Premium content from Griswold: Jen has never been on anything less than firm footing

whatshouldicareabout said:

Here we go ...

Going to try to summarize as much as I can with at least background facts/evidence ...

Jen doesn't inspire confidence ... Derek's original post summarizes a good amount of the why. Her track record on hiring/firing decisions (see Hopkins and Wynn) on top of Jimmy has been a train wreck. The Race Porter interview is pretty damning about her as being viewed as a two faced leader. Whether tied to coaching, NIL, fan relations, etc. Jen continues to show she's reactionary at best, not a visionary, and often out of touch.

For anybody that pays attention to what Coker has said regarding Jen and the finances, he's had some very pointed things that he's said about Jen, how she ascended to the job, and how she undercut Woodward (particularly on the way out the door). The real important thing to keep in mind from what Coker has said about Jen is about how she manages the overall AD budget ... that it's all about cost containment and that she was very critical of Woodward's expansionary spend money to make money philosophy.

We know that the primary target during the coaching search was Matt Campbell. There's been too many out there that have confirmed that information in various forms. We also know that Jen was not running point in the search from the standpoint of identifying the coaches ... that was done elsewhere. We know Pete was involved, likely some bouncing of ideas off of Stoops given that Pete/Stoops are close, the Huards (Brock in particular was very nuanced in how and more importantly when he tweeted comments publicly). There probably were a few more in the inner circle but I don't think that the circle was particularly large. Effectively, Jen was the figurehead leader front and center while others behind the scenes were telling her how and when to dance.

Brock made a tweet at one point saying that the two people he would talk to were Aranda and Campbell (not a coincidence there) ... I don't think we ever got started with Aranda (obviously). Campbell was always going to be a nuanced sell in that he has a very good situation at Iowa St and he doesn't have an urgency per se to leave. As a result, I think it's fairly clear that we worked a backup plan with DeBoer as the Plan B in case Campbell fell through. This is my opinion, but we had an agreement with DeBoer locked up PRIOR to meeting with Campbell as a contingency because DeBoer's regular season ended a week earlier.

We know UW and Campbell met and key people were involved. That's not really debatable at this point. I had multiple people (not tied into each other) tell me on both Saturday and Sunday night that a deal with Campbell was done and that the expectation was that it would be wrapped up. So what happened?

This is where there is mostly conjecture at best trying to piece things together and me putting my opinion on what information has come out:

Iowa St played on Friday and Campbell met UW on Saturday. The first alert that I got that a deal was done was on Saturday night. It all seemed very logical and made sense. UW has a higher ceiling and is one of the 20 jobs or so that you can win at in College Football. There are only so many of those jobs out there and they don't typically come available that often. Moreover, of those 20 jobs, not all of those jobs IMO are a great fit for Campbell so you're probably looking at more like 5-10 jobs tops that he'd be interested in. UW was one of those.

By Sunday morning, there was reservations out there. From the sound of it, USC played Campbell a bit making him think he was still in consideration when they were going after Riley, then Riley gets announced, and everything goes back to square one. At this point, it was relayed to me that behind the scenes things were getting very heated and that there were members of the inner circle advising Jen that were getting pissed with her that the deal was looking like it fell through. I believe if you go back through the Twitter timeline, you'll find a tweet from Brock that night that was slightly cryptic but fit what I was hearing. By the end of the evening I heard that the damage control was successful and that Campbell was back on board (with an uptick in compensation from the original offer) from a completely different source.

By Monday AM everything was back to being off and by the end of the day everything had things tied to DeBoer who was announced the next day. Was Campbell just a flake? Did he get scared away from Riley going to USC? I'm sure that there are some narratives that can be painted to pin what happened squarely on Campbell. But I will say that I personally don't think that the goal for Campbell was to enter next season at Iowa St. There hasn't been any raise that I've seen announced or any of the usual upticks that one gets by playing the coaching carousel to their advantage.

So here's what I think happened ... Campbell is really big on being supported by a strong AD that shares the vision of what it takes to compete for championships. We've seen in particular how much the landscape is changing with NIL and the resources that are going to be required to be successful. If I was in Campbell's shoes, I would want to feel great about where I'm going in that regard knowing that the place that he is currently at gives him all the resources they can to be successful ... effectively he's in a cushy spot right now. So to take on the added risk he needs to know that there's added reward coming (and that's more than his salary increasing). In the end, I don't think he bought Jen and didn't envision working under her being successful to the level that would make him leave. If he did his diligence and realized that Jen's unlikely to be here past the expiration of her contract in 2024 (if not earlier) there's the uncomfortable element of not being "the hire" of your new boss. Moreover, Campbell wasn't Jen's hire ... it was the choice of her advisors. The advisors made the mistake through this of letting Jen be the face of the AD, selling the program, etc. Does anybody have confidence right now that Jen could sell the program? As was said in many areas with the DeBoer hire, the video, and the press conference her actions don't strike you as being professional like a Top 20 AD should be. She acts like you'd want the AD for a G5 or maybe even FCS level.

