I want to get personal professions as to why the Northwestern Football program was so poor from 1976-1981 (and beyond). I have my thoughts and have done some research but I want to compile the reasons from all of you stakeholders. Also, if any of you have any literary resources to point to (articles, text, etc.), please point me in the right direction (perhaps I have not uncovered them yet). I am trying to develop a good thesis as to why Barnett succeeded in 95 where Pont, Venturi (and even Green and Peay) could not. I value the opinions and info from Wildcat nation.
Thanks in advance!
-ChappyCat
Many folks do not remember that we were a darn good football team in the early '70s under Alex Agase. We finished 2nd in the Big Ten one year and beat OSU. Purdue hired Agase for more money. Our unwillingness to retain Agase was a signal that times were changing.
President Robert Strotz believed that success in athletics diminished the academic stature of the school, and intentionally sought to destroy NU's sports programs. He completely failed to appreciate the unique character of NU, combining Big Ten athletics, a fun-loving lakeshore campus, and a top-notch academic program. In the 1960s, NU was known as the "North Shore Country Club", a school for smart rich young men and women. As late as the mid-'70s, I had a professor tell me that the current students were all "kiss-asses" (he used a stronger word indicative of greater sexual contact than kissing") who wanted good grades and unseamly strove for success. He found it all very dirty. He said that young men should spend their spring afternoons on Deering Meadow, throwing footballs and moving on pretty coeds. That attitude still had remnants at NU in the '70s, and Strotz wanted to change it . Strotz had both the Greek system and intercollegiate athletics in his sights. He hoped to remake NU into the U of C. We had horrible facilities, low coaching salaries, and miniscule recruiting budgets during his tenure. On occasion, I would work out with frat brothers who were on the football or baseball teams. They all shared a weight room under Dyche that was not much better than that in Patton. I never saw a weight or conditioning coach there.
By the early '80s, alumni pressure and unrest on the Board of Trustees produced a change in the school's orientation to athletics. Strotz was forced to hire a new AD - Doug Single from Stanford, a bright, dynamic, and charismatic young man who impressed both the Chicago media and NU's female students in equal measure. He brought with him, Dennis Green. I met both men in the fall of 1981. Shortly thereafter, Dennis asked a few of us, as dedicated "fans", to help him by starting a booster club. It became the Gridiron Network. We had two functions - to raise sufficient funds to buy things for the program that the school's budget could not afford and to maintain pressure on the administration to improve athletics. Our first purchase was screens for the practice field, so that opposing scouts could not watch the practices. We were more successful in applying pressure than in raising $$$. Darryl Zupancic led an effort for a new weight room and football office building. He traveled, at his own expense, to 30 different schools, many small academic schools, and took pictures and conducted interviews at each. He put together a program for the Trustees that indicated just how terrible our facilities were relative even to Ivy League and Div.II institutions. The Trustees approved the football building that still stands west of McGaw Hall - it should always have been named for Darryl.
Single soon ran into problems and was replaced by a little guy named Bruce Corrie, whom many of us consider whimpy, pompous, and ineffective - not a good combination. He hated the Gridiron Network, perceiving it as a challenge to his authority, and refashioned it under the umbrella of the Wildcat Club. According to Athlketic Department gossip, Corrie is best remembered for stealing newspapers from outside his office in the early morning hours for over a year after he was fired. (The mighty shall have their revenge!)
Dennis loved NU and its alums, but he received little support and left for a better offer. He was replaced by Francis Peay, one of our assistant coaches, in what I think was Strotz's final year as President. Francis was as gentlemanly a man as I have ever met - kind, gracious, soft-spoken, but all wrapped up in a big bear-like physique. Francis won an recently unprecedented 4 or so games in his first year, and the new President, Arnie Weber, had to retain him over his better judgment. Francis ultimately failed to build on his initial success, giving Weber, who truly wanted to rebuild athletics and was hired to do so by the Trustees, the chance to bring in Gary Barnett, whom he had known and respected at Univ. of Colorado. The rest you know.
