution in Seattle that's the world's biggest shining example of nepotism and failure the world's ever seen. And their budget climbs every year. But I won't name names, though parents with kids know what I'm talking about.
Funny side story…when I first got down to Houston ran into an asshole with a hot girlfriend and two other guys at the table next to us at my regular bar. Me and a friend were hammered and still kicking their ass at trivia. He started talking smack about how great Shell was, how smart he was, how he was on a fast track, and that he was getting a MBA. Asked him where and he said some shitty online school I’d never heard of. After another round I turned to his girlfriend and asked for something to write on…she asked why and I said I’m trying to help her boyfriend out. She gave me an envelope…grabbed a pen and as I was drawing he asked what I was doing. I told him I was sketching out an MBA diploma for him…told him it would be worth more than the one he was getting because it was from me.
Needless to say it was the last straw for this dude…he got pissed and got up to fight. About the same time my bartender friend (we drank there a lot) grabbed him by the arm and bounced him. I thought the girlfriend would be a bit understanding/appreciative but she seemed kinda pissed too…
There’s a lot of BS MBAs out there that honestly aren’t worth the paper they are on
It was the right thing for me at the time
Unless you’re doing a full time program the online or evening stuff is pretty worthless unless you need some fundamental business education because you wasted your undergrad time as a general studies major that failed upwards
Jen had a no-brainer hire of Eric Musselman and instead hires a guy who couldn’t take over for a coach who pees himself. She hired Jimmy without having any knowledge/oversite in making him successful…the John Donovan hire should never have happened because any competent AD would have put a stop to it.
The idea of her hiring anyone should frighten everyone.
So Jen’s supposed to be the expert on OC hires?
It was a questionable at best hire at the time and the disaster it turned out to be was a contributing factor in Jimmy getting rightfully fired
But having an AD overtly micro manage hiring decisions by her directs … that’s not how things work
I’m plenty critical of Jen but not in this regard … that’s 1000% on Jimmy
If an AD sees her staff member making a colossal mistake, you intervene. This is not difficult.
Intervene how?
Jesus Christ Teq.
It’s a simple question
I’m asking you to clarify as to not jump to conclusions
If I’m jumping to conclusions I’d expect you to say that if you were the AD you would have blocked and not signed off on the hire
If I'm running a business, and I see an employee making a terrible decision, I intervene.
So you’re going to micro manage your employees
It’s an approach
Making a hire that could crater an entire season = micromanaging
Sure buddy
With all due respect DJ, comments like this from you (and others) are ones where I just shake my head and sigh because this just isn’t how business is done.
Mr Anus gave a really good reason why what you and others are suggesting doesn’t work
Whatever
If UW was manufacturing widgets, I'd agree. They aren't, so I don't. Teq, you must be aware of "MBA Thinking" a short-hand description of extremely narrow group-think pathologies interjected into discussions where they don't belong. This is not a slam against people with an MBA, but typical of persons who know an MBA or two, and love to say shit like "We need to run this School District/Water Department or SDOT like a business." Bullshit. And a true MBA would recognize the massive differences and chasms immediately.
Couldn’t disagree more
When you don’t have structure, process, vision, goals, objectives, etc in place you get the UW AD with accountability to what? You get low bar results with minimal hurdles.
I’m not saying it needs to be the most complex organization … I’ve been part of very micro privately held businesses and far larger publicly traded companies. I despise bureaucracy… inefficient and slows people down
That said you have to have accountability and that’s where everything has fallen apart … make no mistake Jen doesn’t fire Jimmy unless her seat got really warm
There's no official one-true-template for the process. The point I'm making is that many organizations talk the MBA talk, but don't walk the walk when the time comes for it. The accountability needs to be real and tailored to the specific program needs. Obviously it was skipped in UW's case.
Couldn’t agree more
The thing about MBAs and really most degrees is that they don’t give you an answer key to your professional career … they give you skills and knowledge that you can leverage to adapt to the ever changing circumstances around you
The case studies that are given are great in that they give you a chance to apply learnings to a situation and see how you’d address the issues … but there’s no risk because those issues are done and resolved. The real test comes when you’re operating in real time trying to solve a massive problem and spit balling any and all possible solutions, making gut calls on imperfect data, and owning the decisions/outcomes associated with it
You learn way more in the real world than you do reading a book
MBAs dont give you shit besides maybe a promotion or a better job at another company
There are plenty of dipshit MBAs
Be fair. Most of those are from online schools nobody's ever heard of and not worth the toilet paper they're written on. Same with many PhDs and Masters. And many - probably most - wind up in DIE departments of organizations and government offices where there are no metrics, just anecdotal data and rhetoric to pretend they are actually being measured in any way, versus hooked up by friends and family.
There's a particular institution in Seattle that's the world's biggest shining example of nepotism and failure the world's ever seen. And their budget climbs every year. But I won't name names, though parents with kids know what I'm talking about.
