Everyone has heard of the Courtship of Eddie’s Father, but last week was a different show as Colorado State University conducted interviews to fill their Athletics Director vacancy left by the former boss who left town to take the same job at Kansas State. The Rams shortened their list to three candidates, and one of them turned into the Courtship of Dayton AD Ted Kissell.

It’s easy to see why a school like Colorado St. is interested, and many Ram fans are already leaning toward Kissell over Notre Dame associate AD Lawrence Cunningham and UConn associate AD Jeff Hathaway. After reading several message boards for CSU fans, most are impressed with Kissell and commented on how he appeared to arrive with a strong knowledge of the school and it’s history on the playing field.

Here’s an excerpt from some of Kissell’s Q&A’s at the CSU forum last week…
http://www.ramnation.com/message_board/main/2001/August/8/35025.html

We’ve been blessed in the past to have Kissell answer our questions about his responsibilities as UD athletics director, but no mention was ever made of one day seeing him move on to bigger and better things. Perhaps we’ve taken him for granted. Perhaps he feels it’s time to move on. Perhaps a school like Dayton is where he wants to finish his AD career and settle down, giving CSU merely a token look for the sake of appeasing the masses and testing the waters. Whatever the case may be, it’s a sight most UD fans are gimpy over because Flyerland has gone nowhere but up since Teddy Ballgame came to town.

Kissell was hired at the same moment UD’s basketball program was getting flushed down the toilet by an otherwise good, noble man named Jim O’Brien. Let’s forget for a second that O’Brien is now coaching the Boston Celtics and hearken back to the day when the Flyers manufactured 10 wins in two seasons. It wasn’t just that the Flyers were losing, we were losing like losers lose. Bad. Forty point blowouts to Marquette. Nights when we hoped the Flyers would score 50. With him, Kissell brought a winning attitude from the Univ. Arizona and knew what it took to run a solid AD. He oversaw the entire basketball program for the Wildcats and helped give Lute Olsen the tools to build a national power from a program that previously had the basketball history of Sisters of the Poor.

With the hiring of Oliver Purnell, Dayton’s fortunes started to turn. It took a couple seasons but eventually Purnell moved the program to a point where he could keep it afloat without a season-ending dose of CPR from the powers-that-be. Today, Purnell has the Flyers firmly planted in the nation’s Top-40. While former AD Tom Frericks was a legend, he hesitated at a time when hesitation cut like a knife. Dayton tried to do things on a shoestring budget and squeeze water from wine. To Ted’s credit, he realized that cheapest isn’t always least expensive, and spearheaded the funds to bring in the kind of coaches Dayton needed to compete in the Atlantic-10. And don’t think for a second UD was a gimmie addition to the league. After the Great Midwest Conference gave us our walking papers, it was Kissell’s job to find us a home — a home that to this day may not be the perfect fit, but at the time was the best option in a list of few alternatives. Even now, Kissell admits the A-10 is not committed to anything more than across-the-board mediocrity outside mens basketball, but he also realizes Dayton isn’t about to add equestrian, gymnastics, or other fringe sports of the top-tier leagues and become too large for our britches. There’s a high water mark for the Flyers and Kissell is committed to reaching it. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. We’ll never be a St. John’s or Villanova however — at least in the A-10.

One of Kissell’s greatest strengths has been stroking the fat cats for money to help improve the athletic department. It’s a tireless job and one that’s easier said than done. Think of all the new additions since he arrived: The $4 million Donoher Basketball Center, a new European-style terrace to seat 1500 people at Baujan Field for soccer games, a new playing surface for the volleyball team, a new practice facility for the soccer programs near NCR, expanded scholarship funding, new scoreboards at the UD Arena, and a big hand in the $150 million Call to Lead campaign. I know I’m forgetting many others.

Money is a good thing for the AD, which is why Kissell’s greatest victory might be in promoting Dayton’s non-revenue sports to Tier-1 status. With it, he allocated funds to soccer and volleyball and was instrumental in pushing all three teams to the top of the Atlantic-10. I counted five HS All Americans between the mens and womens soccer rosters at last count. No matter how good the coaches are, leadership starts at the top, but that’s why Dayton now has a cast of coaches almost every school in the A-10 would give an arm and a leg for. Oliver Purnell is easily among the league’s best three or four basketball coaches. UD mens soccer coach Dave Schureck and womens soccer coach Mike Tucker could easily be coaching in the Big-10 or SEC. Volleyball coach Pete Hoyer is a conference leader. Even our former track coach was guilded by the US Track and Field authorities and spawned an Olympic medallist. Last but not least is womens basketball coach Jaci Clark. Since the fishy (and timely) exit of Clemette Haskins, Clark has taken the team to the WNIT and — if injuries ever go away — she’s got a great chance of putting womens hoops back on the map for the first time since the Ann Meyers days. While Dayton still sits among the botto min overall athletic expenditures in the A-10, they are among the top half in coaches salaries. Clearly, if your AD is on a budget, spend it on the coaches.

