WSU's Kirk Schulz fires up expletive when asked reaction to Pat Chun's UW defection

Original source (on modern site) | Article images: [1] [2]

Kirk Schulz and Pat Chun (Photo: Zoom grabs)

KIRK SCHULZ, always the height of good manners as Washington State's president, was unvarnished Wednesday when asked his reaction after athletic director Pat Chun first told him on Monday he was in talks with Washington to become the Huskies' new athletic director. He replied to the query from Cougfan.com editors with three words.

The first was "no." The last was "way." The middle word is not one allowed on a family-friend platform, but it ended in "ing."

"I know you can't print it exactly that way," Schulz said in an exclusive interview. "I was  just — you're kidding me. If Pat had said it was the University of Iowa, it was Ohio State or Minnesota or pick whatever I would have said, 'Hey, we want you here but I understand …

"Given all the stuff that's happened with the University of Washington over the last year I was like, there's no way a person is going to move as a senior athletics administrator from WSU to the University of Washington ... Still a little shocked by it to be honest ... I'm upset about the timing of Pat leaving," he said.

ON TUESDAY NIGHT, Schulz said, he was "pissed off and pretty upset." But this morning he's charging into the future and buoyed by the fighting spirit he's finding in donors and alums. He said he was also enthused by the unsolicited, immense response he received from several WSU coaches this morning when Anne McCoy was announced as interim AD.

Schulz said he doesn't plan to be WSU president for a "huge number of additional years" but he's told the Board of Regents "I've got to see this through. I do not want to leave my tenure as WSU president with athletics kinda up in the air. Are you going to finish the job or not? (Chun's) timing was crappy. There's never a great time but there are times that are worse than others ... I felt we were side by side, hand in hand going through some really challenging times ... You feel you've got that person there. We've got a good solid year worth of tough work ahead of us and now you don't. It's profound, the disappointment."

He said he and Chun talked daily over the last six years and, following the Los Angeles schools' announced move to the Big Ten in summer 2022, often two or three times a day in the effort to pilot WSU athletics through uncertain waters. And they had been talking multiple times a day over the last week mostly in regard to trying to retain Kyle Smith as men's basketball coach.

Schulz said he and Chun were talking Monday about the Cougars' basketball situation when Chun, at the end of the conversation, said "Oh, by the way, I'm talking with the University of Washington." 

One day later he was headed to UW and to suddenly see Chun switch from right-hand-man in a titanic battle to working for the people you've been battling in court for months is "hard to fathom," Schulz said.

IN THAT MONDAY CONVERSATION, which took place before Chun had been offered the UW job but when talks were heating up, Schulz said the why of it all kept coming back to Washington being part of the Big Ten Conference. 

The Big Ten and the SEC, in conjunction with the ESPN and Fox Sports, are contriving to make themselves into the super leagues of college sport. Chun is an Ohio State graduate who spent 15 years at OSU in athletic administration under Gene Smith. He was widely believed to be on OSU's short list to succeed Smith but the Buckeyes last month announced Ross Bjork of Texas A&M would be their next AD. Last summer, Chun was believed to have had interest in the USC AD's job, which went to his friend and former UW AD Jen Cohen.

On Tuesday morning, Schulz said, Chun called and said he was expecting to get an offer within a couple of hours. "I said, 'Pat is there anything we can do, or WSU can do, no promises but is there anything we can do to retain you as our athletic director ... and he said no, there is nothing.

"If anybody asks you that (and maybe it's) more salary, something with the budget, maybe it's I need another $2 million more for football, or whatever. But you come up with something that you think is meaningful ... If your answer to that is no, to me you've mentally checked out."

ASKED ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP with the University of Washington and UW President Ana Mari Cauce, who now has delivered a second major blow to WSU in less than a year, Schulz said, "I'm a glass-half-full type of person, I tend to be really positive and I've worked to keep a working relationship going with the University of Washington. You can't reside in the same state, deal with the legislature and all those things, and not have a working relationship.

"I will say Ana Mari tried to call yesterday before the announcement came out but I was on an airplane ... she did want to reach out personally ... but clearly the relationship is not the  same as it was in July of last year, where I thought we had a tight working relationship. It's cordial, but it's definitely damaged. To be honest, (the relationship) probably won't, as long as I am president and she is president, ever be quite the same."

Related: Schulz said coaching search moving at warp speed

RUMBLINGS THAT CHUN HAD strained relationships with various coaches and others in athletics came to the fore yesterday on social media and in text messages Cougfan.com received, as background only, on Tuesday from well-placed sources. Asked if he was aware of the rumblings, the accuracy of them and whether, if true, such strains drove Smith to  Stanford and volleyball coach Jen Greeny to West Virginia, Schulz was straight forward.

"I know there are some stained relationships," Schulz said. "If you said list them all off, I couldn't but I could make some guesses. I think I had enough communications and working relationship with Kyle ... (to say) I don't feel (the relationship with Chun) that that was the reason Kyle left.

"I do think anytime you make decisions as an AD or president and you're somewhere for more than a few years, you're going to have some strained relationships because you've told people no or they don't like the way you handled something. So I don't feel it was a huge issue but I do think there were probably several people felt they weren't getting the support, the time, the things they deserved.

"And with the new AD, that's the type of stuff we need to make him or her cognizant of so they can start from scratch and make those coaches feel supported."

STAY TUNED TOMORROW FOR MORE COVERAGE FROM COUGFAN.COM's CONVERSATION WITH KIRK SCHULZ