Funny side story…when I first got down to Houston ran into an asshole with a hot girlfriend and two other guys at the table next to us at my regular bar. Me and a friend were hammered and still kicking their ass at trivia. He started talking smack about how great Shell was, how smart he was, how he was on a fast track, and that he was getting a MBA. Asked him where and he said some shitty online school I’d never heard of. After another round I turned to his girlfriend and asked for something to write on…she asked why and I said I’m trying to help her boyfriend out. She gave me an envelope…grabbed a pen and as I was drawing he asked what I was doing. I told him I was sketching out an MBA diploma for him…told him it would be worth more than the one he was getting because it was from me.
Needless to say it was the last straw for this dude…he got pissed and got up to fight. About the same time my bartender friend (we drank there a lot) grabbed him by the arm and bounced him. I thought the girlfriend would be a bit understanding/appreciative but she seemed kinda pissed too…
Jen had a no-brainer hire of Eric Musselman and instead hires a guy who couldn’t take over for a coach who pees himself. She hired Jimmy without having any knowledge/oversite in making him successful…the John Donovan hire should never have happened because any competent AD would have put a stop to it.
The idea of her hiring anyone should frighten everyone.
So Jen’s supposed to be the expert on OC hires?
It was a questionable at best hire at the time and the disaster it turned out to be was a contributing factor in Jimmy getting rightfully fired
But having an AD overtly micro manage hiring decisions by her directs … that’s not how things work
I’m plenty critical of Jen but not in this regard … that’s 1000% on Jimmy
If an AD sees her staff member making a colossal mistake, you intervene. This is not difficult.
Intervene how?
Jesus Christ Teq.
It’s a simple question
I’m asking you to clarify as to not jump to conclusions
If I’m jumping to conclusions I’d expect you to say that if you were the AD you would have blocked and not signed off on the hire
If I'm running a business, and I see an employee making a terrible decision, I intervene.
So you’re going to micro manage your employees
It’s an approach
Making a hire that could crater an entire season = micromanaging
Sure buddy
With all due respect DJ, comments like this from you (and others) are ones where I just shake my head and sigh because this just isn’t how business is done.
Mr Anus gave a really good reason why what you and others are suggesting doesn’t work
Whatever
If UW was manufacturing widgets, I'd agree. They aren't, so I don't. Teq, you must be aware of "MBA Thinking" a short-hand description of extremely narrow group-think pathologies interjected into discussions where they don't belong. This is not a slam against people with an MBA, but typical of persons who know an MBA or two, and love to say shit like "We need to run this School District/Water Department or SDOT like a business." Bullshit. And a true MBA would recognize the massive differences and chasms immediately.
Couldn’t disagree more
When you don’t have structure, process, vision, goals, objectives, etc in place you get the UW AD with accountability to what? You get low bar results with minimal hurdles.
I’m not saying it needs to be the most complex organization … I’ve been part of very micro privately held businesses and far larger publicly traded companies. I despise bureaucracy… inefficient and slows people down
That said you have to have accountability and that’s where everything has fallen apart … make no mistake Jen doesn’t fire Jimmy unless her seat got really warm
There's no official one-true-template for the process. The point I'm making is that many organizations talk the MBA talk, but don't walk the walk when the time comes for it. The accountability needs to be real and tailored to the specific program needs. Obviously it was skipped in UW's case.
Couldn’t agree more
The thing about MBAs and really most degrees is that they don’t give you an answer key to your professional career … they give you skills and knowledge that you can leverage to adapt to the ever changing circumstances around you
The case studies that are given are great in that they give you a chance to apply learnings to a situation and see how you’d address the issues … but there’s no risk because those issues are done and resolved. The real test comes when you’re operating in real time trying to solve a massive problem and spit balling any and all possible solutions, making gut calls on imperfect data, and owning the decisions/outcomes associated with it
You learn way more in the real world than you do reading a book
MBAs dont give you shit besides maybe a promotion or a better job at another company
There are plenty of dipshit MBAs
I love my daughter. Very proud of her. She’s about to finish her MBA. She’s an idiot 81% of the time.
Jen had a no-brainer hire of Eric Musselman and instead hires a guy who couldn’t take over for a coach who pees himself. She hired Jimmy without having any knowledge/oversite in making him successful…the John Donovan hire should never have happened because any competent AD would have put a stop to it.
The idea of her hiring anyone should frighten everyone.
So Jen’s supposed to be the expert on OC hires?
It was a questionable at best hire at the time and the disaster it turned out to be was a contributing factor in Jimmy getting rightfully fired
But having an AD overtly micro manage hiring decisions by her directs … that’s not how things work
I’m plenty critical of Jen but not in this regard … that’s 1000% on Jimmy
If an AD sees her staff member making a colossal mistake, you intervene. This is not difficult.
Intervene how?
Jesus Christ Teq.
