Caple lobbed softballs at her and she gave non-answers or canned, cliche'd responses. She was not challenged at all and the whole thing was just a waste of everybody's time.
Let's see the questions you would've asked her?
Seriously?
Off the top of my head, here are questions I would ask, and they would be done so respectfully,,,
Looking back when you had the campaign challenging Husky fans to be "all in", and then you failed to lobby for a delay of the conference championship game and instead stepped aside and allowed Oregon to go, what would you say to Husky fans who felt deeply betrayed by that?
Are you feeling pressure of any sort? If so, which?
Given the fiscal challenges the department is facing, what could have been done differently during the stadium remodel to lower costs?
For Husky fans who are feeling uncertainty about the future of the program including where its home conference will be, what would you say to them right now?
What would be your ideal outcome for the P12 media deal?
Aside from the obvious win-loss record, what characteristics of DeBoer do you most appreciate as head coach?
What were the conversations like between Ohio State and your department? (In regards to OSU bowing out of the trip to Seattle)
Looking back, do you have any second thoughts about how you promoted Penix last season? What is the general plan this season to promote him?
Etc...
Great questions DJ — better and more direct than Caple's for sure (although it's easy to be the hard-hitting second-guesser when you're an uncredentialed message board dictator)
But I don't think Caple's questions were the softballs you claim.
Not fucking up's move UW to the Big Ten is by far the most important thing on Cohen's agenda — and Caple hit on aspects of that situation a half-dozen times.
"We're all in on the Pac-12" bullshit is exactly what she's supposed to spew until the day UW leaves for the B1G. Don't say a word to suggest Washington is anything other than a loyal soldier
Lay low, wait for Colorado and Arizona to start the exit parade and then GTFO
Caple lobbed softballs at her and she gave non-answers or canned, cliche'd responses. She was not challenged at all and the whole thing was just a waste of everybody's time.
Let's see the questions you would've asked her?
Seriously?
Off the top of my head, here are questions I would ask, and they would be done so respectfully,,,
Looking back when you had the campaign challenging Husky fans to be "all in", and then you failed to lobby for a delay of the conference championship game and instead stepped aside and allowed Oregon to go, what would you say to Husky fans who felt deeply betrayed by that?
Are you feeling pressure of any sort? If so, which?
Given the fiscal challenges the department is facing, what could have been done differently during the stadium remodel to lower costs?
For Husky fans who are feeling uncertainty about the future of the program including where its home conference will be, what would you say to them right now?
What would be your ideal outcome for the P12 media deal?
Aside from the obvious win-loss record, what characteristics of DeBoer do you most appreciate as head coach?
What were the conversations like between Ohio State and your department? (In regards to OSU bowing out of the trip to Seattle)
Looking back, do you have any second thoughts about how you promoted Penix last season? What is the general plan this season to promote him?
Etc...
Unfortunately, she would put her leopard print jacket back on and walk out on the interview after the first question.
When I saw this come out I was looking forward to learning something. I posted it tonight in the Wam. But... Caple lobbed softballs at her and she gave non-answers or canned, cliche'd responses. She was not challenged at all and the whole thing was just a waste of everybody's time. I came away with even less confidence in her ability to lead this athletic department.
Her only strong statements were she's excited about new LED lights in the stadium for the gameday experience, and they're halfway to getting 5,000 new ticket holders. (Net or gross?)
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
You had any confidence remaining?
There’s no way she’s granting any interview that poses hard hitting questions
Being excited about seizure inducing LED boards sums Jen up in a single comment
Ditch the fucking lights and fire Mike Hopkins instead
Before he gives me a seizure.
Worthless fucking AD. Worthless.
