Turning UW athletics around

From a distance, Todd Turner can look a little stiff , not quite comfortable in a suit and not quite interested in the limelight. But in the shelter of his modest Graves Building office, wearing slacks and a sweater, the UW's athletic director is aff able and candid, more like an uncle than an executive.

"In my mind the universal symbol is our W. The other marks, no matter which one you pick, are auxiliary marks that appeal to diff erent people. We don't really use the dog logo that much. We use the W. We've kind of made a conscious effort to do that. Mostly because we just don't want the controversy. Nobody dislikes the W so we are going to use the W. It's like the Michigan M or the Tennessee T. You know

what it is."

[HTML_REMOVED] Todd Turner

Instead of beaming about nieces or nephews, however Turner speaks pragmatically of stadium plans and scholarships. He discusses where the Washington Athletic Department was when he took over the program in June of 2004, how far it has come since then and where he hopes it will go in the future.

Turner, who came to Montlake after running athletics at Vanderbilt University, the University of Connecticut and North Carolina State, thought he entered Seattle to turn a struggling program around. But upon arrival, he found that the biggest challenge for Husky athletics would be fixing a cracked image.

"The [task] was really to try to change the perception that existed about the athletic program," said Turner. "It was colored by the very public issues with the football program and with softball, and there was just a perception that there were a lot of things broken."

Turner's task was simplified by a skilled and devoted set of coaches and staff [HTML_REMOVED]almost all of whom retained their positions after the regime change. Most, Turner said, were sick of being demonized, sometimes as incompetent and often as corrupt. They were ready to move the program out of its rut after a year of tire-spinning futility.

Inside the department, change came on two levels that proved to be closely related: organization and culture. Turner quickly hired John Morris as senior associate athletic director for compliance. It falls on Morris to ensure that the program's behavior is totally in step with standards seemingly hurled from every direction: the NCAA, the Pac-10, the state of Washington,and even the UW itself.

"Both the personnel and the budget that's put towards compliance is substantial," said Associate Athletic Director Chip Lydum, a 23-year veteran of the athletic department. "Coming through a period where we had some issues with the NCAA rules, it needed to be tightened up and it was."

Lydum also observed that compliance efforts are greater now than he had ever seen in his time at Washington. Th e prevalent attitude is that even before winning, it is imperative that things are done not just legally, but for the right reasons. Part of that integrity is concentrating on compliance.

"What I like seeing is the high moral content," said Anne Gittinger, president of the Tyee Board of Advisors. "Th e ethics are high and the encouragement to be good people for all of us, from coaches to athletes to donors, it's a very encouraging sign."

It does not hurt that morality practically oozes from the leaders of Washington's two revenue programs. Basketball coach Lorenzo Romar and football coach Tyrone Willingham both have reputations for setting high behavior standards on and off the fi eld or court.

"You can't have better people out front than Tyrone Willingham or Lorenzo Romar," said UW President Mark Emmert, emphasizing the word 'people' to indicate that he meant more than just coaches.

Aside from performance, the UW has benefi ted from having two openly religious coaches who have received national praise as honest leaders and talented recruiters with practically spotless NCAA files.

"It certainly helps when you have standup people in your two top spots among coaches," said Jeff Bechthold, assistant student information director. "It is pretty hard to impugn their integrity. They have never really done anything to let you do that."

Bechthold's comments were made in the vein of public relations. Positive perceptions of Romar and Willingham have done wonders for the entire program's reputation, but neither could single-handedly resuscitate the school's image. To do that, there had to be a logistical shift and a renewed focus on external representation.

Just over a year into his UW tenure, Turner made the decision to consolidate all external relations under one roof. He tabbed former Eastern Washington Athletic Director Scott Barnes to run the new division that would handle fundraising, ticketing, media relations and marketing.

Turner calls the impact of that change huge.

It resulted in a more unified and powerful message, he says, and it really boosted the focus on communications. Part of that was more attention to the Internet. The athletic department's website gohuskies.com was reformatted and ranks among the top fi fteen websites for college athletes. Constantly improving the website's content and interface has become a priority.

Prominently featured on gohuskies.com is the Top Dawg Blog, where Turner regularly posts on various aspects of the athletic department. The blog, Turner explains, is part of a department-wide eff ort to remain transparent and keep fans close to the decision-making processes.

"Doing things like the blog are an important part of trying to communicate our message," Turner said. "Not many people sign on your website and read your blog, but at least it's there and we can direct people there and the media reads it."

The message is getting across. Husky fans are once again more focused on the sport than the bureaucracy behind it, and boosters are getting back on board.

"I think that the people are working hard to tell our story more positively," Gittinger said. "Over the last few years some of those donors had become disenchanted, and I think that they are revitalized now. They are seeing that the working core are dedicated to improving our image."

With that reputation stable, Turner and the athletic department can work on writing the next chapter of the Husky athletics story.