It’s a simple question
I’m asking you to clarify as to not jump to conclusions
If I’m jumping to conclusions I’d expect you to say that if you were the AD you would have blocked and not signed off on the hire
If I'm running a business, and I see an employee making a terrible decision, I intervene.
So you’re going to micro manage your employees
It’s an approach
Making a hire that could crater an entire season = micromanaging
Sure buddy
With all due respect DJ, comments like this from you (and others) are ones where I just shake my head and sigh because this just isn’t how business is done.
Mr Anus gave a really good reason why what you and others are suggesting doesn’t work
Whatever
If UW was manufacturing widgets, I'd agree. They aren't, so I don't. Teq, you must be aware of "MBA Thinking" a short-hand description of extremely narrow group-think pathologies interjected into discussions where they don't belong. This is not a slam against people with an MBA, but typical of persons who know an MBA or two, and love to say shit like "We need to run this School District/Water Department or SDOT like a business." Bullshit. And a true MBA would recognize the massive differences and chasms immediately.
Couldn’t disagree more
When you don’t have structure, process, vision, goals, objectives, etc in place you get the UW AD with accountability to what? You get low bar results with minimal hurdles.
I’m not saying it needs to be the most complex organization … I’ve been part of very micro privately held businesses and far larger publicly traded companies. I despise bureaucracy… inefficient and slows people down
That said you have to have accountability and that’s where everything has fallen apart … make no mistake Jen doesn’t fire Jimmy unless her seat got really warm
There's no official one-true-template for the process. The point I'm making is that many organizations talk the MBA talk, but don't walk the walk when the time comes for it. The accountability needs to be real and tailored to the specific program needs. Obviously it was skipped in UW's case.
Couldn’t agree more
The thing about MBAs and really most degrees is that they don’t give you an answer key to your professional career … they give you skills and knowledge that you can leverage to adapt to the ever changing circumstances around you
The case studies that are given are great in that they give you a chance to apply learnings to a situation and see how you’d address the issues … but there’s no risk because those issues are done and resolved. The real test comes when you’re operating in real time trying to solve a massive problem and spit balling any and all possible solutions, making gut calls on imperfect data, and owning the decisions/outcomes associated with it
You learn way more in the real world than you do reading a book
MBAs dont give you shit besides maybe a promotion or a better job at another company
There are plenty of dipshit MBAs
I love my daughter. Very proud of her. She’s about to finish her MBA. She’s an idiot 81% of the time.
There’s a lot of BS MBAs out there that honestly aren’t worth the paper they are on
It was the right thing for me at the time
Unless you’re doing a full time program the online or evening stuff is pretty worthless unless you need some fundamental business education because you wasted your undergrad time as a general studies major that failed upwards
Generally agree except for the executive/weekend programs at the better schools, which are good mainly for the piece of paper and connections…it’s mostly the chosen employees being sent there by their company. Still laugh…over half my UT program were Exxon employees when they started and I think only 4 were still working for Exxon by the time they graduated. Rest had already switched jobs.
There’s a lot of BS MBAs out there that honestly aren’t worth the paper they are on
It was the right thing for me at the time
Unless you’re doing a full time program the online or evening stuff is pretty worthless unless you need some fundamental business education because you wasted your undergrad time as a general studies major that failed upwards
Generally agree except for the executive/weekend programs at the better schools, which are good mainly for the piece of paper and connections…it’s mostly the chosen employees being sent there by their company. Still laugh…over half my UT program were Exxon employees when they started and I think only 4 were still working for Exxon by the time they graduated. Rest had already switched jobs.
Jennifer Cohen's Unlikely Path to the Top of College Sports
The University of Washington athletic director is the only female one in the Pac-12 and one of five in the Power 5 conferences to hold the position. The journey Cohen took to get there has helped her navigate the uncertainties of 2020.
It’s Superset Friday for Cohen and her workout crew, and that means a cycle of burpees, in-and-outs, speed skaters, hammer curls, mountain climbers and something called a skydiver. The last movement doubles as what it feels like Cohen does when she wakes up every morning.
After the Cohens moved from San Diego to Tacoma, Wash., in the 1970s, Dennis Smith purchased season tickets in the end zone of Husky Stadium. He and Jen soon settled into their fall Saturday routine. The Cohens would drive north to campus, park near the arboretum and walk across the Montlake Bridge into a setting as picturesque as anything in sports. Inside, Jen would sprint to the front row and beg for wristbands, while barking—WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!—at opponents in the nearby tunnel. At halftime, they ate polish dogs. When it rained, they wore garbage bags over their clothes.
Those Saturdays helped a young girl fall in love with college sports in general and Washington football in particular, her passion intensifying until she started penning letters to Husky coaches. She wrote the legend, the Dawgfather himself, Coach Don James, saying she wanted to eventually replace him. James wrote back, dismissing that quest as improbable but noting that there were more opportunities for women than ever in college sports. The fifth-grader took no offense to the less-than-PC response. Whatever else James said, no matter how few women actually lived the life she wanted, none of that mattered. Her hero had told Cohen there was a chance—and a chance was all she needed.
