Instead of it being a somber occasion, Emmert’s departure is more reminiscent of when Ace Ventura left a monastery.
Writing for Sports Illustrated in 2022, Pat Forde wrote, “If there is a less respected current CEO of any organization, I don’t know who it is.”
In 2013, USA Today detailed a litany of Emmert’s failings before he got the NCAA gig, showing the president’s departure should be celebrated coast to coast.
Former USC running back Reggie Bush may throw the biggest party, or maybe it will be at the University of Connecticut, where a billion-dollar construction project under his supervision “gradually became a mess, with widespread code violations and tens of millions of dollars in budget overruns.”
USA Today also reported that while Emmert was at LSU, the football program under Nick Saban was a mess academically.
Emmert oversaw an investigation made by a university instructor and concluded that the majority of the allegations were “unfounded” while acknowledging “five minor and isolated violations.”
“Emmert even met on LSU’s behalf with the NCAA, which accepted LSU’s findings,” USA Today reported. “But after Emmert decided to leave LSU in 2004, a witness testified in a deposition that [an] instructor was telling the truth and that the problems were far more systemic than the school admitted, even extending to grades being changed for football players, according to court records.”
Emmert was in senior management at Montana State in the 1990s, when the NCAA found the university demonstrated a “lack of institutional control.”
There’s a story to be written about how someone so unspectacular was able to fail upward for so long.
As Mandel reminded us, we don’t know what Emmert did during his time as the president of the NCAA, other than line executives’ pocketbooks. Emmert defended his record, but his 12-year tenure was the worst in the organization’s history.
When it comes to Emmert’s tenure as the most powerful man in the NCAA, we’ll put a twist on an old saying: Don’t be sad that it’s over. Be mad that it ever was.