So in that context, I think Campbell is looking at Jen and ultimately can't sell himself for working for Jen. Moreover, I think that Jen's sitting there, knowing she's already got DeBoer in her back pocket, that's a Pete-lite coach, who will make at minimum $4M per year less than Campbell, that doesn't have Campbell's buyout, and goes back to thinking about her bottom line. She's got the Jimmy buyout to cover. She may have the Hop buyout coming. She has an opinion of the fans that they are suckers and will just blindly support anything (despite increasing evidence that that's not the case going forward - the AD is also leading their sales pitch of season tickets by talking about the "exciting Kalen DeBoer era" with really nothing visionary and a set of empty promises that they can bait and switch you on after you renewed). So in the end, Jen sees her budget and as a result I personally don't think she was all-in on Campbell. For her, DeBoer was the guy that made P&L sense for her. So while I don't think she directly sabotaged or torpedoed the Campbell hire, I seriously doubt she ever came off as willing to do whatever it took to hire Campbell and ultimately that left him lukewarm at hitching his future to hers. I think in the context of what I heard about the inner circle being vocal to Jen about not letting things fall through, the logic makes a lot of sense to me.

In the end, what it really comes down to is that the more time passes the more that I personally think Jen's not the right person to lead the AD. As more evidence comes out, the more that I have reason to believe that her actions and judgment aren't good and ill suited to what is needed to run a college AD today. Frankly, her vision is about 20+ years outdated. And as more evidence comes out, the more it makes me question what really happened when outcomes and results seem to not go the way that they should with her. For an AD to fly across the country and for a sitting HC to make a cross country flight the day after the final regular season game, the common outcome is that there's enough mutual interest between both parties that you sit in a room and hammer out the details to a deal. For such an uncommon outcome to occur here, it has never sat right with me (similar to the narrative with K leaving) because for an executive like Jen, it's an incredibly bad look to be responsible for selling your company, vision, etc. on a key leadership hire and they tell you thanks but no thanks. Best case scenario I can see here is that Jen appeased the advisors and donor group by meeting with their hire but turned her attention to a better candidate. But her track record with hires and prioritization of the P&L over seemingly all else in her decision making just makes that a tough sell to me.

So take all of this with a grain of salt ... I hope DeBoer turns out to be a really good coach at UW. But it's hard for me to not view this hire as if we settled for our Plan B and the how in how we got to the Plan B is just so abnormal that there's got to be more to the story. This is how the puzzle pieces make sense to me ... they may make sense differently to others. I really hope I'm not right on this one.

I have some very strong opinions on what you said here … some of it I’m not 100% sure I want to completely elaborate on I need to think about if I want to publicly put out some of the info I’ve heard the last few days and connecting the dots on what I think happened.

1to392831weretaken said:

Baseman said:

PostGameOrangeSlices said:

Baseman said:

The hope list, and first calls went to:

Fickell and Aranda. A Big-10 assistant sent me a text that UW offered Fickell $7M for 7. Clearly his source was Fickell's agent whose agency also rep's said assistant. When word leaks that early, the agent has floated the offer, making a market for his guy. When this happens, Next. No harm no foul. Aranda was also contacted and immediately shut them down.

Jen's first choice was Clawson. She saw him as the CFB Billy Beane, a coach who could build a program without NIL and win by out scheming opponents, Pete?. Moneyball was a cute story but last I checked the A's can't win the big one. Moreover, they're a shit home draw. Right there, that tells you the mindset. "More" with less. Overachieve and overcharge at the gate, draw em in with fancy light shows, purple smoke and a game-break playlist that screams a Nickelback track lurks somewhere in the shuffle.

Jen thought Clawson was in only to learn his wife tubed the deal. Anyone who ever sold for a living understands when the prospect says they have to check with the wife, the deal is dead.

Next, Campbell. He beat Oregon! Less is more. Feel good guy. And so on so forth. Yes, again Jen thought Campbell was in. The courtship drug on and Jen was clearly played. Cucked, more like it.

Meanwhile DeBoner, with the most promising pedigree of the above, IMO, lingered and we got a coach.

This isn't that bad of a coaching search for the AD to have ran. All names would have been good to great except for Campbell, IMO

No problem reaching out to Fickell and Aranada. Why not Lincoln Riley? Take his tempature. Didn't happen. Find the infatuation with Clawson and Campbell disturbing. Both perceived as doing less with more. Jen gets lost in the weeds with gimmicks rather than basics.

@DerekJohnson knows deets

Would you actually want Lincoln Riley here? My hope is that they didn't call him because they didn't want to give $100 million to a guy who's never coached a competent defense in his life.

Maybe it happened by accident and only because she failed with her first choices, but isn't what happened pretty much ideal? Making a coach actually earn it on the field before mortgaging the AD to pay him?

You make the call, see if he's interested and if so, his number. If nothing else, it helps determine the market. Whatever. Jen is small time. She worries more about game day experience instead of the product on the field. The students didn't suddenly pack the stands and make noise to hear Party in the USA. The team entered Saturday night 3-0 and is fun to watch. Amazing how this attracts fans and keeps them in the seats.

The real Jen Cohen is incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. The one Grinolds thinks is on firm footing is a clone developed in Bagley Hall by a biochemistry grad student.

Jen got blindsided that USC and UCLA went to the B1G.

That alone is a fireable offense.