COLUMN: ETSU’s Future Is Up For Grabs – Who Wants it?

There was a light.

And now that light has flickered off.

East Tennessee State University President Paul Stanton’s recent decision to retire March 1, 2009, made headlines for one day. But the ramifications of Stanton’s unexpected announcement are still making waves. And the power vacuum created by Stanton’s impending departure has big-money donors, high-ranking university officials, regional politicians and concerned insiders plotting, jockeying, whispering and wondering who’s going to arrive, red cape flowing and barrel-chest bared, to save the day.

Why the fuss, you wonder? What’s at stake?

A lot. Primarily the uncertain future of ETSU’s stuck-in-the-mud and increasingly behind-the-times athletics program.

Despite major blunders committed since former Buccaneer tennis coach Dave Mullins took over as ETSU athletic director in December 2002, the school’s sports program has had one thing going for it the past few months: a little momentum.

Granted, the momentum only arose when Stanton, buoyed by a not-so-polite push from an outsider’s club led by Sen. Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City), awoke from a decade-long athletics slumber and finally began thinking big.

But, hey, momentum is momentum, and you take what you can get in the form of progress when it comes to an athletics program that still plays a large number of its sports in a “Mars Attacks!”-like spaceship and has confused non-revenue sports like soccer, tennis and golf for the American big three of football, baseball and basketball.

Now, though, the think-tank committee Stanton had created – one charged with dreaming up a wide-eyed, limitless future for ETSU athletics – has been tabled.

“I’m going to save that for the next [president],” Stanton said. “The next person might have their own ideas.”

And with that decision, all momentum has been boxed up and traded for one big, all-encompassing question: Who’s going to replace Stanton?

“I think it will be a national search … there’s no question about that,” Stanton said. “It’ll be national. I guess even international.”

We’ll see.

Because two words that have been echoing around ETSU for years have now begun to ring out a little clearer. Two words, one name: Wayne Andrews.

Andrews, former vice president for administration at ETSU and current president of Morehead State University in Kentucky, might be the only big-name ETSU official in recent memory less liked by his peers and Buc supporters than Mullins.

Yet a push has already begun by a few who want to dictate the future of the many to make Andrews the clear-cut favorite before the Tennessee Board of Regents begins its selection process later this year.

And an Andrews-led ETSU almost certainly spells doom for the future of Buc athletics.

Stanton called the next six months “crucial” when speaking about the potential of the think-tank committee he had formed and the fork-in-the-road that ETSU’s athletics program had reached. But that was before Stanton suddenly decided to step away. And that was before Andrews’ name began to make the rounds.

Remember, folks. We’re talking about a university that no longer fields a football team, when in the South, football is K-I-N-G.

And we’re talking about an athletics program that has consistently alienated, confused and disappointed alumni, longtime supporters and big-money donors.

An athletics program that twiddled its thumbs and talked in circles when the United States Olympic women’s softball team announced it wanted to visit Johnson City.

An athletics program that still hasn’t announced the official completion of a soccer stadium that is now a whopping nine months behind schedule.

And a university that decided to kill its football program in 2003 to save money, but had no qualms about recently throwing $540,000 it didn’t have at the feet of singer Carrie Underwood, just so it could proclaim to the kids that it had lured an American Idol winner.

That’s a lot of stumbling.

And now, the biggest question – the football question – is being handed off to the next president, near year.

“I think those [who] supported bringing football back had already started looking out at 2012,” Stanton said, referring to the year following his previously expected departure. “So, if anything, this might allow that group to think earlier. … There’s no question another president will be here sooner than I had anticipated. … So [football supporters] will have their opportunity to see what that next person will be like and wants to do. And I’m sure that the supporters of the football program would like to have – and may well have – input into a next leader.”

But not if the next president is Andrews – who many credit with turning away the Tennessee Titans from training summers at ETSU, ending Buccaneer football and sending ETSU’s athletics program on its current downward slide.

And not if Buc supporters, alumni, employees and students, as well as the regional Tri-Cities community and its elected leaders, don’t rally together and take a stand.

Stanton said the search for a new president should not be a “protracted search … that gets to be divisive.”

He’s right. It shouldn’t.

The search for ETSU’s next president should be exactly one thing and one thing only: a search. A search for someone with new ideas and vision. A search for someone who can carry ETSU’s academic and athletics program through the uncertainty of the 21st century.

ETSU deserves it. Northeast Tennessee deserves it. Southwest Virginia deserves it. And Buc believers deserve it.

But what if the search isn’t a search? What if the answer comes out of yet another back-room, closed-door meeting, and an emperor with no clothes emerges, leaving everyone shaking their head and wondering, “How? Why?”

Well, you might as well kiss any dreams of football ever returning to ETSU goodbye. And you should probably tear down the few remaining “ETSU Pride” signs while you’re at it.

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