Gender did not shape, or factor into, Cohen’s quest initially. Failure did. As a senior, she ran for president at Curtis High, losing to a classmate named Mark Sievers who was overseas during the election and won without giving a speech. She applied to UW, chasing childhood fantasies, only to be waitlisted. She graduated from San Diego State, earned her master’s degree from Pacific Lutheran and began her march toward the top of college sports as a … glamorous … celebrated … Division III volleyball coach. “I was,” she admits, “terrible at it.”
Cohen swept floors and fixed shot clocks. She slept in church basements, split bagels for breakfast and drove vans for hundreds of miles into inclement weather for games with no fans, long before crowd sizes were restricted. She became the de facto strength-and-conditioning coach. And the staff nutritionist. And she wrote to Division I athletic directors, begging for a meeting, asking for informational interviews that might crack open doors long closed. No chance, they almost universally responded, if they even responded at all.
With no gatekeeper and little pedigree, all the more typical paths to becoming an athletic director (her dream) remained closed. Rapidly approaching 30 and concerned about her future, Cohen left behind her husband and moved to Lubbock, Texas, to become an intern in the Texas Tech athletic department in the mid-90s. Cockroaches scrambled across the floor of her cramped apartment, multiplying until she took to vacuuming them up en masse so she wouldn’t have to touch them. Her life possessions at that point consisted of a TV, a futon and the bug-vac. She had never been to a press conference before. But she stayed. Learned. Climbed. Vacuumed.
Because her then husband was a youth baseball coach … and because he introduced Cohen to an influential UW baseball donor named Herb Chaffey ... and because Chaffey decided to throw his heft behind a lifelong Husky who just happened to be female … Cohen landed her dream job in the Washington athletic offices back in 1998. Even then, Barbara Hedges, the school’s female AD, wondered about Cohen’s qualifications.
Cohen’s father wrote Jen a letter as she settled into her office near the stadium where they once sat together on Saturdays in the fall. It read, in part, “Remembering you at the tunnel.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She loved Washington athletics as much as anyone loved anything, and one day, she hoped, she would follow Hedges into the school’s top office.
Cohen never left. But as she began to cement her reputation as an ace fundraiser, others began to qualify her accomplishments, making her an ace female fundraiser and the rare woman to work at the highest levels for a major college program. Maybe she didn’t care about her gender, but that didn’t mean she could escape such outdated and obstinate notions, either. She could only roll her eyes when someone said Saturdays were “for the boys.”
With office dynamics, especially in regard to conflict resolution, she couldn’t win. If she cried or expressed emotion, she was too vulnerable, too womanly, too weak. If she yelled and screamed, swore and pounded tables, she was too aggressive, a real “b----.” Men she worked with constantly shushed her; one asked her to fetch him ice cream. Donors mistook her for a coach’s wife, or, worse, a player’s mom. Some tried to intimidate her. One wrote saying that he figured Cohen would fail in a department the size of Washington’s, because he didn’t like Hedges, who ran things in a gruff, no-nonsense style and represented more of a contrast to Cohen than an apt comparison. “Wow, people only see me as a woman,” Cohen thought. She wrote the donor back, saying she was curious about the comment when she and Hedges shared so little in common beyond their gender. The donor never responded.
So many focused on who she wasn’t and who she was supposed to be, rather than who she actually was and is. Friends describe Cohen as loud, gregarious and a free hug dispenser (pre-COVID-19, anyway). She’s smart and capable and one of the top administrators in the country. She doesn’t have to apologize for any of that and doesn’t plan to. And yet, from ’98 to 2016, as she became an important voice at the one place she loved the most, she still considered herself an underdog, unworthy in some respects, searching for someone who believed in her more than she believed in herself.
That person was Stephanie Rempe, a longtime UW athletics employee who’s now the COO in the athletic department at LSU. Cohen isn’t exactly sure why Rempe said anything to her. Perhaps Rempe could sense Cohen’s fear, her deepest doubts. That she couldn’t do the job, that she wasn’t the person that these people, this system, this entity, wanted. Regardless, Rempe looked her straight in the eyes in ’15 and told Cohen, “You know you can do it, right?”
Cohen nodded, unconvincingly.
Rempe continued: “Not only can you do it, but you owe it to us to do it.” Meaning, become an athletic director of a major program. Not a female AD. Not a b----y or sensitive AD. Just an AD, the job that Cohen still coveted after almost two decades at UW.
Cohen says she never doubted her qualifications again after that conversation. She had already helped Washington land Chris Petersen, the highly regarded football coach. Petersen didn’t know of Cohen when the Washington contingent flew to Boise for an interview, but he quickly realized that she connected with and understood people “better” than anyone he’d ever met. When coaches applied for assistant positions, Petersen would ask Cohen to meet with them, and he rejected some applicants based on her reads, which weren’t always the same as his. He began to refer to Cohen as his problem-solver, and when Scott Woodward left the AD position for the same job at Texas A&M, Petersen recommended strongly that administrators choose Cohen to replace him. Reading people was her superpower, Petersen told the UW brass.
