CSNbbs

Full Version: Duke AD Alleva
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
4 Duke Athletics and AD

According to the Washington Post, Ralph Friedgen, who
just won national coach of the year in his first
season, applied to Duke before he took the Maryland
job:

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17826-2001Oct6.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17826-2001Oct6.html</a>

Duke athletic director Alleva refused to even
interview or consider him despite his amazing
qualifications at 3 time ACC champ Maryland, Super
Bowl Chargers, and Georgia Tech where he was named the
nation's top assistant and was the most highly paid.
Friedgen is the premier offensive mind in football,
has the most balanced and unpredictable offense ever,
plus he obviously knows how to coach a defense as
well. Alleva fired two time national coach of the year
Goldsmith after reportedly expressing his dislike for
him and wondering how he was still coaching even
before he became AD. He replaced him with Franks, a
low level assistant who had never even called plays
before yet became both offensive coordinator and head
coach at Duke, based on his friendships with Spurrier
and Franks. The coach that was chosen over national
coach of the year Friedgen had the nation's only
winless season last year, is 3-30 despite being left
with 21 returning starters 12 of whom already signed
NFL contracts in just the last 2 years, and has the
longest losing streak in the nation by far at 23,
that's unacceptable.

How is Goldsmith doing? Incredibly well, losing only
once by a single point in the first game of the season
to a power program in just his first year coaching
high school, according to various articles and NC HS
football coach PJLowman who posts and moderates at
thedevilsden:

"PJLowman
Coach
Member # 93
posted November 24,2001 05:27PM

-------------------------------------------------------
Coach Goldsmith's Franklin High School team knocked
off traditional power Eastern Randolph in the first
round of the North Carolina 3-A state play-offs. As I
posted in an earlier thread, Eastern Randolph is
coached offensively by former Carolina and Clemson
coordinator Daryl Moody. Great win for Franklin.
As a sidenote, Goldsmith's team won their conference
championship and entered the play-offs with one loss,
that coming in the season opener. This has been quite
unexpected, as Franklin returned ZERO offensive
starters and THREE defensive starters from a year ago.

The guy can coach, admit it - but he NEVER had support
from the Duke athletic or academic administration.
What if he had the same financial backing and
commitment as Franks has??? What if we would have
constructed the football building after his 94
season???

Just be honest and think back folks - it makes no
sense."

Newspapers in NC and even Los Angeles have noted two
time national coach of the year Goldsmith's success
while pointing out Duke's miserable failures and
folly:

<a href="http://www.charlotte.com/observer/sports/docs/goldsmith1130.htm" target="_blank">http://www.charlotte.com/observer/sports/docs/goldsmith1130.htm</a>

<a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-fbh-goldsmiths-return1110nov10" target="_blank">http://www.latimes.com/sports/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-fbh-goldsmiths-return1110nov10</a> .story

So Alleva fires winners who are the best in the
country, and refuses to interview or even acknowledge
winners who are the best in the country who are
begging for a job with lowly Duke football, and hires
inexperienced losers based on friendships and
connections instead of qualifications. He refuses to
ever admit his many mistakes or consider performance
of his handpicked pals or results or abject futility
or national record setting humiliation or the wishes
of the thousands of fans, students, and alumni, that
ultimately pay his and every Duke salary and will
replace him and any others at Duke that stand squarely
and intentionally in the way of success or insist for
no reason on being the worst.

Alleva also fired Steve Traylor after the 99 season
after he led Duke to its best decade ever for
baseball, setting the school record for wins with 39
in both 93 and 96, in addition to 38 wins in both 92
and 98. Traylor had a 356-286-1 record at Duke after
taking over a program in horrible shape, in fact the
11 year streak of 20 win seasons during the last 11 of
his 12 year tenure was more than the total of just
nine 20 win seasons in the 95 year history of Duke
baseball prior to his arrival. Traylor had a career
record of 625-391-3 including 268-107-2 in 7 seasons
at Florida Atlantic which was ranked in the top 10
each of his last 5 years there. Alleva replaced him
with Bill Hillier, who had a 97-171 career record all
at UNC Wilmington, who had never even come close to a
winning record in 5 years as a coach, going 20-39 in
99 before he took over at Duke. His first year was not
good according to this excerpt from the 5/1/00
Chronicle:

"One of the worst Duke baseball seasons ever
officially became the worst Duke baseball season this
weekend.

