Good Riddance, Chris McIntosh

Chris McIntosh said that leaving his job as UW Athletic Director was “bitter-sweet” for him. It certainly was for the fans. It was bitter to watch him operate in his job and sweet to see him go.

McIntosh took a program that Barry Alvarez and Pat Richter built into a great success and ran the thing into the ground in less than five years. His was a special combination of cluelessness and arrogance. But his biggest mistake — and there is a lot of competition for that distinction — was actually something that was a team effort that included Alvarez himself. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

First let’s add up the smaller missteps that marked McIntosh’s tenure. He hired a consulting firm and paid them God knows what to screw up Badger football games. Massive speakers blared out music that season ticket holders — who all grew up on the Beatles — did not recognize or like. Worse, the recorded music drowned out the real life marching band. That band was an island in a stormy sea for all those awful years when it was the best thing about the game. And the people who remember that all too well — the ones who were now buying the rights to buy the seats and thus paying McIntosh’s salary — were essentially being told that time had passed them by and this was the new reality and deal with it and just keep on sending in the checks and screw you very much.

Then he decided to build a grand football practice facility on the site of the old, tattered and yet beloved Shell. Outside of the Shell there were these bricks that had been purchased by those same aging fans to help the Athletic Department build something else and said bricks had messages on them, some of which meant a great deal to the poor old suckers. Well, that never occurred to McIntosh or his minions and so, when they started to tear down the Shell they tore up the bricks which were destined for a landfill until somebody noticed. Then they scrambled to do… something. The bricks are in storage someplace looking for a home.

Then he decided that the hockey rink at the Kohl Center had to be bigger.. or maybe it was smaller… for some reason. They used that opportunity to reconfigure the seats for basketball and add some fancy areas with food and beverage services that could be a new profit center. And guess what? You remember the pathetic fans that were paying the bills back at Camp Randall, the ones who bought bricks that would honor loved ones for all eternity out in front of the Shell? Yeah, them. They were issued form letters telling them that their courtside seats were now not theirs any longer and, by the way, they could buy some crummy seats for a similarly steep price. And once again, screw you very much.

And that big, new building that obliterated the Shell? That cost $285 million. McIntosh pushed ahead with the project just as the players were settling a lawsuit that allowed them to be paid just over $20 million a year from the university. McIntosh knew this was coming, knew the department couldn’t afford to blow almost $300 million on the building and yet… arrogantly went ahead anyway because —

The taxpayers would bail him out. This brings us to the present. McIntosh got the UW lobbyists to wire a bill that handed over almost $15 million of taxpayer money to his department every year, ostensibly to pay off debt for buildings like that one, but really to pay the players. The bill was introduced right before the legislature went home, but the skids were greased. Gov. Tony Evers even egregiously agreed in advance to sign it, which he did last week.

Rather than forcing McIntosh to actually, you know, manage his budget and cut the fat so that he could pay the guys on the field who are actually producing all the profits, the Legislature and Evers just handed over the public purse. Nothing needs to change. You can still pay losing coaches $8 million a year with an automatic $100,000 annual pay raise regardless of performance. The taxpayer-suckers will cover your losses and help you cover up your incompetence.

Which brings us to Luke Fickell. On this one, I don’t necessarily blame McIntosh entirely. It was true that the football program had gone stale and it is true that football produces 80% of the revenue that pays everybody else. So, he decided to swing for the fences and he went and got Fickell, who at the time looked like a catch.

That should have worked out and the fact that it has failed so spectacularly is part of a broader failing which involves not only McIntosh, but also Alvarez, the late Chancellor Rebecca Blank and current and soon to be former Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin. The UW has long led the way in fighting against paying the players what they’re worth and in upholding the ludicrous notion of the “student-athlete.” Blank actually testified on behalf of the NCAA in court proceedings that eventually resulted in the NIL agreement. Alvarez was AD at the time and set her up to do it. And Mnookin, seemingly not paying attention, backed McIntosh to the hilt, even giving him a new contract and a big raise after Fickell’s first disappointing year.

What all of them did was stubbornly resist the obvious. College football was going to change. After a century or more of indentured servitude, players would finally start to get a still inadequate piece of a very rich pie. But because this group had its heads fixed firmly in the sand they didn’t embrace the new world. They balked at raising the money to pay the players. As a result, Fickell’s squads quickly fell behind.

I actually credit Fickell for not throwing the others under the bus for this. And now, finally, McIntosh got the big boosters to open their wallets wider and Fickell’s grabbed no less than 34 players from the portal, many of which look promising. Add a more forgiving schedule this year and the odds that his first string quarterback will actually stay healthy for more than a quarter and Fickell may well have a winning season and a trip so some mediocre bowl game, which will save his job.

But McIntosh won’t be around to see that and he won’t be around to take the heat if it doesn’t happen. Alvarez, I assume, has engineered a cushy, ill-defined and brand new position at the Big Ten home offices for McIntosh. In the bowels of the Big Ten bureaucracy McIntosh can do no harm, but still pull in a big paycheck. He’ll live happily ever after.

And what the fans and taxpayers get now is a fresh start. The interim AD will have to start by cleaning up the messes left by McIntosh. That includes several female athletes who are suing the department, claiming they were harassed and demeaned by their coaches and, when they brought their concerns to the department, McIntosh’s team did nothing. And he’ll have to rebuild relationships with those justifiably unhappy long-time fans.

But with a new governor, UW System president, Madison chancellor and AD, maybe we can shake this off. What’s needed is a leaner program and one that respects the people paying the bills. Instead of fighting every change tooth and nail, the Badgers should lead reforms, including spinning off athletics from the educational institution as I suggested last week.

McIntosh was a huge part of the problem, but he wasn’t alone. The UW Athletic Department has been living in its own world for too long, fighting both its fans and its players and seemingly in existence for the comfort and profit of its own administrators. What’s needed is a clean and complete break with the past — and by that I don’t mean just with the last five years.