After nearly thirteen years in charge, Bob De Carolis’ last day as Oregon State athletic director is June 30th of this year.
Officially, De Carolis is resigning. Unofficially, he is being swept out the door by a university concerned with health and feeling its oats with a football coaching hire that has everyone excited and a basketball program on the rise.
Oregon State must think that now is as good a time as any to make a change. It saves the university what would have been a tough, painful negotiation with De Carolis, whose contract had just a year left to run.
The divide appeared to center around the fact that De Carolis, now in his 60s and battling Parkinson’s disease, wanted a new long-term deal with assurances and ambitions that OSU was unwilling to give.
Nowhere has it been said that De Carolis is retiring. He’s not. That was never the idea. De Carolis wanted to keep working. Oregon State wasn’t going to let him.
Seeing the writing on the wall, and understandably wanting to prevent a messy breakup with the school that gave him his name, De Carolis announced that he’s stepping away.
Maybe he’s never an athletic director again, but De Carolis will still be around college sports. His roots span the country – from Boston College, his alma mater, to Michigan where he spent almost two decades and coached the softball team, all the way west to Corvallis.
Oregon State’s decision to cut ties is as unfortunate as it is uncomfortable, because it grapples with the Parkinson’s diagnosis that flew mostly under the radar when talking about De Carolis for the last four years.
The Beavers are ambitious, and that ambition has a lot to do with the improvements to the athletic program that happened under, and because of, the athletic director they’re letting walk.
De Carolis’ body of work is impressive. He helped build a national title winning baseball program, and fended off the likes of Notre Dame and other top universities to keep Pat Casey. Funnily enough, Casey is now considered an interesting choice for the athletic director position.
The hiring of Scott Rueck as women’s basketball coach at a time when, amidst ugly controversy and allegations, it looked simpler just to pretend that the program didn’t exist, has proved inspired. Under Rueck, the Beavers won the Pac-12 last year.
It’s always been an uphill battle in the glamour sports, men’s basketball and football, but De Carolis’ work stands up there too.
His relationship with Mike Riley was fruitful, but it had its boundaries. Make no mistake – part of the reason that Riley left for Nebraska in the offseason was that De Carolis clamped down on contract requests for his assistants and asked that Riley shake up his staff.
When Riley bolted, De Carolis landed Wisconsin’s Gary Andersen – a move that has been universally applauded around college football and has Oregon State more excited for football next season than it has been in a long time.
De Carolis’ last basketball hire, Wayne Tinkle, looks to be a winner too. The energy in Gill Coliseum at the end of last season was special.
Improvements to facilities like Reser Stadium, the basketball practice center, and the Valley Football Center renovation that was announced just before the shock hiring of Andersen just a few months ago leave OSU in a far better position to compete than they were a decade or two ago.
Remember, Oregon State was pretty much nowhere before De Carolis came in in 1998. Save for the Gary Payton basketball era, which clearly was a one-off, it was almost impossible to compete in Corvallis.
De Carolis’ build at OSU hasn’t been without its bumps – a loud fraction of boosters and supporters won’t be sad to see him go – but it was a steady rise from a dismal position at the bottom of the Pac 12.
That should be appreciated. So too should De Carolis the man, who, like the football coach who was most synonymous with his stay at Oregon State, garnered a reputation over the years as one of the nicest, most genuine men in the business.
A lot of Oregon State fans, and apparently Oregon State itself, thinks the Beavers can do even better. They look at schools like Baylor, Mississippi and Kansas State, and, always, even subconsciously, Oregon, and wonder why they can’t do more.
What those fans and administrators should think about is why they have the audacity to, in equal parts, dream and expect better. In many ways, it’s down to the work of De Carolis.
I doubt this was the ending that De Carolis wanted, just as Riley didn’t get the ending he wanted when he bolted for the Cornhuskers. Hopefully, De Carolis lands on his feet somewhere where he is wanted.
This is a period of considerable upheaval in Corvallis. The new AD comes in this summer to helm a program with major facilities upgrades underway, a new football coach, and a men’s basketball coach readying for his second season.
I understand the logic. This is as good a time as any for change. Look for the athletic department to be upgraded in terms of technology and marketing. Look for fan experiences at games to be emphasized.
All that is well and good.
But Oregon State isn’t a position to think big without the man they called Bob the Builder.
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