On Friday, it will be one year since the Freeh Report was released. The NCAA sanctions will hit their one-year “anniversary” two weeks from tomorrow.
But in the final Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings released last week, Penn State’s teams were doing just fine, thank you. Especially on the field, where they were ranked sixth among all NCAA Division I schools.
Led by wrestling’s third consecutive NCAA championship, 16 Nittany Lion teams totaled 1,100 points — more than half of Penn State’s varsity sports teams in 2012-2013.
It’s a culture of winning that extends beyond football. On and off the field.
Penn State’s varsity athletes graduate at a higher rate (88%) than the average Division I school (80%). Penn State’s six-year rate (80%) is much better than the NCAA average school (65%). And the four-year graduation rate of Penn State’s athletes is 78%, also much higher than the national average of 64%, second in the Big Ten to only Northwestern (88%). Nittany Lions athletes are anything but average.
Note: These are figures compiled and released by the NCAA. The same organization that said Penn State had a decidedly football culture.
And over the past year, a total of 296 Penn State athletes earned Academic All-Big Ten honors.
Sure sounds like a student-athlete culture.
Penn State’s success this past school year was broad-based – five teams scored Learfield points in the fall, five in the winter and six in the spring. (Of the top five finishers, four them warm-weather schools: Stanford, with its 19th consecutive No. 1, followed by Florida, UCLA, Michigan and Texas.)
It was Penn State’s ninth Top 10 finish in the past 20 years, a tradition of excellence that was nurtured and directed by former athletic director Tim Curley. Penn State is one of only nine programs to finish in the Directors’ Cup Top 25 in all 20 years that the award’s been around.
Here are the teams that contributed points to the sixth-place finish; 100 points indicates a team was national champion:
Wrestling 100 points, women’s soccer 90, fencing 85, women’s volleyball 83, women’s lacrosse 70, men’s indoor track and field 67.5, women’s cross country 61.5, men’s outdoor track and field 61.5, field hockey 60, men’s swimming 53.5, women’s swimming 45, women’s outdoor track and field 44, men’s cross country 29, men’s lacrosse 25, men’s volleyball 25 and women’s golf 17.5.
Especially noteworthy were the combined 263.5 points earned by the cross country and track squads, directed by head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan.
Teams led by veteran coaches like Russ Rose (women’s volleyball), Char Morett (field hockey), Erica Walsh (women’s soccer) and Emmanuil Kaidanov (fencing) performed at the highest levels in the first sports season after the sanctions, testament to their steady leadership.
Meanwhile, another important component of Penn State’s strong finish was the performance of its teams led by coaches who have been with Penn State for less than a half-decade. New blood from outside the Penn State coaching tree has been vital in revitalizing wrestling, both lacrosse teams, men’s soccer and women’s basketball.
That strategy – The Curley Manifesto, if you will – looks like it will continue under current athletic director Dave Joyner. For now.
Over the past month, both baseball coach Robbie Wine and softball coach Robin Petrini resigned. Wine had a losing record over nine seasons, while Petrini’s team had losing records in the Big Ten in four of the last four seasons.
Despite the advantage of playing in Lubrano Park since 2007, Wine’s teams had a 111-185 record in the Big Ten and were 228-261 overall. His teams never made it to the NCAA tournament. Despite being saddled with a high-school caliber home field for his entire tenure (1991-2004), Wine’s predecessor, Joe Hindelang, had a 389-355 mark (177-185 in the Big Ten), and took Penn State to the NCAAs in 2000 and won the Big Ten title in 1996. Petrini took Penn State to the NCAA tournament eight times, but only once in the past five years.
So, on the non-football, non-America’s pastime fields, Penn State continues to flourish. That’s in large part due an influx of top coaches over the past decade and buttressed by a national-caliber coaching staff of veterans, as well as enhanced playing and practice facilities.
That should hold, for now at least. NCAA sanctions stipulate that Penn State cannot reduce the budgets of its non-football sports during the five-year probation period, but that doesn’t mean the penalties haven’t impacted the programs. That doesn’t mean budgets, or salaries (save for Bill O’Brien) are rising, either. And recruiting is more of a challenge in some instances, in part since the fiscal challenge will even be greater when that protection is lifted.
Penn State swimming coach John Hargis recently left Penn State for the associate head coach’s position at Auburn, which has a top-caliber program. While Auburn is his alma mater, it is telling that he left PSU for a lesser-titled job – a 98.5-point Learfield Cup departure.
The fact that Penn State dropped its plans for a major addition to McCoy Natatorium (in addition to a new tennis center) had to play into his decision. Ironically, the Penn State Board of Trustees approved the hiring of an architect for the two projects on Nov. 11, 2012. Almost exactly 10 months later the BOT took plans for the $65 million upgrade off the table. The money was to have come from student activity fees ($60 million), the athletic department ($25 million) and donations ($10 million).
Here’s what Hargis told Mark Dent of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February about the future of non-football programs at Penn State:
“I guess my concern would be beyond that,” Hargis said. “Yeah, you’re protected for those five years; what happens in year six, seven, eight and nine when there’s a chance that the athletic department could be in the red at that point? That would be my only fear.
“Would it happen? I still don’t think it would happen. Not at all. I don’t think this university would ever cut a sport. I really, truly don’t.”
