Lucas Gebhart
Editor-in-Chief
About 13 months ago, a group of football boosters known as the Football Alumni Team (F.A.T) submitted an op-ed to the Idaho State Journal calling for the removal of former president Author Vailas and former athletic director Jeff Tingey. The group said they were going to withhold $80,000 in fundraising money until the changes were made. They claimed they did this because of the “horrible state of ISU athletics.”
It was later found that the group didn’t have the $80,000 to withhold and they moved $58,000 into an endowment fund once this came to light. It appeared that the issue was put to bed, and the two sides were moving on. But less than 13 months later, both men who the boosters called out are no longer employed at ISU, whether that was a direct cause of the op-ed is still unclear and may never become clear.
13 months after the editorial was released and statewide media attention was cast on ISU, both demands made by F.A.T were met, even if they didn’t have the money to withhold.
Vailas announced his retirement shortly after the op-ed was released, but said his decision was unrelated to the booster’s demands and that he had been planning it for a while. Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant now. About a year later, current President Kevin Satterlee placed Tingey on paid administrative leave and hired Pauline Thiros as interim athletic director.
When it was all said and done, both demands made by F.A.T were met, and, in the end, the boosters got what they originally asked for. Both Tingey and Vailas are no longer a part of ISU.
Athletic departments thrive on booster money. No matter how much or how little a state board of education gives a school, it’s the boosters that steer the ship. Typically, in collegiate athletics, when boosters are unhappy with an athletic director, that athletic director typically doesn’t have much time left. The boosters are the ones with the money and whoever has the money usually is the one who calls the shots. That’s not just the case in college athletics, that’s the case in all aspects of life.
The bottom line here is, whether it was a direct cause or not, you can’t have boosters publicly call out an athletic director and expect that athletic director to keep his/her’s job for too much longer.
Satterlee said he decided to make the move because he felt it was in the best interest of the university and that the move was performance based.
If you look at ISU’s record in football and men’s basketball, you can see where he’s coming from. Both the ISU football and men’s basketball teams had one winning season while Tingey was at the helm. Tingey took over in 2009 and while he was the head of the department, the ISU football team had a combined record of 24-77 while the men’s basketball team had a combined record of 70-169. That right there is a fireable offense at most Division I institutions across the country. Combine that with the displeasure of F.A.T and a picture of why Tingey was let go starts to come to light.
You can look at the athletic department as a whole all you want, look at APR scores or look at the facilities and renovations that have gone up in the last couple years, but at the end of the day, I think Satterlee realized that in order to have a successful athletic program, the football and men’s basketball teams have to win and you have to keep the boosters happy.
Tingey didn’t do either one.