No doubt, there have been a few bumps along the way during Kissell’s reign, but does he take the blame in all cases? Fisticuffs involving Tony Stanley, Andy Metzler, Nate Green, and Coby Turner were largely self-inflicted gunshot wounds and Kissell’s job was to merely hand out punishment and redraw his line in the sand. Former track coach Lefty Martin was surrounded by widespread rumors of broken promises and mistreatment to current and potential runners and was pushed out. Probation to the basketball program might point more unfavorably in Kissell’s direction however. While he did accept blame and acknowledge impropriety, it happened under his watch and no matter how many apologies Clay Mathile offered, communication evidently broke down somewhere along the line. Fortunately, there never appeared to be any purposeful deception and a few honest mistakes — albeit rather dumb ones — came and went. As it stands now, Purnell has regained the lost scholarship and the recruiting limitations are nearly over.

If it’s easy to see why Colorado St. would be interested in Ted Kissell, why would he be interested in Colorado St.? First and foremost, the Fort Collins-based school has 21,000 students and is a state university. Getting things done takes money and having the Governor on your side is a tremendous edge over privately-funded institutions like Dayton. Second, the Rams play I-A football and field a borderline Top-25 team in most seasons. Football is an animal all by itself and carries with it a certain bravado for a school, their fans, and the administration. Ram sports play in the Mountain West Conference (MWC) consisting of fellow members Mew Mexico, San Diego St., UNLV, Utah, Wyoming, Air Force, and BYU. While Air Force maintains strict entrance standards all to their own, only BYU can be considered under the same guise of a private institution. Clearly, the MWC is a league with a lot of money, a lot of notoriety, and a lot of potential. For CSU, football will never become a national contender by aligning with these schools, but most of the other sports are well-served. Most or all of the institutions field strong basketball programs, and other sports like soccer or volleyball put MWC teams in the nation’s Top-25 every season. If Kissell wants to create a broad-based athletics powerhouse, it’s doable. If he envisions fighting for the BCS National Title in football, it’s not going to happen. Aside from mens basketball, the A-10 isn’t a competitive league — competitive enough to establish a reputation that is. The big question is this: what’s the future of the MWC and are the candidates ready to implement a plan of action if realignment occurs? Right now, the MWC isn’t part of the Bowl Championship Series, and the leagues that are typically get termed Tier-1 status. Those are the ACC, Big-10, Big-12, SEC, Big-East, PAC-10, and Notre Dame. So in a sense, the A-10 and MWC are similar because both are better than mid-major leagues, but slightly lacking in the respect department when it comes to major league status. The A-10 may one day be poised for conference reshuffling, and so too could be said for the MWC.

The MWC basically formed after the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) grew too large for its own good, a demise that seemed certain at the time as geographically aligning schools from Texas to Wyoming to California looked impossible. It was. The WAC trimmed itself down and several WAC institutions like Utah and CSU bolted the league to the newly formed MWC, while other schools like Texas Christian found refuge in the revamped and renamed Big-12 Conference. But the MWC has seen its share of problems as well. Before conference reshuffling took place, WAC schools had more respect and more collective pulling power. BYU won football’s national title in 1984, but it could be another 30 years before a WAC or MWC school does it again. So like the Atlantic-10, the MWC must make strides in non-revenue sports where getting a leg up is much easier than going head-to-head with Nebraska and Notre Dame in football. To its credit, the MWC has the tools in place to make this happen.

Kissell knows all about conference reshuffling and handled Dayton’s boot in the rear from the Great Midwest Conference quite well. Were it to happen again at Dayton or at CSU, it would be old hat. Normally, stepping up from a small private school like Dayton to a large public school such as Colorado St. would be arduous at best, but Kissell has big-time experience from his days at Arizona and is better prepared than the other three candidates because he’s not only been a right hand man at a Tier-1 school, but he’s also the only candidate to be the top dog at a D-I basketball institution. No matter the responsibilities, there’s something to be said for having everyone but the university president answer to you.

After all of this being said however, Kissell has stated that he may not take the job even if he’s offered it, which begs the question of why he’s interviewing in the first place. Normally, if a university goes to the trouble of interviewing, wining, dining, and convincing a candidate on the otherworldliness of their school, they do so on the assumption that the interviewee is just as interested. Considering CSU contacted Kissell and not the other way around, it could be a case of Kissell merely testing the waters and boosting the legitimacy of UD athletics. It’s doubtful that a salary boost alone will make an impact on any potential decision.
Details aside, intangibles could decide all of this. Kissell’s family by most accounts is happy in Dayton and have a daughter with a couple of years left in high school. Uprooting the family when most of the loose ends remain untied is rarely the best move. The seasonal timing is also very poor. Fall sports start in two weeks and any change for Kissell will be rather messy at the start — and potentially for Dayton as well. The Flyers have a good deal of momentum going in the AD and Kissell may have unfinished business. Several projects are already on paper, including new additions to the UD Arena, a permanent stadium for Baujan Field, and potentially more funding (scholarships) down the line for other sports. It’s safe to say he enjoys helping Dayton return to its basketball glory as well. But Ohio isn’t Colorado and doesn’t have crystal clear streams, mountains, rock climbing, mountain biking, skiing, rafting, or any other outdoor adventure — unless you count the orange barrels.

A decision will come in due time and UD fans are hoping things stay the way they are. There’s a lot of continuity in the UD athletic dept. and we’re living through a renaissance of sorts. But a few canvases remain to be painted and Kissell is still the man holding the brush.