Washington promoted Cohen to interim athletic director in ‘16. You were built for this, she continued to remind herself. Then she proved her constitution beyond even the most optimistic expectations. She started with the strategic planning exercise known as a SWOT analysis, brainstorming ideal Huskies and what they represented until her team had clearly defined the culture they wanted to create. She asked the coaches in nonrevenue sports what they needed to continue winning championships. She erased the $15 million deficit she inherited, continued fundraising and pumped the additional cash and growing TV money into facility renovations. Petersen laughed at the interim tag. Like, he says, “Wait, what are we talking about here? Just hire her already.” The school made her the permanent AD after a few months.
Cohen made unpopular decisions, like firing beloved basketball coach Lorenzo Romar after the 2016–17 season and replacing him with Mike Hopkins, a talented outsider from Syracuse who wasn’t well known on the West Coast. Three of her first five new coaching hires—Hopkins; Yasmin Farooq, women’s rowing; and Elise Ray-Statz, gymnastics—won conference coach of the year honors in their respective first seasons. The football team compiled the highest APR in the country and made the Fiesta Bowl, the softball team surged to the Women’s College World Series final, the baseball team advanced to the CWS for the first time, both rowing teams finished second nationally— and all that was just 2017–18. Meanwhile, Cohen helped coax Jimmy Lake, the prized football assistant, to remain on staff, and when Petersen stepped down for personal reasons in December, his top lieutenant was available to elevate. Amid all that winning, Cohen landed the school a 10-year, $119 million deal with Adidas, quadrupling the previous agreement with rival Nike, good for the fifth-highest contract in the nation based on yearly average and second-most in the Pac-12.
Jennifer Cohen's Unlikely Path to the Top of College Sports
The University of Washington athletic director is the only female one in the Pac-12 and one of five in the Power 5 conferences to hold the position. The journey Cohen took to get there has helped her navigate the uncertainties of 2020.
It’s Superset Friday for Cohen and her workout crew, and that means a cycle of burpees, in-and-outs, speed skaters, hammer curls, mountain climbers and something called a skydiver. The last movement doubles as what it feels like Cohen does when she wakes up every morning.
After the Cohens moved from San Diego to Tacoma, Wash., in the 1970s, Dennis Smith purchased season tickets in the end zone of Husky Stadium. He and Jen soon settled into their fall Saturday routine. The Cohens would drive north to campus, park near the arboretum and walk across the Montlake Bridge into a setting as picturesque as anything in sports. Inside, Jen would sprint to the front row and beg for wristbands, while barking—WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!—at opponents in the nearby tunnel. At halftime, they ate polish dogs. When it rained, they wore garbage bags over their clothes.
Those Saturdays helped a young girl fall in love with college sports in general and Washington football in particular, her passion intensifying until she started penning letters to Husky coaches. She wrote the legend, the Dawgfather himself, Coach Don James, saying she wanted to eventually replace him. James wrote back, dismissing that quest as improbable but noting that there were more opportunities for women than ever in college sports. The fifth-grader took no offense to the less-than-PC response. Whatever else James said, no matter how few women actually lived the life she wanted, none of that mattered. Her hero had told Cohen there was a chance—and a chance was all she needed.
Gender did not shape, or factor into, Cohen’s quest initially. Failure did. As a senior, she ran for president at Curtis High, losing to a classmate named Mark Sievers who was overseas during the election and won without giving a speech. She applied to UW, chasing childhood fantasies, only to be waitlisted. She graduated from San Diego State, earned her master’s degree from Pacific Lutheran and began her march toward the top of college sports as a … glamorous … celebrated … Division III volleyball coach. “I was,” she admits, “terrible at it.”
Cohen swept floors and fixed shot clocks. She slept in church basements, split bagels for breakfast and drove vans for hundreds of miles into inclement weather for games with no fans, long before crowd sizes were restricted. She became the de facto strength-and-conditioning coach. And the staff nutritionist. And she wrote to Division I athletic directors, begging for a meeting, asking for informational interviews that might crack open doors long closed. No chance, they almost universally responded, if they even responded at all.
With no gatekeeper and little pedigree, all the more typical paths to becoming an athletic director (her dream) remained closed. Rapidly approaching 30 and concerned about her future, Cohen left behind her husband and moved to Lubbock, Texas, to become an intern in the Texas Tech athletic department in the mid-90s. Cockroaches scrambled across the floor of her cramped apartment, multiplying until she took to vacuuming them up en masse so she wouldn’t have to touch them. Her life possessions at that point consisted of a TV, a futon and the bug-vac. She had never been to a press conference before. But she stayed. Learned. Climbed. Vacuumed.
