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Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
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burden Offline
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Post: #21
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
Number two(in goldenflash99’s post) always amazes me. I run into a lot of Kent students around Hudson/Stow who work in restaurants etc. They are a mix of commuters and residents and they too hardly even know Kent has teams competing in Division I. Haven’t met a basketball or football fan yet. It’s really odd. One student who I got to know fairly well was asking me for advice on what team was worth watching.

Also I just completed a poll for sports fans (college and pro) living within a 150 mile radius of Cleveland. Questions on college football and basketball gave me three choices of teams I root for. Akron, Ohio St and Youngstown St. No Kent St. or Cleveland St both of which I believe are within 150 miles of Cleveland!! What is that trying to tell us. Maybe it’s just a poorly done poll or maybe they already know Kent St. is not a player in that market.
(This post was last modified: 02-13-2019 08:22 AM by burden.)
02-13-2019 08:21 AM
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Post: #22
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
I think that’s true at most universities. It’s really a relatively small group of students that go to games or know anything about the school’s athletics. They’re concerned with their studies and their social lives, and the school’s football and basketball players are like aliens to them, physical freaks they see around campus occasionally. There is a core of students who go to games but it’s a very small percentage of the student body. If I were guessing, I’d say over 90% of undergrads haven’t gone to more than one or two games in their four years and much than half have gone to none.
02-13-2019 09:33 AM
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burden Offline
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Post: #23
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-13-2019 09:33 AM)axeme Wrote:  I think that’s true at most universities. It’s really a relatively small group of students that go to games or know anything about the school’s athletics. They’re concerned with their studies and their social lives, and the school’s football and basketball players are like aliens to them, physical freaks they see around campus occasionally. There is a core of students who go to games but it’s a very small percentage of the student body. If I were guessing, I’d say over 90% of undergrads haven’t gone to more than one or two games in their four years and much than half have gone to none.

If that’s true, that says going for about 1000 students per game is about the best we can do. Then I have to ask what caused the Buffalo crowd the other night. Was it the unusual amount of pre-game coverage the newspapers gave it? You can’t count on that as the Plain Dealer only does that once or twice a year and the Akron Beacon definitely has a bias towards Akron U. I still think the key is marketing in Stow, Hudson etc. I know the gymnastics team hits the community pretty hard looking for donations for charity and came into a local golf simulator business loaded with 60+ male customers. Lo and behold at least three of them took their gymnast granddaughters to meets that year and at least one has made it a yearly event. There has to be equivalent opportunities for a lot of the Kent sports.
02-13-2019 12:18 PM
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KSU93 Offline
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Post: #24
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
Joey has gutted his marketing departments. I think a GA is in charge at this time. He expects his coaches to recruit, win games, be in charge of their team's academics, fund raise and promote. One day and hopefully it will be soon he will be gone. Its a shame that he is still here but we can support our teams monetarily and by attendance and hope that a new President will release him.
02-13-2019 02:41 PM
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Post: #25
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-13-2019 12:18 PM)burden Wrote:  
(02-13-2019 09:33 AM)axeme Wrote:  I think that’s true at most universities. It’s really a relatively small group of students that go to games or know anything about the school’s athletics. They’re concerned with their studies and their social lives, and the school’s football and basketball players are like aliens to them, physical freaks they see around campus occasionally. There is a core of students who go to games but it’s a very small percentage of the student body. If I were guessing, I’d say over 90% of undergrads haven’t gone to more than one or two games in their four years and much than half have gone to none.

If that’s true, that says going for about 1000 students per game is about the best we can do. Then I have to ask what caused the Buffalo crowd the other night. Was it the unusual amount of pre-game coverage the newspapers gave it? You can’t count on that as the Plain Dealer only does that once or twice a year and the Akron Beacon definitely has a bias towards Akron U. I still think the key is marketing in Stow, Hudson etc. I know the gymnastics team hits the community pretty hard looking for donations for charity and came into a local golf simulator business loaded with 60+ male customers. Lo and behold at least three of them took their gymnast granddaughters to meets that year and at least one has made it a yearly event. There has to be equivalent opportunities for a lot of the Kent sports.

