White's contract extension gives him more time to make memories
By ANDREW SOUKUP
Sports Writer
Even though Kevin White jokingly says he has trouble remembering his anniversary, the Notre Dame athletic director can quickly tell you the significance of other dates.
There's Mar. 12, 2000, when he flew from Arizona State to interview in an O'Hare Airport hotel room with a select group of individuals, including University President Father Edward Malloy, who impressed White with his vision for Notre Dame in general and athletics in particular.
There's Mar. 13, 2000, when White was publicly introduced as Mike Wadsworth's successor and vowed to uphold Notre Dame's standards of excellence without truly understanding what those standards were.
The date that defined Notre Dame for White didn't come until he had been on the job for a year and a half. On Sept. 11, 2001, less than six hours after the World Trade Center collapsed, White and his family were among the 5,000 participants in a Mass on South Quad.
"Where else in the country could such a thing happen just five to six hours after that tragic event with such meaning and purpose?" he said last week. "… It showed us a side of Notre Dame that we knew existed but hadn't yet experienced."
Spend any amount of time with White and he'll inevitably begin gushing about one aspect of Notre Dame or another. It was this passion for Notre Dame that initially chased him away from hiring Tyrone Willingham the first time because White felt Willingham didn't appreciate Notre Dame enough. It is this passion that motivates him to lead an athletic department that ranks among the best in the nation simply because he believes excellence and Notre Dame are synonyms.
And it is this passion, coupled with a successful track record, which gave White another date to remember. On Dec. 30, 2002, Malloy announced he had extended White's contract by two years. The second extension White has received in his nearly three-year tenure with Notre Dame, his contract will now run out in 2012.
Yet White dismisses the stability such a long-term deal provides his family, and rather looks at the increased time as a way to increase his goals for the department.
"When Father Malloy was very kind and generous in extending the opportunity to come serve, we talked about being the very best in the country when you looked at it from every dimension," he said. "That's what we're in pursuit of, and we're making progress."
A simple look at Notre Dame athletics under White reveals just how much progress the University has made. White hired Willingham, mens basketball coach Mike Brey and mens soccer coach Bobby Clark, three coaches who turned their respective programs around in a relatively short time. Twenty of Notre Dame's 26 athletic programs qualified for postseason play last year, eight won Big East championships, and the Irish finished 11th and 13th in the Sears Cup, now called the NACDA Cup, in White's first two years.
Most impressively, besides the school's 90 percent graduation rate, Notre Dame is one of a handful of athletic departments in the nation that does not lose money, something White attributes to a tremendously supportive fan base. He also takes pride that any money the athletics department generates beyond what is needed for expenses goes into the general student scholarship fund.
The athletic director is present at virtually every major Notre Dame sporting event, and Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese once called White one of the most visible athletic directors in the nation. But White claims he watches not because he wants people to see him, but because he loves sports and loves competition.
"I love game day. The best thing around here is game day," he grinned. "I love when our organization competes against somebody else's, our institution competes against somebody else's, our department against somebody else's. … We all have a role to play to facilitate the right kind of environment and we have responsibility, and that starts at the very top of the institution.
"It isn't just the team and the players, there's a lot more that goes into it, and if the right pieces aren't in place, the chances for that specific team are greatly reduced."
Yet not everything is a fantasy world for White. While he euphemistically admits the most difficult part of his job is "separating" people from the University — "You get to the point where you gotta do what you gotta do," he shrugged — not even White himself could have imagined how difficult the football coaching change would have been 13 months ago.
Many criticized White for mishandling the change, which resulted in George O'Leary resigning five days after he was hired for lying about his academic and athletic background. Although Willingham's success last season now makes a serious gaffe look like divine intervention, White knows his position leaves him wide open to criticisms.
"I think they should judge us on everything that we do," he said, adding he had "some communication" with both O'Leary and Bob Davie without going into detail. "I don't think there's anything I would distill and say this doesn't warrant accountability or not warrant introspection. I've been afforded a wonderful opportunity, and everything and anything I do warrants some review."
With the contract extension under his belt, White is once again focused on implementing a variety of programs the athletic department has been working on for quite some time. Although he would not discuss the particulars of any plan currently under works, White has in the past expressed support for expanding scholarships in all varsity sports to the NCAA maximum, signed coaches to multi-year contracts and suggested renovating the Joyce Center and building a new football training facility.
It's all part of a plan of excellence he first talked about with Malloy in a Chicago hotel almost three years ago.
"If it was a light switch mentality, and I tell our coaches this all the time, everybody would be doing it," he said. "It's a progression, it's a process, and we're chipping away and gaining on it."
All Sports Stories for Wednesday, January 22, 2003