Because her then husband was a youth baseball coach … and because he introduced Cohen to an influential UW baseball donor named Herb Chaffey ... and because Chaffey decided to throw his heft behind a lifelong Husky who just happened to be female … Cohen landed her dream job in the Washington athletic offices back in 1998. Even then, Barbara Hedges, the school’s female AD, wondered about Cohen’s qualifications.
Cohen’s father wrote Jen a letter as she settled into her office near the stadium where they once sat together on Saturdays in the fall. It read, in part, “Remembering you at the tunnel.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She loved Washington athletics as much as anyone loved anything, and one day, she hoped, she would follow Hedges into the school’s top office.
Cohen never left. But as she began to cement her reputation as an ace fundraiser, others began to qualify her accomplishments, making her an ace female fundraiser and the rare woman to work at the highest levels for a major college program. Maybe she didn’t care about her gender, but that didn’t mean she could escape such outdated and obstinate notions, either. She could only roll her eyes when someone said Saturdays were “for the boys.”
With office dynamics, especially in regard to conflict resolution, she couldn’t win. If she cried or expressed emotion, she was too vulnerable, too womanly, too weak. If she yelled and screamed, swore and pounded tables, she was too aggressive, a real “b----.” Men she worked with constantly shushed her; one asked her to fetch him ice cream. Donors mistook her for a coach’s wife, or, worse, a player’s mom. Some tried to intimidate her. One wrote saying that he figured Cohen would fail in a department the size of Washington’s, because he didn’t like Hedges, who ran things in a gruff, no-nonsense style and represented more of a contrast to Cohen than an apt comparison. “Wow, people only see me as a woman,” Cohen thought. She wrote the donor back, saying she was curious about the comment when she and Hedges shared so little in common beyond their gender. The donor never responded.
So many focused on who she wasn’t and who she was supposed to be, rather than who she actually was and is. Friends describe Cohen as loud, gregarious and a free hug dispenser (pre-COVID-19, anyway). She’s smart and capable and one of the top administrators in the country. She doesn’t have to apologize for any of that and doesn’t plan to. And yet, from ’98 to 2016, as she became an important voice at the one place she loved the most, she still considered herself an underdog, unworthy in some respects, searching for someone who believed in her more than she believed in herself.
That person was Stephanie Rempe, a longtime UW athletics employee who’s now the COO in the athletic department at LSU. Cohen isn’t exactly sure why Rempe said anything to her. Perhaps Rempe could sense Cohen’s fear, her deepest doubts. That she couldn’t do the job, that she wasn’t the person that these people, this system, this entity, wanted. Regardless, Rempe looked her straight in the eyes in ’15 and told Cohen, “You know you can do it, right?”
Cohen nodded, unconvincingly.
Rempe continued: “Not only can you do it, but you owe it to us to do it.” Meaning, become an athletic director of a major program. Not a female AD. Not a b----y or sensitive AD. Just an AD, the job that Cohen still coveted after almost two decades at UW.
Cohen says she never doubted her qualifications again after that conversation. She had already helped Washington land Chris Petersen, the highly regarded football coach. Petersen didn’t know of Cohen when the Washington contingent flew to Boise for an interview, but he quickly realized that she connected with and understood people “better” than anyone he’d ever met. When coaches applied for assistant positions, Petersen would ask Cohen to meet with them, and he rejected some applicants based on her reads, which weren’t always the same as his. He began to refer to Cohen as his problem-solver, and when Scott Woodward left the AD position for the same job at Texas A&M, Petersen recommended strongly that administrators choose Cohen to replace him. Reading people was her superpower, Petersen told the UW brass.
Washington promoted Cohen to interim athletic director in ‘16. You were built for this, she continued to remind herself. Then she proved her constitution beyond even the most optimistic expectations. She started with the strategic planning exercise known as a SWOT analysis, brainstorming ideal Huskies and what they represented until her team had clearly defined the culture they wanted to create. She asked the coaches in nonrevenue sports what they needed to continue winning championships. She erased the $15 million deficit she inherited, continued fundraising and pumped the additional cash and growing TV money into facility renovations. Petersen laughed at the interim tag. Like, he says, “Wait, what are we talking about here? Just hire her already.” The school made her the permanent AD after a few months.
Cohen made unpopular decisions, like firing beloved basketball coach Lorenzo Romar after the 2016–17 season and replacing him with Mike Hopkins, a talented outsider from Syracuse who wasn’t well known on the West Coast. Three of her first five new coaching hires—Hopkins; Yasmin Farooq, women’s rowing; and Elise Ray-Statz, gymnastics—won conference coach of the year honors in their respective first seasons. The football team compiled the highest APR in the country and made the Fiesta Bowl, the softball team surged to the Women’s College World Series final, the baseball team advanced to the CWS for the first time, both rowing teams finished second nationally— and all that was just 2017–18. Meanwhile, Cohen helped coax Jimmy Lake, the prized football assistant, to remain on staff, and when Petersen stepped down for personal reasons in December, his top lieutenant was available to elevate. Amid all that winning, Cohen landed the school a 10-year, $119 million deal with Adidas, quadrupling the previous agreement with rival Nike, good for the fifth-highest contract in the nation based on yearly average and second-most in the Pac-12.