The Blue Devils (14-36, 4-17 in the ACC) were swept in
a three-game series against No. 18 North Carolina
(39-11, 11-10) at historic Jack Coombs Field, and with
the three defeats, Duke set a school record for most
losses in a season.

"I realize that," first-year coach Bill Hillier told
The Herald-Sun of Durham. "That is [former coach]
Steve Traylor's problem. That is not my problem. I
didn't recruit these guys. I wasn't expected to win
[this season]. If this was a good program, Steve
Traylor would still be here."

The Blue Devils lost Game 1 Thursday 16-1...
"We were out-pitched, out-hit, out-defensed," Hillier
said of the series. "Right now, we're not in a
position to compete with them.... Carolina's better
than us. We were the underdogs this weekend. We
weren't expected to win."

<a href="http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/story.php?articleID=19397" target="_blank">http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/story.php?articleID=19397</a>

... after that 5/1/00 article, Hillier went on to lose
5 more games to lower the bar even further and shatter
the Duke record for losses in his first season with
41. Meanwhile, Traylor went on to guide Wofford to its
highest win total since 94 in his first season then
won even more his second year. At least Hillier seems
to have the mental attitude that Alleva was looking
for which is why no search committee was formed and no
other candidates were considered aside from the coach
with the 97-171 record who had never won in 5 years.
Unfortunately, that's the same way the football coach
Franks was hired, no search committee, no other
candidates, no candidates whatsoever with any kind of
meaningful experience.

Duke also had to replace womens soccer coach Hempen
who left under mysterious circumstances for Colorado
and may have been forced out, Alleva's choice took
Duke to the bottom of the ACC in just his first
season, after Hempen had taken Duke to the national
championship game and kept Duke in the national
rankings. These failures are even worse considering
the effect on recruiting that Duke's millions of
dollars worth of new facilities have had, plus all the
extra athletic scholarships that have been funded
since Duke had the fewest in the ACC with Butters.

Duke's former AD Butters hired winners in mens and
womens basketball, lacrosse, golf, tennis, and chose
two time national coach of the year Goldsmith for
football after another great coach, Jim O'Brien who
has since won big at Boston College, reportedly turned
Duke down. Alleva was the fallback choice to replace
Butters and coach K publicly and enthusiastically
backed him since he was an insider, this scared away
the actual top candidates who were offered by Duke's
search committee for a new AD.

Here's an interesting Chronicle article about how Duke
made the wrong choice for AD, they knew way back when
he was hired that the choice and search process was
handled very poorly, and this is long before Alleva
showed he may be the worst AD in sports history:

<a href="http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/story.php?article_id=11654" target="_blank">http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/story.php?article_id=11654</a>

If Alleva is incapable of considering more than one
candidate, Wake Forest's baseball coach has done very
well lately making the College World Series, while
Duke hasn't even made the NCAA tournament in several
years if ever. Stanford has one of the best baseball
programs in the nation, winning a number of national
championships, and their AD Ted Leland is considered
the best in the country. Notre Dame also has a great
AD, athletics, and baseball. There is no reason Duke
shouldn't have an outstanding baseball or football
program or topnotch AD.