I would hope the athletic dept can be creative and get students down to the MACC. At UD (where one of my kid graduated) -there is a waiting list for mens' student bball tix- "Red Scare" + other student sections totals 3000 students ave at a school with 8500 total undergrads!! maybe its the $5 beers at the games? KSU (where I pay tuition for another kid) has approx 9000 students living on campus and another 5-7000 living in apt/houses in Kent?? AD and his marketing area surely can do better?? Product on the court looks pretty good most nights?!! C'mon Joel- get your head out of Razorback sports and FOCUS on the institution that pays your salary.
02-13-2019 02:51 PM
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ksu315 Offline
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Post: #26
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
I have no visibility into the inter workings of the dept if it toxic or not but I think a lot is being unfairly unloaded at Joel's feet.

- live attendance is down at all levels from pro all the way to high school. OHSAA just announced huge drop in state championship even though one game had 18K. can you find outliers like buffalo and OU sure. but I don't think that's all on Joel. Could marketing dept do more yes and that's been the same answer well before Joel.

- he's a proud parent. Do the # of tweets research dave did look bad? personally don't think its a big deal. I'd guess anyone with kids would gladly accept criticism of being overly proud of his kids.

- Can he do better at his job? Like EVERYONE i'm sure things he could do better but this board acts like nothing has been done positively. Like i said i dont know interworkings but I'd guess that's an inaccurate one sided job assessment. The truth and performance is probably somewhere in the middle of this board opinions and actual reality. IF everyone thinks so highly of president warren (and I do too) do you really think she'd miss the mark that bad as far as the AD? I don't think so...
02-15-2019 10:40 AM
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JimJoyce Offline
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Post: #27
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
ksu315 - are you a parent? Specifically, do you have any daughters?
02-15-2019 11:53 AM
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ksu315 Offline
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Post: #28
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-15-2019 11:53 AM)JimJoyce Wrote:  ksu315 - are you a parent? Specifically, do you have any daughters?

yes
02-15-2019 12:10 PM
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JimJoyce Offline
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Post: #29
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
Ok. Imagine if your daughters were student-athletes or worked in a place where unwanted sexual contact wasn’t just possible, it was PROBABLE.

Would you feel a little differently?

Because according to Dave and others, that’s exactly how the Kent State Athletic Department was described in an official climate study.
02-15-2019 12:14 PM
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Post: #30
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-15-2019 10:40 AM)ksu315 Wrote:  I have no visibility into the inter workings of the dept if it toxic or not but I think a lot is being unfairly unloaded at Joel's feet.

- live attendance is down at all levels from pro all the way to high school. OHSAA just announced huge drop in state championship even though one game had 18K. can you find outliers like buffalo and OU sure. but I don't think that's all on Joel. Could marketing dept do more yes and that's been the same answer well before Joel.

- he's a proud parent. Do the # of tweets research dave did look bad? personally don't think its a big deal. I'd guess anyone with kids would gladly accept criticism of being overly proud of his kids.

- Can he do better at his job? Like EVERYONE i'm sure things he could do better but this board acts like nothing has been done positively. Like i said i dont know interworkings but I'd guess that's an inaccurate one sided job assessment. The truth and performance is probably somewhere in the middle of this board opinions and actual reality. IF everyone thinks so highly of president warren (and I do too) do you really think she'd miss the mark that bad as far as the AD? I don't think so...

You absolutely have a right to your opinion KSU315.

I can see why you and others may consider Nielsen's tweeting habits to be no big deal. I come to it from a public relations/media perspective. As someone who holds a master's degree in PR from Kent State, I found it all troubling. The optics are awful. Nielsen is getting paid almost half a million dollars a year, and it doesn't strike him that he should probably show a little interest in KSU Golf if he's going to constantly share the good news of the Arkansas teams... It's especially thoughtless when they are playing in the same tournament. And if it bothers donors, and it does, that is a problem.

If you read the climate study commissioned by the university, you'll see that much of the assessment of Nielsen's performance is probably not an inaccurate, one-sided job assessment. The climate in the department is miserable and Nielsen is almost universally disliked.

