WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.008 In a nutshell, 2 00:00:02.008 --> 00:00:08.088 Coach Valvano had become both basketball coach and the director of athletics along the way. 3 00:00:08.088 --> 00:00:14.319 Also during that time, I guess it wasn't all that common in those days although it seems to be very common these days, 4 00:00:14.319 --> 00:00:19.258 was that he had been given a perpetual contract. 5 00:00:19.258 --> 00:00:23.710 As I recall it he was always at the beginning of a five-year contract, 6 00:00:23.710 --> 00:00:27.912 so it would automatically renew every year for five years. 7 00:00:27.912 --> 00:00:31.746 So with that by way of context, 8 00:00:31.746 --> 00:00:35.599 there were some accusations made about the coach and about the program, 9 00:00:35.599 --> 00:00:38.644 who knows how much of that was true in the detail. 10 00:00:38.644 --> 00:00:43.331 It ranged from sort of what most people considered fairly trivial, 11 00:00:43.331 --> 00:00:47.733 players selling shoes that they got free from sponsors, 12 00:00:47.733 --> 00:00:52.499 to giving away or selling tickets that they received free because they were student athletes, 13 00:00:52.499 --> 00:00:54.579 those sorts of things, 14 00:00:54.579 --> 00:00:57.583 to some more serious accusations about 15 00:00:57.583 --> 00:01:03.611 pressing professors to delay or change grades to keep players eligible. 16 00:01:03.611 --> 00:01:05.809 All that sort of stuff was in the mix. 17 00:01:05.809 --> 00:01:13.916 My concern never really was the detail about the truth of every bit of that, 18 00:01:13.916 --> 00:01:15.730 although those were all important questions. 19 00:01:15.730 --> 00:01:20.500 What we got to was a point where there was an untenable situation, in my view, 20 00:01:20.500 --> 00:01:24.543 which was we had a coach who had been investigated, a program that had been investigated. 21 00:01:24.543 --> 00:01:29.151 That created a dynamic on campus where 22 00:01:29.151 --> 00:01:34.106 the coach operated very independently from the chancellor and the administration 23 00:01:34.106 --> 00:01:37.220 So the student body president at that time and I 24 00:01:37.220 --> 00:01:42.845 contacted the coach and asked for an opportunity to visit with him, and we did. 25 00:01:42.845 --> 00:01:47.271 We went to his house and we sat in his living room and had a very frank conversation 26 00:01:47.271 --> 00:01:52.993 about what was going on, his recruiting practices, some of the allegations that were out there. 27 00:01:52.993 --> 00:01:57.061 Clearly he had a case to make and we listened. 28 00:01:57.061 --> 00:01:59.848 We also, I think, asked some challenging questions 29 00:01:59.848 --> 00:02:04.655 that we had about practices and behaviors and so forth 30 00:02:04.655 --> 00:02:06.937 and suitability to lead at this point, 31 00:02:06.937 --> 00:02:10.433 There was an investigation by the University of North Carolina system. 32 00:02:10.433 --> 00:02:14.936 The Poole Commission Report is the famous report that came out of that. 33 00:02:14.936 --> 00:02:19.898 That report was heavily redacted because it had a lot of names in it and so forth, 34 00:02:19.898 --> 00:02:27.239 but although that report found generally I think a lack of direct rule violation 35 00:02:27.239 --> 00:02:32.523 there was an awful lot of questionable judgment, in my view, that had gone on, 36 00:02:32.523 --> 00:02:36.917 so in the end I felt like the university cannot move on as long as he was coach. 37 00:02:36.917 --> 00:02:41.498 Now you've got to remember I came to campus with a "Jimmy Valvano for President" bumper sticker on my car, 38 00:02:41.498 --> 00:02:48.238 so I was a fan. I mean this is a guy who I liked and was a huge State fan and loved the big win in '83, 39 00:02:48.238 --> 00:02:52.667 and you'll remember I started in '86 so this was very fresh in everyone's mind. 40 00:02:52.667 --> 00:02:56.385 I also knew that ninety-nine percent of students thought he walked on water 41 00:02:56.385 --> 00:02:59.679 and that to say otherwise would be a really unpopular point of view. 42 00:02:59.679 --> 00:03:04.002 But I ultimately came to the view that it was time for him to go 43 00:03:04.002 --> 00:03:08.785 and for us to move on, so I gave a speech to the student senate to that effect, 44 00:03:08.785 --> 00:03:12.758 I got a lot of flack about it, got a lot of support too 45 00:03:12.758 --> 00:03:18.190 from people and faculty and staff as well who were supportive, which I appreciated. 46 00:03:18.190 --> 00:03:24.108 Who knows if I'd do everything the same way over again, it's impossible to say, 47 00:03:24.108 --> 00:03:28.025 hindsight's twenty-twenty, but I'm comfortable with all of that 48 00:03:28.025 --> 00:03:35.507 and I do feel like we had gotten to a point where for the university to really get past this blemish, 49 00:03:35.507 --> 00:03:40.219 whoever you might feel is responsible for the blemish, we needed to change personnel. 50 00:03:40.219 --> 00:03:44.567 Out of all this the chancellor resigned. 51 00:03:44.567 --> 00:03:50.236 It had gotten to a point where there were times I was communicating between the chancellor and the coach 52 00:03:50.236 --> 00:03:53.020 and they were not, 53 00:03:53.020 --> 00:03:57.260 so that by itself spoke volumes, I think, about where things had gotten on campus. 54 00:03:57.260 --> 00:04:00.304 We had people cutting up their diplomas and mailing them back. 55 00:04:00.304 --> 00:04:06.557 It was during all this that our student body president at the time stepped down and I became student body president 56 00:04:06.557 --> 00:04:10.074 automatically for the last month or so of that school year 57 00:04:10.074 --> 00:04:13.304 and so therefore was a trustee for a period of that time. 58 00:04:13.304 --> 00:04:20.064 During that time when we went through the transition we rewrote the contract that would be offered to the next coach, 59 00:04:20.064 --> 00:04:23.622 we had to go through a chancellor search, 60 00:04:23.622 --> 00:04:28.117 and I was on the chancellor search committee that 61 00:04:28.117 --> 00:04:34.459 offered Chancellor [Larry] Monteith the position on an interim basis and ultimately hired him as the permanent chancellor.