I’d like to petition to change my name to Polish dogs & Garbage bags.
Kim's newest defense of Jen is "There's a difference between a bad hire and a hire that didn't work out". Wtf? If a hire doesn't work out that makes it a bad hire. Gtfo with that bullshit.
Kim's newest defense of Jen is "There's a difference between a bad hire and a hire that didn't work out". Wtf? If a hire doesn't work out that makes it a bad hire. Gtfo with that bullshit.
Not to defend anyone but there is a difference. You can do the thing with the highest chance of success and get an interior outcome.
There is a powerball winner out there laughing at your 401k.
Comments
Needless to say it was the last straw for this dude…he got pissed and got up to fight. About the same time my bartender friend (we drank there a lot) grabbed him by the arm and bounced him. I thought the girlfriend would be a bit understanding/appreciative but she seemed kinda pissed too…
It was the right thing for me at the time
Unless you’re doing a full time program the online or evening stuff is pretty worthless unless you need some fundamental business education because you wasted your undergrad time as a general studies major that failed upwards
good mainly for the piece of paper and connections…it’s mostly the chosen employees being sent there by their company. Still laugh…over half my UT program were Exxon employees when they started and I think only 4 were still working for Exxon by the time they graduated. Rest had already switched jobs.
Jennifer Cohen's Unlikely Path to the Top of College Sports
The University of Washington athletic director is the only female one in the Pac-12 and one of five in the Power 5 conferences to hold the position. The journey Cohen took to get there has helped her navigate the uncertainties of 2020.
It’s Superset Friday for Cohen and her workout crew, and that means a cycle of burpees, in-and-outs, speed skaters, hammer curls, mountain climbers and something called a skydiver. The last movement doubles as what it feels like Cohen does when she wakes up every morning.
After the Cohens moved from San Diego to Tacoma, Wash., in the 1970s, Dennis Smith purchased season tickets in the end zone of Husky Stadium. He and Jen soon settled into their fall Saturday routine. The Cohens would drive north to campus, park near the arboretum and walk across the Montlake Bridge into a setting as picturesque as anything in sports. Inside, Jen would sprint to the front row and beg for wristbands, while barking—WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!—at opponents in the nearby tunnel. At halftime, they ate polish dogs. When it rained, they wore garbage bags over their clothes.
Those Saturdays helped a young girl fall in love with college sports in general and Washington football in particular, her passion intensifying until she started penning letters to Husky coaches. She wrote the legend, the Dawgfather himself, Coach Don James, saying she wanted to eventually replace him. James wrote back, dismissing that quest as improbable but noting that there were more opportunities for women than ever in college sports. The fifth-grader took no offense to the less-than-PC response. Whatever else James said, no matter how few women actually lived the life she wanted, none of that mattered. Her hero had told Cohen there was a chance—and a chance was all she needed.
Gender did not shape, or factor into, Cohen’s quest initially. Failure did. As a senior, she ran for president at Curtis High, losing to a classmate named Mark Sievers who was overseas during the election and won without giving a speech. She applied to UW, chasing childhood fantasies, only to be waitlisted. She graduated from San Diego State, earned her master’s degree from Pacific Lutheran and began her march toward the top of college sports as a … glamorous … celebrated … Division III volleyball coach. “I was,” she admits, “terrible at it.”
Cohen swept floors and fixed shot clocks. She slept in church basements, split bagels for breakfast and drove vans for hundreds of miles into inclement weather for games with no fans, long before crowd sizes were restricted. She became the de facto strength-and-conditioning coach. And the staff nutritionist. And she wrote to Division I athletic directors, begging for a meeting, asking for informational interviews that might crack open doors long closed. No chance, they almost universally responded, if they even responded at all.
With no gatekeeper and little pedigree, all the more typical paths to becoming an athletic director (her dream) remained closed. Rapidly approaching 30 and concerned about her future, Cohen left behind her husband and moved to Lubbock, Texas, to become an intern in the Texas Tech athletic department in the mid-90s. Cockroaches scrambled across the floor of her cramped apartment, multiplying until she took to vacuuming them up en masse so she wouldn’t have to touch them. Her life possessions at that point consisted of a TV, a futon and the bug-vac. She had never been to a press conference before. But she stayed. Learned. Climbed. Vacuumed.
Because her then husband was a youth baseball coach … and because he introduced Cohen to an influential UW baseball donor named Herb Chaffey ... and because Chaffey decided to throw his heft behind a lifelong Husky who just happened to be female … Cohen landed her dream job in the Washington athletic offices back in 1998. Even then, Barbara Hedges, the school’s female AD, wondered about Cohen’s qualifications.