People who are unappreciated, overworked and underpaid end up leaving or will not go that extra mile to do the best possible job. That is even more the case when the department "leader" is paid at a rate so significantly above the average of other athletic directors in the Mid-American Conference.

How much more could the marketing department accomplish and who could it hire if Nielsen was paid a reasonable salary and the extra $200,000 per year was targeted to marketing? The pay gap between Nielsen and the rest of the department is a problem.

I would also argue there have been few positive or sustained results during Nielsen's tenure. Sure, there are cases like the 2012 football season, which arrived thanks in large part to four future NFL players recruited by a coach who Nielsen let go. The program never built on that momentum. Quite simply, Kent State's athletic department is not in better shape than it was almost nine years ago when Nielsen took over.

Here are some examples I believe prove the point:

1. All four "priority" sports (Men's and women's basketball, football, and volleyball) have worse records in Nielsen's nine years than they did in the last nine year's under Laing Kennedy. That's a pretty big sample size.

2. After nine years, just about every program is down. The only teams that have shown some improvement during Nielsen's tenure are women's soccer and indoor women's track. Every other team has a worse regular-season combined with either fewer or an equal number of championships than it did in the last nine years under Kennedy.

3. Coaches and staff are miserable. Just look at the results of KSU's climate study, where results in athletics recored "statistically significant" lower responses than any other department on campus. As I've mentioned before, coaches share the story of Nielsen telling them "I don't care about department morale. I only answer to one person," meaning the KSU president who can give him an extension. His motto regarding staff has long been "you are replaceable." Say that enough, or have it repeated enough by deputies who are even embarrassed to say it, and loyalty withers. Nielsen is the living example of the old saying "a leader with no followers is just a guy out for a walk."

To anyone reading this who knows someone who works in the Kent State Athletic Department, I urge you to ask them about their feelings towards Nielsen and the job he has done.

4. Poor treatment of women is especially upsetting for a department run by a father of three daughters. It reached a point where a coach finally felt it necessary to file a federal complaint with the EEOC. The firing of Janet Kittell (under the guise of a retirement that was forced) was particularly disgusting. One of the reasons I soured on Nielsen and eventually lost all respect for him is his handling of a sexual harassment case of a member of his senior staff by a fellow member of senior staff. After an investigation found the accused guilty of sexual harassment, Nielsen told the accuser that she should leave if she is not happy at KSU, and she's just going to have to find a way to work with her harasser. I can't imagine he would have kept his job if this investigation took place during today's climate.

By the way, one longstanding rumor mentioned in a quote by a staff member interviewed in the above sexual harassment case suggests the department's inability under Nielsen to protect its own female student-athletes from being inappropriately ogled by the accused senior staff member. It's an alarming read. That senior staff member was finally let go just this past summer, a few days after Nielsen eliminated the position of Kittell.

5. More proof of Nielsen's poor track record with women on his staff is an F rating in a recent study by the University of Minnesota on head coaches of women's collegiate teams. Using their formula, only 7 of the nation's 349 Division I schools scored worse than Kent State. Not good nine years into an athletic director's administration.

6. Donors are becoming fed up with Nielsen. I personally know donors who have decided to pull their money and/or no longer attend games for which they have tickets. Membership in the NADC, the leadership advisory organization supporting the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics at Kent State University, is sitting half full since the summer when multiple board members decided they had had enough.

7. Three words: The Game Plan. Laughable. When was the last time anybody heard about The Game Plan? It disappeared without a whisper! I wonder if it is still even an internal joke. Here's the long-forgotten "scorecard."

I could go on and on. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, even giving credit to the good things that have happened under Nielsen's watch, the ROI on his salary simply isn't there. There is no way Kent State can justify continuing to pay any athletic director $452,000 per year. Is it six MAC athletic directors or assistant directors who have moved up to Power 5 jobs during Nielsen's time at KSU? It might be more. There's a reason Nielsen hasn't had a sniff.

I was in a senior staff meeting with Nielsen when he talked about the shelf life of presidents and athletic directors at Division I schools. Nielsen has lasted beyond that point.

