More than ever, people are donating to Mizzou athletics. But the guy who raised the funds suddenly is out without an explanation.
Athletics director Jim Sterk is stepping down, as the school announced a mutual agreement of resignation on late Monday afternoon. What the school should’ve done was respect those donors and fans by giving them some clarity on what happened. The donors and fans are the ones who bought into Sterk, and thus gave Sterk the money to buy the indoor football facility and make other improvements to the athletics program.
Instead, they were left in the dark, wondering if record donations weren’t the answer, then what is? Under Sterk’s watch, the athletics department and the Tiger Scholarship Fund raised a record $50.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Then, in fiscal year 2021 — a year we know in which many people took hits financially — TSF broke the 2017 record with $55.5 million.
Some people believe Sterk wasn’t appreciated enough by higher-ups of higher-ed. A school’s athletics director is a dissected position — and powerful people have differing opinions on the power of an athletics department. But it seemed as if Sterk was maximizing each situation he found himself in — which makes it odd that he’s found himself out of the job.
Sterk’s hiring of football coach Eli Drinkwitz looks like one that’ll be part of Missouri lore. Perhaps I’m putting the cart before the horse, but “Drink” has become a brand in this state — and it happened fast. He won five games against Southeastern Conference opponents in his first season. Then he made the Tigers footprint impressionable on St. Louis and the state.
The coach’s unwavering confidence, his started-from-the-bottom story and his football intellect won over recruits and recruits’ families. He got some key transfers, too (namely the great-named linebacker Blaze Alldredge, who’s on the Dick Butkus Award watch list to start this season). And “Drink” has elevated Mizzou in the recruiting rankings — the class of 2022 is No. 13 in Rivals’ rankings. That's eye-popping.
Whomever Missouri hires to replace Sterk, his or her relationship with Drinkwitz will be crucial. The new AD must be able to work with the football coach, deliver for the football coach and keep the football coach from being some other school’s football coach. It’s a weird dynamic, of course, considering the athletics director is the football coach’s boss. But when you have a top-15 recruiting class before your second season, the power shifts a bit.
Sterk also hired basketball coach Cuonzo Martin, and I remain a believer in the man, especially because he took last year’s team to the NCAA Tournament. When you talk to Martin, you come away impressed by his integrity, his sense of self and even his sense of humor. Others, though, still aren’t high on the hiring. We'll see.
And Sterk made the impressive hiring of softball coach Larissa Anderson, whose bashing ballclub became the talk of Columbia last spring. And he resuscitated the “border war” with Kansas. And he oversaw an athletics program that has tallied a 3.00 or higher grade-point average for each of the past nine semesters.
So it seems, Sterk maximized opportunities at Mizzou. But the question is — can the next athletics director supersize opportunities? Mizzou is a canoe in the SEC pond of yachts. The athletics budget is smaller than most conference schools — and surely is smaller than the two potential new conference schools, Texas and Oklahoma.
What can the new AD do to catapult Mizzou financially? Or was Sterk doing about as good a job as one could do? If the new AD finds a way, it’ll be in part because of Sterk’s hiring of the head football coach.
As for now, the Mizzou fan base has to wait and wonder what happened. It’s definitely not the best time for all of this to happen. Football season is about to start — heck, less than two hours before the email about Sterk hit reporters’ inboxes, an email arrived with schedules for media day and football practices.
Everything seemed set with Mizzou; now, much is in flux until the new AD is hired.
Predictably, many names have surfaced online as possible Sterk replacements. Most of them are men who worked under previous athletics directors at Mizzou — and then became athletics directors at smaller universities. All make for quality candidates. But Mizzou’s hiring should be as innovative as the person hired.
Hopefully the school will consider a woman as athletics director, in addition to the men on the list. And hopefully the school will consider that the qualifications for an athletics director have changed.
College football is in a new frontier. Name, image and likeness rules will make college athletes paid athletes. The college football playoff, and thus its payoff, is expanding. Texas and Oklahoma could join the Southeastern Conference, enriching the league but making the toughest conference even tougher. The new Mizzou athletics director should be equipped to navigate all of these changes and challenges.
But the old Mizzou athletics director seemed like a good guy to have in the captain’s chair.
