As John Currie takes over Wake Forest, his work at K-State is freshly validated
Exhilarated but exhausted after the emotional whirlwind leading up to his introduction as athletic director at Wake Forest, his alma mater, John Currie turned on the TV in his Winston-Salem hotel room late last Monday.
He happened upon visions of a previous life as the AD at Kansas State, scenes that were part of a rekindled feeling that things ultimately play out as they ought to after a time in his life when he had to wonder some.
On the Fox Sports Network, he saw that the Kansas State women’s basketball team coached by Currie’s hire, Jeff Mittie, was winning its fifth straight Big 12 road game to close the regular season.
Over on ESPN, the K-State men’s team was in the process of beating Texas Christian 64-52 to position itself Saturday against Oklahoma to win at least part of a conference championship for only the second time since 1977 -- which the Wildcats indeed did with a 68-53 dissection of the Sooners.
Both of those rare feats were under the guidance of Bruce Weber, who at 12:17 A.M. had texted congratulations to Currie about his new job punctuated the way you might think it would be.
“Bruce is heavy into exclamation points,” Currie said, laughing.
As it happens, that tendency isn’t limited to Weber’s typing. That night, his 148th win for the Wildcats broke a tie with Jack Gardner that left Weber the third-winningest coach in K-State history behind only Jack Hartman (294) and Tex Winter (261) … with the enticing sequel to last season’s elite eight run still ahead.
So let’s turn back the clock: Perhaps you’ll recall that plenty of people ridiculed the hiring, some for five-plus years after, and vilified Currie for both that decision and the perception he badgered the popular Frank Martin into leaving for South Carolina.
As Currie sat in a downtown office in the historic Johnston Building that friend Matt Smith of the Finley Group has lent him for his consulting operation in between AD jobs, he could have brought up that Weber (149-87) had won 20 more games than Martin (129-105) since then.
Or he might have mentioned Weber is about to take his team to the NCAA Tournament for the fifth time as Martin hopes for a second such run in that span (albeit with a doozy of a first: a Final Four appearance).
He didn’t, though, so I’m saying it for him.
None of that is to say Weber is or isn’t a better coach than Martin. Each has faced different circumstances, including Weber prospering by what he was left from Martin. Scheduling also has something to do with this, and Weber will have a different sort of challenge ahead next season after losing sterling seniors Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade.
But all of it is to say that the criticism of Currie sure seems ridiculous now, especially if you pause and consider the $230 million he raised for K-State and $210 million in facilities improvements delivered under his leadership from 2009-17.
So who could blame the sharp, engaging, principled and quick-witted Currie if he wanted to maybe gloat some?
Gratified as he might be for all those involved, though, Currie worried that even saying he was proud might sound arrogant. Especially when it comes to a school he loved and a town to where the youngest of his three children, Mary-Dell, still hopes the family will return.
“We won a lot, we built a lot of buildings, we had a great team (to work with),” he said. “It was just a really neat place. It was fun to be part of it.”
So he stays above the fray. Just as he does when it comes to the debacle he endured at Tennessee, where he previously had prospered as an assistant athletic director for development and associate AD.
But when he was hired as AD in 2017, he became mired in the cesspool of a nasty power struggle and a chilling fan uprising and was fired just eight months later.
While he surely made missteps of his own, this was all about chaos and scheming that was beyond his control.
His $2.5 million separation agreement has no language that bars him from disparaging the school, but it’s telling that he best frames that time by referring to the administrative support he enjoyed all around him at Kansas State.
“You learn retrospectively that alignment is everything. And I was really lucky at K-State,” he said. “Alignment is everything.”
Told that some of these jobs don’t seem so desirable no matter how much they pay, he smiled and said college athletics are fueled by passion. With a laugh, he called the work “pretty intellectually stimulating” and added, “Balance and perspective is probably the biggest thing.”
That and seeking to base decisions on the integrity of the university and welfare of student-athletes, he added, gives him conviction that has helped him contend with the heat he’s taken.
“No one likes to be criticized, but maybe over time you build up some scar tissues,” he said. “Because, ultimately, if you’re so wounded by noise that you can’t do your job, then you’re not a professional.”
Still, the Tennessee experience might have been a shattering time, the sort of thing that could have driven him out of this line of work. At a crucial moment, though, he was uplifted by colleagues across the business.
At a reception in New York in December 2017 when he was suspended by Tennessee, Currie was amazed by the encouragement he received from conference commissioners, ADs and university presidents. As reported by Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples but confirmed by Currie, the meaning of the night was perhaps best summed up by Prairie Village’s Bill Hancock, the College Football Playoff executive director.
“‘You know, John, what you’re experiencing right now is like going to your own funeral,’” Currie recalled Hancock saying. “‘All your people are saying great things to you because they love you that they wouldn’t otherwise say unless you’d died.’”
Buoyed by such support, even as Currie stepped back he stayed connected and energized through such ventures as consulting for the University of Texas and teaching at Columbia University.
Now, he has particular appreciation for the role he will officially take over on May 1 in the considerable footsteps of mentor Ron Wellman. His 27-year tenure included hiring Currie for his first job after graduating in 1993, and Currie considers him responsible for everything he has in his professional life – particularly an ethical foundation.
But even as he inherits a program ranked first in the Atlantic Coast Conference and sixth nationally in the most recent Learfield Director’s Cup standings, immediate challenges await Currie, who will turn 48 next month. Most notably, entering the weekend Wake Forest basketball under Danny Manning is 4-14 in ACC play this season and 25-70 in conference games in his five seasons with just one NCAA Tournament appearance.
Perhaps ironically, that was a 95-88 loss to Kansas State in 2017 weeks before Currie started at Tennessee. Had the Wildcats lost that game, maybe incoming AD Gene Taylor would have assessed Weber’s job status differently after the season.
Instead, Weber survived to thrive last season, taking the team to an elite eight berth in Atlanta … where Currie blended into the crowd.
Meanwhile, had Wake won that game, perhaps the program would be in a better place today.
It’s hard to decipher quite where Wellman’s final decisions will give way to Currie’s first ones, but Currie knows winning basketball is crucial at Wake Forest.
Just the same, he laughs at the notion that athletic directors always automatically want to bring in “their own guys,” noting how much more pressure it immediately adds. And if he wasn’t already sensitive to the impact of change on coaches’ families, he certainly is all the more so now as he prepares to move his family into its fifth house in just over two years.
However he proceeds with men’s basketball, Currie has credibility and currency – including for seeing the right fit in Weber and sticking with him through tough times. That’s something that should be appreciated in Manhattan, a place Currie might not have left if he knew what was immediately ahead.
Nonetheless, it proved to be a move that ultimately led him home.
“I guess the lesson is that things work out,” he said. “Things work out the way they’re supposed to.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2019 at 12:49 AM.