Like him or not, it's time for Kent State Athletics to go in a different direction. I can't imagine a valid alternate argument. KSU Athletics has stagnated while dumping too much money into Nielsen's banking account. It's time to see if the Golden Flashes can find new life behind some new ideas by new leadership.

...And I promise you, when that day comes, there will be a party at the M.A.C. Center unlike any it has ever seen.

Based on my experience having worked at Kent State, the truth is actually far worse than what people on this board could possibly know. People are afraid to speak up. The climate study confirms that. According to staff, ever since the summer when the university ordered athletics to address some of the major problems raised by the climate study, Nielsen has turned on the charm and started an open-door policy in his brand new office. The chameleon approach does not appear to be changing many minds. After nine years of saying his staff is replaceable and he only answers to the president, most people at Kent State know who Nielsen really is.
(This post was last modified: 02-15-2019 01:50 PM by DavidCarducci.)
02-15-2019 01:31 PM
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Post: #31
At RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
I hate to bring Warren into this because I know everybody thinks she is great but I have to wonder. If it’s half as bad as Dave describes, she should have not allowed this to continue for nine years (especially the sexual harassment). People do have a tendency to emulate their boss so I have to wonder about Warren. I know the students love her but I always am suspicious about bosses that need to be loved by the rank and file. I’ve seen many like that who are totally different when managing their immediate underlings. Occasionally they are even incompetent and use the rank and file to prop themselves up. I for one have never been that impressed with her. Her giant pep rally at the one basketball game last year had to be one of the least impressive things I’ve ever seen by a high ranking manager. I’m just not a big fan and have to put some of the blame on her for allowing Nielsen to last this long. If a manager is poor but is allowed to stay, the real problem is that managers boss. After nine years that is probably the case here.
02-15-2019 02:48 PM
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ksu315 Offline
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Post: #32
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
like I said I don't know the inter-workings so I cant dispute what Dave is saying one way or another. I just find it really hard to believe a person in that position with that level of exposure and pay grade could blatantly create an environment that poor against women, especially when he has 3 daughters himself.

Dave has passion and info but as he admits he left the department so obviously he has no love loss there. I'm not sure what flaming him publically will do other than make kent state look very bad.
02-17-2019 01:00 PM
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Post: #33
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-17-2019 01:00 PM)ksu315 Wrote:  like I said I don't know the inter-workings so I cant dispute what Dave is saying one way or another. I just find it really hard to believe a person in that position with that level of exposure and pay grade could blatantly create an environment that poor against women, especially when he has 3 daughters himself.

Dave has passion and info but as he admits he left the department so obviously he has no love loss there. I'm not sure what flaming him publically will do other than make kent state look very bad.


Hi KSU315,

I understand your worry about how this may make KSU look. My intent isn't to make Kent State Athletics look bad. It's to help to expose and encourage others to either speak up about or who into what is a bad situation within the Kent State Athletic Department.

I want to see change.

Unfortunately, it's difficult for people within the Kent State Athletics to speak up. The climate study shows that coaches and staff in athletics are afraid to speak up about difficult subjects because they are more scared about the repercussions. Take the case of Janet Kittell, who spoke truth to power and paid for standing up to Nielsen by being marginalized, having responsibilities seized, and then finally being surprised one day by Nielsen saying her position had been eliminated and forcing her into what felt like a hostage decision: Either be humiliated or write a letter saying she had decided to retire. It truly was death by a thousand cuts.

Most people who work in athletics love the tradition of the work and desperately want to advance careers in athletics. If they are head coaches, they want to either keep their jobs or advance to the next job. If they are assistants, they want to be head coaches. If they are associate athletic directors, one day they want to be athletic directors.

Becoming a whistleblower means risking a career in an industry that is still very much an old boy's club. Exposing Nielsen could mean becoming limiting your future options. For example, Nielsen is close friends with Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek from their days at Wake Forest. Does exposing Nielsen mean risking future jobs at an SEC school like Arkansas, or places like Houston, Vanderbilt, or Western Carolina, all schools where Yurachek cut his teeth? I have several good friends who left KSU and have resisted speaking out about Nielsen because they were up for jobs at other schools and worried about retribution.