Duke needs to have a capable AD and competent search
committees that work with discretion to handle hiring
of new ADs and coaches in the future. Wake Forest AD
Ron Wellman has done a fantastic job, hiring great
coaches like Grobe in football and Prosser in
basketball, along with the best field hockey coach in
America and others, plus he has an influential
position within the NCAA. Arizona State wanted him
last year even before he made his two big hires of
Grobe and Prosser. Wellman should get many more
offers in the near future, and Duke, one of the top
athletic programs in the nation which has the
potential to equal Stanford overall, should do what it
takes to hire him as soon as possible.

Another possible choice is Duke's best football alum Mike Mcgee, who won the Outland trophy and is in college football hall of fame, as AD at South Carolina he hired Lou Holtz and Dave Odom after offering Tubby Smith and Jim Calhoun.
interesting post on thedevilsden:

DBSpaugh
Walk-On
Member # 99

posted August 12, 2002 06:01 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I brought this up on the basketball board because of the implications if Coach K were to retire but someone mentioned that it might be more appropriate for the football board since there have been so many changes already. So here it is:

I was browsing around on the net and came across this Spectator article <a href="http://www.spectatoronline.com/1999/102399/feature.html" target="_blank">http://www.spectatoronline.com/1999/102399/feature.html</a> from a while back and there were some pretty interesting comments from John Feinstein ("Joe Alleva is a very nice guy, but his next idea will be his first.") regarding Joe Alleva.

I was just wondering what everyone's general feelings were about the current Director of Athletics?
I still would have taken Friedgen, he's the ****
So what? alleva screwed up on one thing.

Ya know, he is a terrible AD, I agree. Finishing 6th in the Sears cup a few years back, and finishing top 30 every year is horrible. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="rolleyes.gif" />
Alleva screwed up big time on everything he's done so far. He fired two of the best coaches Duke had and hired the worst coaches in sports history. Franks will set the alltime record for futility after inheriting a team with 21 returning starters and at least 17 players who signed NFL contracts after the last 3 seasons, while two time national coach of the year Goldsmith took his HS team with one returning starter to one single point loss from an undefeated season his first year. Alleva's new baseball coach shattered the alltime Duke record for losses his first year, while the coach he replaced had set records for wins at Duke and took his next program to new heights. Obviously Duke finished 7th in Sears Cup in 99 because of the coaches that the previous AD Butters had hired. Despite all the new scholarships and facilities that have been funded, Alleva just took Duke to its second worst Sears Cup ranking ever at 30th.

Alleva deserves zero credit for new facilities or extra scholarships, in fact he deserves a lot of blame for how bad Duke's facilities still are compared to the rest of the ACC never mind the rest of the nation and Duke still funding the fewest athletic scholarships in the ACC. He proved what a puppet of K he is when Duke spent millions for a new office for K before even thinking about football facilities despite the fact that basketball is already on top with legendary facilities and no problems recruiting and football was on the bottom with some of the worst facilities in the nation.

Duke raked in $2 billion in its recent campaign and Alleva could only get a paltry $75 million total for athletics none of which went to the football building. Duke athletics was forced to rely on donations from former football players which took years to collect before even starting construction on a $20 million football building which costs 40% of what UNC's building cost years ago and 20% of the football renovations at many other ACC schools, all of whom have far less money than Duke and already had far better facilities as well. With the billions Duke is collecting, athletic scholarships should have increased far more than they have, Duke still funds the fewest in the ACC and less than even Wake which has to spend just as much per scholarship and has a tiny fraction of Duke's endowment or athletic success.

Any way one looks at it, Alleva has done a disastrous job as AD and never should have been hired, everyone agrees on this, fans, writers, Feinstein, even the Chronicle which never seem to question the hiring of anyone at Duke, even the pathetic Franks. He's done so much damage that having no AD at all would have been far more preferable. What AD has been worse than Alleva? What coach has been worse than Franks? Since Duke has more money than 95% of div.IA schools and competes with Stanford and Notre Dame in so many ways, shouldn't it also have one of the best ADs in the nation instead of the worst ever?

<small>[ August 21, 2002, 11:03 PM: Message edited by: Deep Blue ]</small>
Reference URL's