Her ineptitude is really mind blowing
It’s comical to me that she gets an extension that is kept off the radar because everybody knows that if announced in real time would have gotten significant blowback
Moreover she’s run the financial side of ICA into the ground (she’s had help with factors she controls and doesn’t control) and her whole angle for getting the job in the first place was fiscal responsibility that she brought that Pool Boy didn’t
Because of her own fiscal blunders she’s sacrificed hoops because she can’t fire Hop because she doesn’t have the budget to do so
She’s not Tawdy Turner bad … but she’s the next worst AD of UW in my lifetime … her tenure at best is comparable to Babs
When I saw this come out I was looking forward to learning something. I posted it tonight in the Wam. But... Caple lobbed softballs at her and she gave non-answers or canned, cliche'd responses. She was not challenged at all and the whole thing was just a waste of everybody's time. I came away with even less confidence in her ability to lead this athletic department.
Her only strong statements were she's excited about new LED lights in the stadium for the gameday experience, and they're halfway to getting 5,000 new ticket holders. (Net or gross?)
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
You had any confidence remaining?
There’s no way she’s granting any interview that poses hard hitting questions
Being excited about seizure inducing LED boards sums Jen up in a single comment
Ditch the fucking lights and fire Mike Hopkins instead
Before he gives me a seizure.
Worthless fucking AD. Worthless.
Her ineptitude is really mind blowing
It’s comical to me that she gets an extension that is kept off the radar because everybody knows that if announced in real time would have gotten significant blowback
Moreover she’s run the financial side of ICA into the ground (she’s had help with factors she controls and doesn’t control) and her whole angle for getting the job in the first place was fiscal responsibility that she brought that Pool Boy didn’t
Because of her own fiscal blunders she’s sacrificed hoops because she can’t fire Hop because she doesn’t have the budget to do so
She’s not Tawdy Turner bad … but she’s the next worst AD of UW in my lifetime … her tenure at best is comparable to Babs
When I saw this come out I was looking forward to learning something. I posted it tonight in the Wam. But... Caple lobbed softballs at her and she gave non-answers or canned, cliche'd responses. She was not challenged at all and the whole thing was just a waste of everybody's time. I came away with even less confidence in her ability to lead this athletic department.
Her only strong statements were she's excited about new LED lights in the stadium for the gameday experience, and they're halfway to getting 5,000 new ticket holders. (Net or gross?)
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
You had any confidence remaining?
There’s no way she’s granting any interview that poses hard hitting questions
Being excited about seizure inducing LED boards sums Jen up in a single comment
Ditch the fucking lights and fire Mike Hopkins instead
Before he gives me a seizure.
Worthless fucking AD. Worthless.
Her ineptitude is really mind blowing
It’s comical to me that she gets an extension that is kept off the radar because everybody knows that if announced in real time would have gotten significant blowback
Moreover she’s run the financial side of ICA into the ground (she’s had help with factors she controls and doesn’t control) and her whole angle for getting the job in the first place was fiscal responsibility that she brought that Pool Boy didn’t
Because of her own fiscal blunders she’s sacrificed hoops because she can’t fire Hop because she doesn’t have the budget to do so
She’s not Tawdy Turner bad … but she’s the next worst AD of UW in my lifetime … her tenure at best is comparable to Babs
Wasn’t she supposedly really good at fund raising?
When I saw this come out I was looking forward to learning something. I posted it tonight in the Wam. But... Caple lobbed softballs at her and she gave non-answers or canned, cliche'd responses. She was not challenged at all and the whole thing was just a waste of everybody's time. I came away with even less confidence in her ability to lead this athletic department.
Her only strong statements were she's excited about new LED lights in the stadium for the gameday experience, and they're halfway to getting 5,000 new ticket holders. (Net or gross?)
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
You had any confidence remaining?
There’s no way she’s granting any interview that poses hard hitting questions
Being excited about seizure inducing LED boards sums Jen up in a single comment
Ditch the fucking lights and fire Mike Hopkins instead
Before he gives me a seizure.
Worthless fucking AD. Worthless.