I'm fortunate to have left Kent State of my own accord. As a former reporter, I criticize myself all the time for not doing more to be a whistleblower while at KSU because I was afraid of what would happen. I didn't have the guts to leave and return to a dying field in journalism. I spent my last two years at KSU working on a master's degree in public relations, fell in love with the profession and saw it as both an escape and a salvation. It may have been gutless, but I waited to finish my degree before resigning my position at KSU.

I did love most of my work at KSU. I loved the variety it offered and the chance to promote a school, teams and people who were important to me. But the toxic atmosphere created by Nielsen, the phony image the department was portraying to key publics, the lack of vision, the inconsistent and incoherent decision making, the treatment of my female colleagues, and the constant turnover followed by decisions not to fill key positions became too much.

I chose to get out of athletics completely. A series of incidents involving former colleagues after I left KSU made me believe it was time to blow the whistle. I'm happy to say many others have come forward to tell their stories about Nielsen. It's taken a while, but stay tuned.

If anyone else has a story to share about the disfunction in KSU Athletics, please contact me and I'll put you in touch with people who need to know.

In my opinion, it's not what we do that will make Kent State look bad. It's the state of the department under Nielsen that will make Kent State look bad.

With a new president coming in, this is the time to try to fix what's broken. If Nielsen convinces another president into giving him an extension while we could have done something about it, then that's on all of us.

Kent State has little to show for Nielsen's nine years running its athletic department. His biggest accomplishment may be his role in helping Pres. Warren successfully convince FedEx to support the overhaul of the Kent State Airport. Valuable, yes, but it has nothing to do with athletics. Could feeling a debt to Nielsen over that deal have anything to do with Warren's loyalty and decision to extend his contract through 2020? I wonder.

Now, forget every negative thing I've written out about Nielsen. In fact, choose not to believe a single word and, instead, focus on every positive thing he has done in his nine years at Kent State. Can anyone justify paying $450,000-plus annually for those accomplishments.

I can't imagine anyone arguing he should be given another extension at that price. It was the loyalty of former president Lester Lefton just before his retirement that led to Nielsen getting such an exorbitant contract.

Remember... All four priority sports (men's basketball, women's basketball, volleyball and football) are down in Nielsen's nine years as compared to the last nine years under Laing Kennedy. Every other sport is either suffering from neglect or was already "unbreakable" thanks to Kennedy.

There's a reason why other MAC athletic directors during Nielsen's tenure have advanced to Power 5 schools while Nielsen can't even get a sniff. Yurachek's star has risen from an associate position in external relations at Akron to AD jobs at Houston and Arkansas, all while Nielsen has remained at Kent State.

Does it make any sense that no other school is trying to get him to lead their athletic departments while we are paying him so much more than every other Mid-American Conference athletic director. Before last year's pay bump, Nielsen made $436,560 in 2017-18. While nobody else in the MAC made $300,000, the league's other ADs earned an average $246,827.

That's insane. It can't be justified.
(This post was last modified: 02-17-2019 02:55 PM by DavidCarducci.)
02-17-2019 02:55 PM
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Post: #34
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
Basically you are saying what Dr. Kamansense said soon after Nielsen was hired (I’m assuming you and Dr. Kamansense are two different people, although I do wonder at times). I know I am not that happy with the performance of the teams under Nielsen and would certainly not be surprised if he doesn’t treat people all that well. When this began you inferred the Record Courier might be preparing a story on the topic. I wonder if that’s still in the works.
02-17-2019 07:32 PM
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Post: #35
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-17-2019 07:32 PM)burden Wrote:  Basically you are saying what Dr. Kamansense said soon after Nielsen was hired (I’m assuming you and Dr. Kamansense are two different people, although I do wonder at times). I know I am not that happy with the performance of the teams under Nielsen and would certainly not be surprised if he doesn’t treat people all that well. When this began you inferred the Record Courier might be preparing a story on the topic. I wonder if that’s still in the works.

Hi Burden,

I promise you I am not Dr. Kamansense. I've always been a believer in using my own name, even if it is a risk. Fortunately, truth is the best defense to a libel suit. A friend who still works at KSU said recently that isn't much Nielsen or anyone at KSUY who may support him could say because "everything I've seen Dave post has been factual."