Cohen’s father wrote Jen a letter as she settled into her office near the stadium where they once sat together on Saturdays in the fall. It read, in part, “Remembering you at the tunnel.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She loved Washington athletics as much as anyone loved anything, and one day, she hoped, she would follow Hedges into the school’s top office.
Cohen never left. But as she began to cement her reputation as an ace fundraiser, others began to qualify her accomplishments, making her an ace female fundraiser and the rare woman to work at the highest levels for a major college program. Maybe she didn’t care about her gender, but that didn’t mean she could escape such outdated and obstinate notions, either. She could only roll her eyes when someone said Saturdays were “for the boys.”
With office dynamics, especially in regard to conflict resolution, she couldn’t win. If she cried or expressed emotion, she was too vulnerable, too womanly, too weak. If she yelled and screamed, swore and pounded tables, she was too aggressive, a real “b----.” Men she worked with constantly shushed her; one asked her to fetch him ice cream. Donors mistook her for a coach’s wife, or, worse, a player’s mom. Some tried to intimidate her. One wrote saying that he figured Cohen would fail in a department the size of Washington’s, because he didn’t like Hedges, who ran things in a gruff, no-nonsense style and represented more of a contrast to Cohen than an apt comparison. “Wow, people only see me as a woman,” Cohen thought. She wrote the donor back, saying she was curious about the comment when she and Hedges shared so little in common beyond their gender. The donor never responded.
So many focused on who she wasn’t and who she was supposed to be, rather than who she actually was and is. Friends describe Cohen as loud, gregarious and a free hug dispenser (pre-COVID-19, anyway). She’s smart and capable and one of the top administrators in the country. She doesn’t have to apologize for any of that and doesn’t plan to. And yet, from ’98 to 2016, as she became an important voice at the one place she loved the most, she still considered herself an underdog, unworthy in some respects, searching for someone who believed in her more than she believed in herself.
That person was Stephanie Rempe, a longtime UW athletics employee who’s now the COO in the athletic department at LSU. Cohen isn’t exactly sure why Rempe said anything to her. Perhaps Rempe could sense Cohen’s fear, her deepest doubts. That she couldn’t do the job, that she wasn’t the person that these people, this system, this entity, wanted. Regardless, Rempe looked her straight in the eyes in ’15 and told Cohen, “You know you can do it, right?”
Cohen nodded, unconvincingly.
Rempe continued: “Not only can you do it, but you owe it to us to do it.” Meaning, become an athletic director of a major program. Not a female AD. Not a b----y or sensitive AD. Just an AD, the job that Cohen still coveted after almost two decades at UW.
Cohen says she never doubted her qualifications again after that conversation. She had already helped Washington land Chris Petersen, the highly regarded football coach. Petersen didn’t know of Cohen when the Washington contingent flew to Boise for an interview, but he quickly realized that she connected with and understood people “better” than anyone he’d ever met. When coaches applied for assistant positions, Petersen would ask Cohen to meet with them, and he rejected some applicants based on her reads, which weren’t always the same as his. He began to refer to Cohen as his problem-solver, and when Scott Woodward left the AD position for the same job at Texas A&M, Petersen recommended strongly that administrators choose Cohen to replace him. Reading people was her superpower, Petersen told the UW brass.
Washington promoted Cohen to interim athletic director in ‘16. You were built for this, she continued to remind herself. Then she proved her constitution beyond even the most optimistic expectations. She started with the strategic planning exercise known as a SWOT analysis, brainstorming ideal Huskies and what they represented until her team had clearly defined the culture they wanted to create. She asked the coaches in nonrevenue sports what they needed to continue winning championships. She erased the $15 million deficit she inherited, continued fundraising and pumped the additional cash and growing TV money into facility renovations. Petersen laughed at the interim tag. Like, he says, “Wait, what are we talking about here? Just hire her already.” The school made her the permanent AD after a few months.
Cohen made unpopular decisions, like firing beloved basketball coach Lorenzo Romar after the 2016–17 season and replacing him with Mike Hopkins, a talented outsider from Syracuse who wasn’t well known on the West Coast. Three of her first five new coaching hires—Hopkins; Yasmin Farooq, women’s rowing; and Elise Ray-Statz, gymnastics—won conference coach of the year honors in their respective first seasons. The football team compiled the highest APR in the country and made the Fiesta Bowl, the softball team surged to the Women’s College World Series final, the baseball team advanced to the CWS for the first time, both rowing teams finished second nationally— and all that was just 2017–18. Meanwhile, Cohen helped coax Jimmy Lake, the prized football assistant, to remain on staff, and when Petersen stepped down for personal reasons in December, his top lieutenant was available to elevate. Amid all that winning, Cohen landed the school a 10-year, $119 million deal with Adidas, quadrupling the previous agreement with rival Nike, good for the fifth-highest contract in the nation based on yearly average and second-most in the Pac-12.
There is a powerball winner out there laughing at your 401k.