Her ineptitude is really mind blowing
It’s comical to me that she gets an extension that is kept off the radar because everybody knows that if announced in real time would have gotten significant blowback
Moreover she’s run the financial side of ICA into the ground (she’s had help with factors she controls and doesn’t control) and her whole angle for getting the job in the first place was fiscal responsibility that she brought that Pool Boy didn’t
Because of her own fiscal blunders she’s sacrificed hoops because she can’t fire Hop because she doesn’t have the budget to do so
She’s not Tawdy Turner bad … but she’s the next worst AD of UW in my lifetime … her tenure at best is comparable to Babs
Wasn’t she supposedly really good at fund raising?
That was her legacy role and by most accounts she did it well
I have a firm belief that most have a shelf life in a job or position without some change occurring because without it things get tired and stale
I’m not sure I see a lot of fundraising coming from ICA right now at anything other than the corporate and/or big booster level (and that seems slow at present)
The biggest challenge is that if you have people with purse strings that effectively have limited confidence in Jen (wouldn’t shock me) … then it’s impossible for ICA to be operating with anything other than one hand tied behind its back
Perhaps there is something in the hopper that can’t materialize until after the media fiasco is wrapped up because of reasons … but it’s really hard for me see how Jen’s propensity to hide in a non public facing manner is best for business
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
This one is enough for me. @GrandpaSankey could see how important that position was at the time, and Cohen went and found someone who was woefully incapable and disinterested in being on the leading edge of the transition to pay for play. And why? Why on earth did she hire that bimbo? I still can't get my mind around it.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Holy hell. This is a Tequila to end all Tequila posts.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Holy hell. This is a Tequila to end all Tequila posts.
Well, swinging those mammaries around might work in the beginning, get you in the front door, climb the ladder .... but when you reach the higher echelons it's too bad your boobs don't have leadership or decision-making qualities.
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Except when other ADs were questioning, UW repped by JC vouched for Larry Scott as innovative, the man with the plan. Jens been blinded by "game day experience" going back to Tyrone. Purple smoke, The Zone, Jimi Hendrix, who can forgot plagerism of Michigan's Mr Brightside piped into an empty stadium. Meanwhile professed Duck Ramming waved her tatted ass on Instagram for almost two years with zero recruiting results before "a move" was made. Anyway you cut it, it's tone deaf and the mark of someone that doesn't get it...Oh, then there's the big secret she would leave in a heartbeat if Pete wanted to take Built for Life on the road and take her with him.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Holy hell. This is a Tequila to end all Tequila posts.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Holy hell. This is a Tequila to end all Tequila posts.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Holy hell. This is a Tequila to end all Tequila posts.
Jen hits a special nerve with me
Anna Marie Caucey is the one who actually gets a say on what the UW does. There's a collective vote amongst the regents obviously but she has the power to say "Fuck all of this, we're just going to go independent and cut a deal with Amazon ourselves"
I don't like to be negative about her but this is how I see the situation.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Except when other ADs were questioning, UW Meanwhile professed Duck Ramming waved her tatted ass on Instagram for almost two years with zero recruiting results before "a move" was made.
Not that I really care, but of course you do. Most here do. If you didn't like being negative about her, this softball interview would have been exactly what you'd expect instead of some kind of crisis. I doubt you were in the Tug complaining every time Fox News had Trump on to fellate him live on TV for an hour because you didn't like to be negative about him.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position.
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around.
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require).