Here's a long and possibly boring story that I hope will offer some context:

Back when Dr. Kamansense was posting here, I was still a reporter at the Record-Courier. That was back when three beat writers from three different newspapers regularly covered Kent State Athletics. Dr. Kamansense's posts echoed what we weree being told in person by multiple staff members and coaches.

Another veteran beat writer told me what he was hearing from his sources and we discussed our options. Nielsen had arrived in Kent to what would have been a difficult situation for anyone, replacing an athletic director who was loved and respected by almost the entire department. Rather than rushing out stories with accusations about Nielsen, we agreed to request a sit down with his deputy, Tom Kleinlein. TK was someone we had come to like and respect, and we thought he might have an idea about how to approach Nielsen with the problem. Maybe Nielsen didn't recognize the gap that was growing between him and his department? Maybe there was still a chance for him to bridge that gap? If so, crisis averted.

TK did his best, but months later, the stories coming out of the athletic department were getting worse and worse. I asked Nielsen about his discussion with TK and he told me "oh, yeah, that was nothing. It was all in the past."

It wasn't.

Nielsen was always relatively nice to me. I might not have agreed with some of his decisions, but I thought our relationship was fine. If I was critical of him in the newspaper, I always did my best to be fair and I assumed, like KSU's coaches and student-atheltes, he respected me for it.

That might not have been the case, though. I was told by a fellow member of senior staff just a few years ago that Nielsen told him "Carducci once tried to get me" when he was a reporter. In reality, my hope (and my colleague's hope) in going to TK was to give Nielsen a chance to soothe the situation with his coaches and staff. In my days as a reporter, I never derived pleasure out of hammering someone in a column. And yet, there were several suggestions at KSU that hiring me was right out of the Godfather: "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer."

When I chose to accept the offer to take a job in the Kent State Athletic Department, I did so with eyes wide open. There was still something thrilling about going to work at a place that had meant so much to me ever since I was a little kid going to games with my father while he was in grad school. I had several head coaches tell me they had a little pool (no money involved, NCAA) about how long it would take before my spirit was broken. It took longer than anyone expected.

Even as I witnessed the disfunction in the department and experienced the toxic work environment, I found a way to keep my head down and just do my work as assigned.

My turning point arrived when I watched how Nielsen handled a sexual harassment case involving a colleague. The more I learned, the more disgusted I became. Instead of continuing to keep my head down and work in my own little silo, I took more of an interest in the what was happening around me.

I grew angry and bitter as I watched so many good, hard working employees work for a man who wasn't afraid to say openly that he thought they were all expendable. Too many fantastic people, coaches and support staffers, many of them Kent State alumni, have left Kent State for lateral moves simply to get away from Nielsen and hopefully find a job where they are appreciated.

When I left to start a new career, I continued to stay in touch with friends and colleagues at KSU, and I listened to more horror stories. Now I didn't question them.

The way Kittell was treated was a breaking point for me.

So, the long answer to a simple question, Burden, is that I'm sure KSU already knows stories are coming based on public records requests made by media outlets. I've provided some documentation along with my input, which amounts to pretty much what I've posted here. It's the stories of others who hopefully will inspire the change KSU Athletics and its extended family needs and deserves.

My goal in posting here isn't to scream into the wind. My hope is to inspire others to share their stories as long as they feel safe to do it.

The time is now! With a new president coming soon, it's up to people who truly care about KSU Athletics to do what they can to make sure the Golden Flashes do not spend a second decade with Nielsen at the helm.
(This post was last modified: 02-17-2019 09:42 PM by DavidCarducci.)
02-17-2019 09:25 PM
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Post: #36
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
My main passions at Kent are Men Hoops, Baseball and Women's Hoops. How is JN's relationship with those coaches?

I fully acknowledge and candidly I love the fact that all 3 of those coaches would probably leave at the first chance at a larger job. I want hungry coaches looking to move up.

