Let’s time travel back to Aug. 26, 1989, and an excellent New York Times article by Barry Jacobs on the announcement that University of North Carolina system president C.D. Spangler and the board of governors supported a systemwide ban on college athletic directors also serving as head coaches.
The primary target of the ruling was then N.C. State basketball coach Jim Valvano, who became the scapegoat for a laundry list of academic-related shortcomings in the Wolfpack athletic program. Accused of nothing but also asked to resign as athletic directors were coaches Clarence “Bighouse” Gaines at Winston-Salem State, Jeff Mullins at Charlotte and the late Jeff Capel at Fayetteville State.
Jacobs’ article went on to report that a four-man panel that studied the whole issue at N.C. State didn’t blame Valvano for misconduct as much as they blamed his superiors for letting academic integrity become compromised.
Jacobs quoted Samuel Poole, chairman of the investigation, as saying, “When you’ve got a low threshold and big expectations, you can hardly blame him (Valvano) if it goes to the lower threshold.’’
When decisions like this happen at the collegiate level, they have a way of trickling down to the high school level, and over the years that’s exactly what happened. One by one, schools and school systems across the state replaced coaches and former coaches who were serving as athletic directors with administrators. Many of them had little or no actual coaching experience or athletic backgrounds.
Today in Cumberland County, the position of high school athletic director is charged to an assistant principal, who generally also has academic responsibilities on his or her list of duties.
I for one think local high school athletics has suffered because of that. Not because the people doing the job aren’t competent or committed to their work, but they lack valuable experience that having been a coach at one time gives them to understand the challenges faced by those people and the athletes under their charge.
But don’t just listen to my opinion. Hear the words of someone with vastly more background in this area than me.
Fred McDaniel spent 10 years as the student activities director for Cumberland County Schools. Before that he was an athletic director at Westover and Cape Fear High Schools, and a baseball, wrestling and assistant football coach at Terry Sanford. He served a year as president of the N.C. Athletic Directors Association, and is a member of the NCADA, NCHSAA, Fayetteville Sports Club and George Whitfield Halls of Fame.
“Unless I’ve been there, I can’t make the correct rules,’’ McDaniel said of the value of experience as an on-field coach. “I think that’s a big part of it right there.’’
McDaniel said he never wanted to forget that like most of his fellow coaches, he was once an athlete, and what he did as a coach was try to put his athletes in the position where they have the best chance of being successful.
McDaniel, and I concur with his thinking, fears that when an athletic director is a school administrator first, with little to no athletic background to pull from, athletics moves to the back burner for him or her.
“Most of them have aspirations for being a principal, moving up the ladder,’’ McDaniel said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But the bottom line is athletics goes to the side.’’
McDaniel feels that can be dangerous, because a lot of coaches are aggressive by nature in what they do, and intentionally or unintentionally they can sometimes push the envelope of success to risky limits.
“If you don’t keep a tight rein on them, lots of times they start doing things they shouldn’t be doing, and that’s when you start having all of these situations you don’t need to run into,’’ he said.
There’s already a ton of pressure, even on an experienced athletic director. McDaniel remembers his early days as the athletic director at Westover. In addition to athletics, he was in charge of buses. He also went from overseeing discipline for one grade level of students to all four.
“I worked 14, 15 and 16 hour days,’’ he said.
He knew lawsuits could be looming if he didn’t keep all the plates spinning fast enough.
Curriculum, for obvious reasons, drives everything in schools as it should. But McDaniel worries sometimes, in some positions, a curriculum person is hired first, then possibly tried to plug into a coaching or athletic director job as a sideline.
It’s time to reverse that trend, at least when possible, and start putting people with athletic backgrounds in athletic oriented jobs.
Nobody’s asking anyone to cut corners on education. You’re hired as a teacher or educator first. But nothing says that person can’t also have a background in coaching.
I harken back to the days of men like Len Maness, John Daskal and Buddy Luper, each remembered as great administrators but also as solid classroom teachers.
All three had backgrounds as great athletes too.
“I think that comes from having been an athlete, having been a coach,’’ McDaniel said. “I think that’s a natural progression for being in an athletic spot.’’
I agree. And I think it’s time for Cumberland County Schools to do a mid-course correction. Leave the assistant principal positions for educators. Let’s put athletics back in the hands of people experienced with, as Wide World of Sports used to say, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
• Speaking of local high school sports, while I appreciate the accomplishments related to the classroom by the county schools, I was disappointed with its recent top 10 list of moments in the schools for 2023.
All the accomplishments on the list were deserving, but there was no mention of any of the school system’s athletic achievements.
We had a football team from Seventy-First make it all the way to the NCHSAA 3-A championship game.
We had a wrestler from Cape Fear, Samuel Aponte, bring home his second state 3-A individual wrestling title.
It’s great to herald academic advance, but my old friend and former county schools student activities director the late Bill Carver used to refer to high school athletics as the front porch of the school system. It’s nice if the system would recognize the achievements on the athletic field as part of its annual yearly wrap up.
• I apologize for the abbreviated amount of articles this week but I’ve been taking a brief respite from work to deal with some personal issues regarding my father’s health.
I’m happy to report he’s shown improvement in recent days and I plan to be back full speed next week.
I again encourage people to submit nominations for athlete of the week, both male and female. Because we’ve been down since the Christmas break, any performance that took place over the holidays through next Tuesday, Jan. 9, is eligible for nomination. Just send details of the performance along with a head and shoulders photo of the athlete to
earlvaughanjr@gmail.com no later than noon next Wednesday.