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
Comments
It’s comical to me that she gets an extension that is kept off the radar because everybody knows that if announced in real time would have gotten significant blowback
Moreover she’s run the financial side of ICA into the ground (she’s had help with factors she controls and doesn’t control) and her whole angle for getting the job in the first place was fiscal responsibility that she brought that Pool Boy didn’t
Because of her own fiscal blunders she’s sacrificed hoops because she can’t fire Hop because she doesn’t have the budget to do so
She’s not Tawdy Turner bad … but she’s the next worst AD of UW in my lifetime … her tenure at best is comparable to Babs
I have a firm belief that most have a shelf life in a job or position without some change occurring because without it things get tired and stale
I’m not sure I see a lot of fundraising coming from ICA right now at anything other than the corporate and/or big booster level (and that seems slow at present)
The biggest challenge is that if you have people with purse strings that effectively have limited confidence in Jen (wouldn’t shock me) … then it’s impossible for ICA to be operating with anything other than one hand tied behind its back
Perhaps there is something in the hopper that can’t materialize until after the media fiasco is wrapped up because of reasons … but it’s really hard for me see how Jen’s propensity to hide in a non public facing manner is best for business
For me, I don't really give a shit about Jen Cohen. Mostly because I'm just not as fanatical about the Huskies as I once was. The UW AD is a large business that relies on a dying product (in this region) for a majority of its income, and people think the CEO is at fault when in reality she's just a figurehead. Want proof? Same AD, back to back years, change the head coach, and you go from four wins to 11. Who's more important to success?
I don't see how stadium funding is on her. I don't see how a loss of revenue due to COVID is on her when every other school was hit the same way. I don't see how her lack of psychic ability in being able to predict the LA schools' defection is a huge crisis. The NIL situation is complex, as there seems to be none for 18 year olds, yet a bunch of pro guys were retained and they picked up Bernard from MSU.
I'd hope she has a lot more inside info than me, but I'd have made many of the same mistakes. I'd have extended Hopkins after he won back to back coach of the year and won the conference with Thybulle and [checks notes]... nobody. I'd have hired Lake if Petersen truly endorsed him. I'd have wore leopard print (I mean, come on). You guysm would fucking haaaate me. I guess that's why I'm not the AD.
I think the only thing that's really enraged me about Cohen is hiring that fucking Duck to manage NIL, as that's something she surely had a direct hand in and was an absolute tone deaf fuckup. Other than that, it's a lot like when I get my weekly pep talk email at work from the CEO. I just picture who.gif and delete without reading. It's the coaches, players, donors, and fans that make the real difference.
Not speaking for the Derek angle here, but about the bolded. Jen's had a long-standing "strategy" at this point for staying out of the public eye and having effectively limited visibility or accountability in communication to the general population of stakeholders that support the UW Athletics community. She's not going to be visible without any kind of pre-approved list of questions from which she not only can ensure that she's not having to answer any (Pat Hill) TUFF questions but also provides her time to generate her talking points in advance. That's very clearly it is what it is at this point. The part that bothers me the most about this, and you touch on the impact below, is that the UW Athletic Department has had a long term reputation across multiple ADs (and Jen continues this tradition) of really only giving a crap about the communication with the bosses on upper campus (Cauce, BOR, etc.), corporate donors (why do you think there was a large survey recently sent out by ICA asking if you could identify UW's business partners, your opinion of those business partners, etc.), and however many high net worth donors that are supporting ICA. By not seeking to having strong and strengthening relationships with the rank and file alumni and fans of the program, what Jen is effectively doing is lessening the connection that those fans/alumni have with the program. When she talks about the difficulties for attendance, etc. and the impacts that it has on the fiscal profile of ICA, while some of those items she talks about are true, you never hear her talk about the role that the mismanagement of ICA and their outreach has had on that. Add on top of that the comments that she has made in the past referencing her effective disdain about critical comments coming from the fans of the program ... it's just everything you don't want to do in her position. Jen Cohen makes you do the opposite of THINKING or CARING ... the indifference that her leadership has had on the overall UW program seeps into how you feel about your support of the program. Said differently, if she's not really that interested in competing at a high level across the board then why should you be invested in supporting such indifference? The challenges that UW faces in football with the way the modern world works are definitely real ones. But as an AD, it's her JOB to work at figuring out how to differentiate the product in a way that draws interest. Here's a great example - instead of effectively shutting down campus on fall Saturday afternoons and leveraging as an opportunity to build as much good will around UW as possible through the medium of a football game, UW has instead limited and made difficult the ability to tailgate and instead promoting items such as public transportation and public tailgate areas that are highly generic and do nothing to differentiate the product from the multitude of other sporting options in the area. UW football isn't a dying product ... it's a neglected product that has had YEARS of neglect behind it and will require YEARS of focused engagement to turn around. The stadium funding is not on her per se ... that deal was done before she took the AD job and in the grand scheme of things I think the rebuild was done rather smartly and at a price that looks like a bargain compared to what more modern builds look like. What is on Jen though is not operating in a mindset that maximizes the revenues that come from Husky Stadium and those 7 Saturday afternoons each Fall (for starters). There is very little original thinking that I see coming out of ICA. There's deflection of blame when things don't work out to expectations. There was a very poor response to the COVID pandemic and UW was one of the last to act in terms of making adjustments to the budget. Instead of getting ahead of the plan Jen's been reactionary ever since ... her inability to be a visionary and instead only be reactionary is probably my biggest criticism of her leadership.
