Sullivan | Jurich needs an editor, not exile

The man on the phone wanted to know when enough was enough. He wanted to know when I would be calling for Tom Jurich’s head.

I told him not to wait.

The University of Louisville’s athletic director does not need to be exiled. He needs to be edited. He needs a seasoned spinmeister to massage his message and prune his statements so that a man who has accomplished so much does not continue to trip over his own tongue.

And maybe he has found one.

Less than 48 hours after his cringe-worthy admission that U of L had been in receipt of inside information about Wake Forest football strategies in advance of its Nov. 12 game at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, Jurich issued a much-improved second statement Friday afternoon announcing the suspension of assistant coach Lonnie Galloway for the Citrus Bowl.

Jurich hit as many wrong notes on his first try as did Meryl Streep playing Florence Foster Jenkins. He showed no remorse, made no apology, rationalized improperly obtained knowledge of another team’s new plays and formations and conveyed annoyance that the matter was deflecting attention from U of L's bowl preparations. In reversing his field on Friday, he demonstrated newfound sensitivity to national criticism and local embarrassment.

It shouldn't have taken so long, but this was progress.

"It is clear to me that the information should not have been shared by anyone at Wake Forest and it should not have been received by anyone at the University of Louisville," Jurich said. "Although no one from Louisville sought the information, once it was provided, we did not do what should have been done.  The information should not have been accepted.  It should have been rejected and officials at Wake Forest should have been alerted to the inappropriate action taken by Mr. (Tommy) Elrod.

". . .This is an unusual situation.  When someone receives information they should not be given, it is important that they do the right thing.  Even in a competitive atmosphere, the right and ethical thing would have been for us to not accept the information.  I regret very much that this took place.”

Jurich’s first statement was dumb and it was damaging and the sweeping criticism it received was mostly deserved. It perpetuated the image of U of L as an outlaw school, obsessed with winning, indifferent to cheating. But maybe the worst thing about it was that it was allowed to stand for almost two days without revision or clarification and without a strong dissenting opinion from the people in power at the university.

Again.

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Only 11 days earlier, Jurich had appeared on WLOU’s “D&D Spill the Tea” show and suggested that politicians’ complaints about the university’s lease terms at the KFC Yum! Center was a sign U of L wasn’t wanted and should leave. It was a silly statement in light of the 28 years remaining on the lease and the advantages it has provided both the city and its anchor tenant, and most sensible citizens recognized it as pure posturing.

On the theory that Jurich was simply venting, frustrated by being criticized for negotiating a good deal, I offered him the chance to appear less strident. While working on a column about Jurich’s remarks, I sent a message to U of L athletics spokesman Kenny Klein:

I’m writing about the Tom Jurich/Yum Center issues and am inclined to think Tom was mainly blowing off steam in his radio interview and has no desire or realistic possibility of extricating U of L from an arena lease that runs through 2044 and that has been of tremendous financial benefit to the university. Moreover, I fail to see how the powers that be would ever permit a state university to pursue such a course that would place an additional burden on the taxpayers.

To be clear, I don’t think of U of L as the “bad guy” in this deal, and I don’t blame Tom for expressing his frustrations. But since I am reading his comments as an overreaction, I would like to offer him a mulligan. If he would like to reframe his comments, please let me know.  

Regrettably, Jurich passed on that opportunity. So I wrote that he had made an accusation that “defies logic and invites laughter.” As baseball sage Paul Owens liked to say, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t stick his dumb, bleeping head in it.”

In his early admissions of infractions in the Katina Powell scandal and in imposing significant pre-emptive penalties, Jurich showed that he is capable of accountability and that he can take serious allegations seriously. Friday's statement might repair some of the damage he has done this week, but caving to criticism rarely works as well as does doing the right thing on the first try.

With the advantage of having seen how poorly Jurich's original statement was received, Virginia Tech Athletic Director Whit Babcock struck the right tone in admitting his own school’s culpability in the Wake Forest case on Thursday. The lesson Jurich should learn here is that major pronouncements merit second opinions and several coats of polish. And that the first draft is rarely the best.

“I have rewritten – often several times – every word I have ever published,” the novelist Vladimir Nabokov once wrote. “My pencils outlast their erasers.”

There’s no shame in second effort. And often, improvement.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com or @TImSullivan714 on Twitter.