Dave - Have you voiced your issues with anyone in power as not sure the message board, while interesting, will get anything done?
02-18-2019 09:03 AM
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DavidCarducci Offline
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Post: #37
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-18-2019 09:03 AM)ksu315 Wrote:  My main passions at Kent are Men Hoops, Baseball and Women's Hoops. How is JN's relationship with those coaches?

I fully acknowledge and candidly I love the fact that all 3 of those coaches would probably leave at the first chance at a larger job. I want hungry coaches looking to move up.

Dave - Have you voiced your issues with anyone in power as not sure the message board, while interesting, will get anything done?

The idea of posting to this board is only partly to shed some light on what's going on in KSU Athletics. The bigger hope is other former coaches and staff members will come forward to talk about their experiences with Nielsen. That's happening! There may be former coaches and staffers who left KSU feeling good about their experience with Nielsen, but I can't think of one.

Sadly, current staff members are afraid to speak out, and for good reason. That's why I would rather not speak for current staff members and put them in danger of retaliation.

One former member of KSU's senior staff sent me an email today with a link to an article about how employees feeling uncomfortable or scared to speak up is a clear sign of a problem with the organization's culture.

When I was at Kent State, I did quietly take my issues to people in both department and university administration. I even spoke with professors about ethical questions as I struggled with what to do.

Several coaches have taken their issues directly to President Warren, who, according to them, showed no interest.

The fact that it took the university several years to even address results of the climate study in the athletic department says quite a bit about how much Warren cares about employee satisfaction. I have nothing against President Warren, really. She has done a good PR job in winning over the student body. I think most of the staff and faculty feel like she has accomplished very little and, despite her listening tours and all of her studies, she shows very little interest in taking on some real problems at the university.
(This post was last modified: 02-18-2019 11:51 AM by DavidCarducci.)
02-18-2019 11:39 AM
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ksu315 Offline
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Post: #38
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
So burden hit the nail on head with Warren.

Sounds like ex akron president Matt Wilson, win over the student body by shaking hands and winner over masses while doing nothing strategically for the university faculty and staff.
02-18-2019 12:38 PM
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Muskrat Offline
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Post: #39
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
I really miss Laign Kennedy. Ever since he left the "vibe" surrounding the sports teams just hasn't been the same. I can't put my finger on it, but it's just not the same.
(This post was last modified: 02-18-2019 02:33 PM by Muskrat.)
02-18-2019 02:27 PM
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theoldflash Offline
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Post: #40
RE: Joel Nielsen rooting for Arkansas over Kent State in women's golf?
(02-18-2019 11:39 AM)DavidCarducci Wrote:  [quote='ksu315' pid='15913547' dateline='1550498592']
My main passions at Kent are Men Hoops, Baseball and Women's Hoops. How is JN's relationship with those coaches?

I fully acknowledge and candidly I love the fact that all 3 of those coaches would probably leave at the first chance at a larger job. I want hungry coaches looking to move up.

Dave - Have you voiced your issues with anyone in power as not sure the message board, while interesting, will get anything done?

The idea of posting to this board is only partly to shed some light on what's going on in KSU Athletics. The bigger hope is other former coaches and staff members will come forward to talk about their experiences with Nielsen. That's happening! There may be former coaches and staffers who left KSU feeling good about their experience with Nielsen, but I can't think of one.

Sadly, current staff members are afraid to speak out, and for good reason. That's why I would rather not speak for current staff members and put them in danger of retaliation.

One former member of KSU's senior staff sent me an email today with a link to an article about how employees feeling uncomfortable or scared to speak up is a clear sign of a problem with the organization's culture.

When I was at Kent State, I did quietly take my issues to people in both department and university administration. I even spoke with professors about ethical questions as I struggled with what to do.

Several coaches have taken their issues directly to President Warren, who, according to them, showed no interest.

The fact that it took the university several years to even address results of the climate study in the athletic department says quite a bit about how much Warren cares about employee satisfaction. I have nothing against President Warren, really. She has done a good PR job in winning over the student body. I think most of the staff and faculty feel like she has accomplished very little and, despite her listening tours and all of her studies, she shows very little interest in taking on some real problems at the university.
[/

David-What is the real story why Mike Morrow was "retired" as women's golf coach?
02-18-2019 05:28 PM
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