As for NIL, the first 2 hires that she made specifically for football have been unmitigated disasters. ICA has taken an approach that their "brand" is to create NIL opportunities (for existing athletes) adjacent to the traditional mantras of college athletics tied to education, support services, training tables, etc. The gaps to this though come in 3 forms: 1) the blurring of athletics vs academics is increasingly leaning towards schools being athletic training grounds and academics being more optional as athletes are looking to maximize their earning power TODAY because nobody knows what the future looks like as a professional, 2) the strategy of taking care of your "proven" players is great for retention and minimizing attrition through the portal but is limiting when it comes to recruiting the top end players who are more concerned about maximizing their dollars up front, and 3) the bloating of the services not tied to NIL increases spend requirements and causes problems when you're facing revenue challenges (not in a B2 conference and therefore having annual media rights that are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 at best of other programs and then relying on alternative revenue sources to cover the gap that the combo of services + NIL require). The decision to extend Hop was defendable and she shouldn't be criticized for that. Where she does deserve to be criticized with Hop is not being able to plug the fiscal deficits in the budget (it all runs together on this) such that when it was clear he wasn't the answer that he was fired versus what she's done of allowing him to go MULTIPLE years as a dead coach walking and DESTROY interest in all material aspects of UW Hoops as a result. The Lake hire is a difficult one to unwrap. Generally speaking, and I'm sure somebody has the data somewhere on this, I think the track record of replacing a "legendary" coach with an in-house assistant tends to end poorly with some short-term success through stability and then heading south. Where Jen will never win me over with Lake is that there are the behind the scenes aspect after the Lake suspension via Caple that Jen would not have fired Lake after Year 2 without the incident occurring. Moreover, the indications were that Jen was still of the mindset of retaining Jimmy providing he showed any level of contrition behind the actions. She got 100% bailed out by Jimmy effectively looking to get that parachute out. So yeah, fair to say that she handled EVERYTHING about the Lake hiring and firing about as bad as possible.
There's more to dive into that isn't the most favorable with Jen's hiring record as well as some scandals that have been effectively swept well under the rug and largely forgotten. Here's the thing about the role of the AD ... their job is two-fold. First, it's to make sure that they've hired the right people to produce results. Second, it's making sure that there is the funding in place to allow the right people the opportunity to be successful. Her hiring results are a mixed bag at best. It's easy to say her budget issues are all COVID driven but it's lazy. Simply put, she either needs to find more revenue OR she needs to make some budget cuts where it makes the most sense. Should she have seen USC and UCLA bolting - perhaps not. Should she have recognized that USC/UCLA making a decision to leave be one that could potentially cripple the future of UW Athletics? Absolutely. As such, there's at least some level of responsibility for not getting ahead of that one way or another. Moreover, she has every level of responsibility to have been thinking about where UW was in the big picture and the direction of where things were going. Any proof she got ahead of that and positioned UW well? Goes back to the whole visionary vs reactionary thing.
I guess that's where the rubber meets the road.
NEXT
Just found a bug. Text box cuts off after certain text length including quotes. It should cut it off after a certain length for the response only.
Oh wait. Nevermind.