Goff walks into challenges at KU but could be ‘the perfect guy to tie it together’
When Dodge City native Travis Goff arrived at the University of Kansas in 1998, the athletic director was the late, great and ever-thoughtful Bob Frederick, who had taken over in 1987 with the football program in shambles and the men’s basketball program about to win a national title but also soon to face NCAA sanctions.
Out of those hard times, Frederick stabilized and reinvigorated KU by hiring Roy Williams to lead the basketball program forward and Glen Mason to fix football. Frederick’s legacy was much more than that, though: It also was about integrity, a commitment to gender equity, relationships near and far and influence across the land in ways that included being chairman of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for two years.
No wonder his standard, constancy, example and impact have been hard to replicate since he retired in 2001, citing his distress over a prevailing win-at-all-costs mentality in college sports.
Perhaps overshadowed by the thriving men’s basketball program under Bill Self (the NCAA Tournament blowout against USC notwithstanding) and the whirling turnstile of football coaches (four and soon a fifth since Mark Mangino was fired in 2009) is this stark fact:
In the 20 years since Frederick’s retirement, Kansas has churned eight different people through that job (four on an interim basis, though Sean Lester did it twice) as it turned this week to Goff in hopes the first KU undergraduate to later take the job full-time since Frederick can do what he did:
Among other things, save a football program in shambles and navigate looming NCAA sanctions threatening the men’s basketball program.
Times have changed, of course, and maybe no one should expect that Goff will be on this job for a term comparable to Frederick’s 14 years — a tenure exceeded only by Phog Allen in KU history.
But that’s the sort of presence and sense of fit KU needs from Goff, who at age 41 calls this “my destination job” after spending seven years in administration at Tulane and the last nine at Northwestern on the way to becoming widely recognized in the industry as a promising prospective AD about anywhere.
Only maybe all the more so here.
Not that being a graduate is any assurance of anything any more than being from somewhere else would exclude him.
Then again, it is a meaningful part of a profile that at least on the surface, in the afterglow of the earnest work of the search committee and the glow of the introductory news conference on Wednesday, figures to give him traction towards galvanizing KU in ways that eluded his recent forerunners in the job for various reasons.
Between his energy, reputation for being more a “we” guy than a “me” guy and the “perfect world” KU past that Self figured was more bonus than necessity, Self called Goff “the perfect guy to tie it together” at the Lied Center after he was introduced.
Certainly, it bears mention that Goff came off as charismatic, dynamic and engaging. That was nicely enhanced by the endearing touch of a number of family members in the audience including his wife, Nancy, and their three children. Toddler son, Graham, cradling a Jayhawk doll, periodically blurting out some encouragement.
Goff “killed it today,” said Self, noting the same about Goff’s informal meetings the day before with various sports leaders and constituencies and adding, “A fresh start. A new energy.”
Good thing. Because Goff figures to need every ounce of that … not to mention some resolve and problem-solving skills while trying to at once appeal to boosters, create consensus and set his own tone.
If the challenge has echoes of what Frederick faced, it also has unique quirks that include inheriting the long-bubbling NCAA probe, the disarray lingering from the abrupt recent terminations of predecessor Jeff Long and his handpicked football coach, Les Miles, and the fact that Self last week was granted a lifetime contract even with the specter of the NCAA allegations over himself and his program … apparently without input from the incoming AD.
Oh, and then there’s the pandemic-related budget crisis that has led to $30 million in lost revenues and the looming madness of potential conference realignment when the Big 12 TV deal expires in four years.
But, yes, taking this job was a “no-brainer” for Goff, who set a calming tone with a certain restraint on Wednesday.
Beyond noting his appreciation for that contract as a reflection of a commitment to Self from the top of the university and saying he’s already established a great rapport with him, beyond making the point that “philanthropic support” will be crucial to addressing the budget issues, Goff was vague about how he would approach the matter of the potential NCAA sanctions and what he will do about football.
Regarding the NCAA, he said, “There has never been a shadow of doubt in my mind that we are going to navigate that successfully.”
When it comes to football, Goff said he had been out to see interim coach Emmett Jones and his staff conduct a spring practice and that the “energy was incredible.” Goff said he told Jones he had come in wanting to be open-minded and listen, learn and absorb.
For those who perhaps wanted to hear more NOW on all fronts, you might ask yourself how much that would have just been for phony effect and even reckless as he tries to acclimate and understand more first.
Indeed, specific to football, Goff said it would have been “insincere” and wrong to have arrived and immediately asserted himself without having listened to those who know more about everything from the state of the roster to the mindsets of the athletes.
Some assumptions about how to run a football program are applicable anywhere, he added. But “what’s important and what I’m trying to really be focused on in these days ahead is what’s going to be applicable here at the University of Kansas … before charting that path forward.”
Certainly, that appears to be a more patient approach than that of his immediate predecessor, who seemed eager to dump David Beaty and install Miles and then sought to discredit Beaty … leading to a $2.55 million settlement for Beaty that was a fine symbol of the chaos mounting the last few years.
Goff’s experience as a fundraiser also was instrumental in his case for the job, and so was another asset.
While no one involved was saying KU athletics was in crisis, certainly it was understood behind the scenes that experience in crisis management was essential … whether in dealing with the current set of issues or the unknowns going forward.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 while he was director of development for the Tulane Athletics Fund, Goff was part of a small group that did anything necessary to negotiate an unfathomable set of circumstances to keep the program running remotely. That included being hands-on even in the remediation of the athletics facility that had been flooded, helping do the work to literally get the lights back on.
From all that, he came to understand that in dire times like that “it was really more about how do you handle yourself and how you lift up others.”
Simply put, that’s the persona he projected to both those making this crucial hire and in his first days on the job.
The real work of contending with adversity is ahead, of course.
But 20 years later, at least all initial appearances are that KU found a fit befitting Frederick in the form of another from that time and place.