By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — When he was a child, the kid who today prefers to be called Jim rather than anything more formal was ready to learn the rudiments of mathematics, a skill that would serve him throughout his life.
“My father, Joe, taught me mathematics through baseball box scores,” he recalled.
Those were days when Jim Palmer was pitching for his favorite team, the Orioles, and Frank and Brooks Robinson were playing their way from Baltimore to Cooperstown.
“He’d sit me there and say, ‘Here’s how you figure a batting average. Here’s how you figure an earned run average.’ I literally learned math through sports.”
It didn’t matter which sport, either. When baseball season turned to football season — they actually had seasons then — Joe would sit with his son and offer different problems.
“If one team scores two touchdowns and an extra point and the other team kicks a field goal, how many points ahead is that team?” Joe would say and Jim would have to figure it out.
He didn’t know it then, but the lessons could come in rather handy as he made his way through the University of Maryland-Baltimore County with a B.S. in computer science, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in operations analysis, as well as an M.S. in computer science from Johns Hopkins.
Academics and sports were entwined in his life, but never as they are now as James P. Clements finishes his first full week as 23rd president of West Virginia University.
He is so new that he has yet to hang his prized possession, an autographed Cal Ripken Jr. bat, in his office, a symbol of the way athletics and academics have merged in his life and a piece of memorabilia that gives some insight into what he expects out of the athletic department at WVU.
“Ripken was all about hard work and dedication,” Clements said.
As it was when his father taught him mathematics through sports, he sees sports as something more than just running and jumping, hitting and throwing, offense and defense. Jim Clements believes sports serve a higher purpose than just producing a winner and a loser.
He spent time as a coach in youth sports, as parents of four active children tend to do, but he was not exactly your typical Rich Rodriguez-type coach.
“What you get when you coach is not just the ability to teach them basketball or football but teamwork, communication, never quitting, working your hardest,” he said.
That can be shortened to character.
The new president at WVU knows something about being an athlete and it was by choice, not by any lack of skill, that he wound up taking the academic path when he came to the fork in the road that we all come to as we head to college.
“I played; my kids play,” he said. “They are very good athletes. I was a pretty good athlete, but I didn’t play beyond high school, even though I had an opportunity to play beyond in baseball, basketball and football.”
As one might guess from someone capable of accomplishing what he has accomplished, the choice was not a hasty one, nor one that wasn’t completely thought out.
“I did not know if I could do what our athletes do,” he said. “Being an athlete, you know, has become a full-time job between practice and travel. Being a student is like having a full-time job. And then you want to have a social life.
“So I made a decision. I said ‘I’m going to really hit the books and be a serious student.’”
No regrets, no looking back.
But there is one thing.
“Honestly, when I’m on the sidelines now I want to put a helmet on and go out and make the tackle, I honestly do,” he said.
It would be best if Clements left that to Reed Williams.
A Critical Time
Clements’ athletic background and his love for sports — he still talks about being at the seventh game of the 1979 World Series when Willie Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat his beloved Orioles to complete coming back from being down three-games-to-one — are brought up because he takes over the presidential mansion at a critical time in WVU sports history.
His seat is a hot one, considering all that has transpired over the past couple of years at the school, that including the Heather Bresch degree scandal, the Rich Rodriguez soap opera and all the repercussions from both.
“On Aug. 31, 2007, David Hardesty was in this office. Twenty-two months later, I come here as the fourth president in 22 months. Normally, you expect eight years, certainly not four in 22 months,” he said.
Indeed, Hardesty left and was replaced by Mike Garrison, a controversial choice who wound up caught in the middle of both the Bresch and the Rodriguez situations, having to resign under pressure. He was replaced by the interim president Peter McGrath.
The selection of Clements was obviously a crucial one, the emphasis on his academic background being a kneejerk reaction to Garrison, who was a lawyer. And as Garrison seemed to be something of a meddler as he got caught up in both situations, Clements maintains he is the exact opposite.
“Ultimately, the president is responsible,” he said when asked his general view on the role of a school president in college athletics. “Something happens on the research side, something happens on the academic side, something happens on the athletic side, the president is the chief of the university.”
But he doesn’t see himself micro-managing.
“The athletic director has to decide who the right coaches are and set the strategic vision for athletics,” he said. “I can do that for the university, of which athletics are a critical component. But I’m not one to meddle. I wouldn’t meddle in a dean’s business. I wouldn’t meddle in a researcher’s business. You have to allow people to do what they do.”
Ideally, that is perfect, but in the real world of athletics at West Virginia, with the governor often involved in such decisions, certainly Clements will learn that on such matters as his football and basketball coaches the decision clearly extends beyond even the athletic director’s authority.
This, of course, brings us to Ed Pastilong, the present athletic director. He signed a deal with Garrison to retire next June 30 and take an emeritus role. Pastilong, however, has given signals that he wishes to stay on full time beyond next June and that will fall squarely into Clements’ lap.
“When I talk about not meddling in athletics, the athletic director is a direct report to me, so I have to make the decision,” Clements admitted.
There just doesn’t seem to be any hurry in making that decision, even though there is less than a year until a replacement must be named under the current agreement.
“We’re running a search for a chancellor, someone to run the medical school, someone to run the hospital, a provost who runs all the academic enterprise on campus,” Clements noted, much of this a direct result of the turmoil of the past two years. “We’re getting ready to start a search for a V.P. of legal.
“I’ve got some big searches going on right now. There is no date set when (Pastilong and I) will sit down and talk. Look, athletics is strong. We are self-supporting and there are only a few programs in the country that are in the black and self-supporting. Those discussions will take place.”
The talk of a self-supporting athletic department leads to the economy as it is at present. Russ Sharp, who is the business mind in the Mountaineer athletic department, says that some belt-tightening has to go on and noted that one such move was to decide for the football team to bus rather than charter a plane to Cincinnati, a saving he estimated at $40,000.
While that may be commendable, it is a drop in the $50 million bucket that is the athletic department budget, a department that has been trying to raise $26 million for a basketball practice facility and Hall of Fame.
“I haven’t seen the specifics of the athletic budget. I know it’s about a $50 million budget. I know about the practice facility. I’m looking for numbers on it,” Clements said.
Football and Basketball
The Rich Rodriguez defection and buyout controversy has put the crown jewel of WVU sports — football — at the crossroads.
Under Rodriguez the program rose to be a consistent Top 10 team with a chance at winning a national championship. This year, after going 9-4 in Bill Stewart’s first year as Rodriguez’s replacement, the Mountaineers have not been getting much Top 25 mention.
Clements understands the football situation as best he can coming in cold from the outside and not yet having experienced West Virginia football as it is.
“Football games in this state, from what I have seen as the new person in West Virginia, are so critical to the state — the health of the state, the energy of the state, the mood of the state. So Saturdays in the fall are a big deal. We need to be putting up Ws on the scoreboard,” he said.
He understands that while his team has five ESPN games this season, if it goes 7-5 it may not have five the next season.
“No question we’ll have to watch that,” Clements said. “I’ve been reading a lot on who is going to win the Big East. WVU can win it. Pitt can win it. South Florida can win it. Cincinnati can win it. It’s really up for grabs. But we have to be the one to rise to the occasion.”
Clements has been impressed by Stewart and his coaches, who dropped in on him unexpectedly as he was checking out the presidential suite in Milan Puskar Stadium.
“I didn’t know they were going to come by, but they did to welcome me and my family, and I thought that was very classy,” he said.
There normally would not be any question about Bob Huggins’ status as basketball coach, considering his long-term contract, roots to the school and his heroic stature, but it must be recalled that he was the biggest thing at Cincinnati when a new president came in, leading to his eventual departure.
To make matters worse, no sooner was Clements in the door than point guard Darryl “Truck” Bryant was arrested after a hit-and-run incident, the second arrest of a WVU point guard in the offseason.
“Things happen with kids,” Clements said of the incident. “It happens with kids in the band and on the stage in musicals. Those are our coaches; you try to support them. I had four months of heavy-duty training transitioning in. I’ve talked with Huggins. I was staying at the Waterplace Hotel when I was here and saw him there.
“We have good coaches. They are doing the best they can to win games and help our kids. What you try to do is run the best possible program. You try to recruit the best kids and help them graduate. Look at Huggins last year; he had a perfect APR (Academic Performance Rate) score. You can’t argue with perfect.”
The other sports
A few years back WVU cut five varsity sports to help comply with Title IX and to cut costs, among them men’s track and field and cross country, two programs that were on the verge of blossoming into Big East and national forces.
While rifle was reinstated and won a national championship this year on a shoestring budget, track remains on the outside looking in even though it is a popular high school sport in the state.
Would Clements consider reinstating track?
“This is only my sixth day on the job,” he reminded. “That has not hit my radar screen yet. It probably will at some point.
That does not mean that Clements wouldn’t consider it or other changes to the Mountaineer varsity sports roster.
“I will tell you what has (hit the radar). Several places I’ve heard, ‘When are you going to add lacrosse?’ The Big East has a conference now. You have Syracuse. You have Villanova. You have Georgetown. What about here, it’s perfect? You can recruit Maryland and New York.
“By the way, my twins play field hockey in Maryland and are phenomenal field hockey players. I imagine there comes a time when you start to look and ask which are the right ones? Are there some we should cut and some we should add for the future? But first let’s hire a chancellor and hire a provost.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
