Incoming AD Joel Maturi has fans in every corner
Pam Schmid
Star Tribune

Published Jul 12, 2002
Bobby Kramig could have blamed Joel Maturi for the death of men's soccer at Miami of Ohio. He could have held Maturi responsible for not fighting harder to save the team he'd coached for 20 years. He could have railed and vented about the unfairness of it.

Kramig did rail. He vented. But in the end, he didn't blame Maturi who, as Miami's athletic director, also oversaw the elimination of men's wrestling and tennis.

Joel Maturi

Kramig, in fact, counts himself as one of Maturi's biggest fans.

"He's a man of incredible integrity," said Kramig, who still coaches women's soccer at Miami. "He's done more for this department in four years than anybody else has done in the last 20 or 25."

Maturi, the Chisholm, Minn., native who is expected to receive official approval today from the University of Minnesota Regents as the Gophers' new athletic director, hasn't shied away from making tough decisions.

Yet he has fans in every corner.

You'll find them in Madison, Wis., where he spent 20 years coaching high school football and basketball before moving down the street to the University of Wisconsin, cutting his administrative teeth within a financially devastated department.

"He has integrity dripping out of his sleeves," said Wisconsin hockey coach Jeff Sauer.

You'll find Maturi fans in Denver, where he served as athletic director from 1996 to '98, overseeing the Pioneers' sometimes-painful transition from Division II to Division I.

"A very caring, sincere guy," said Denver men's hockey coach George Gwozdecky.

Maturi admirers exist as well in Oxford, Ohio, where he's been the athletic director for the past four years.

"He's a person you instinctively trust," said James Garland, Miami's president.

As for Maturi himself, you can hear his Iron Range humility come through when he says: "I don't know how to do anything else."

Eliminating sports

Maturi, 57, appears disarmingly honest. He calls himself a "klutz" and admits he's never written a check, doesn't know the location of the fuse box in his house, can't cook and couldn't begin to figure out how to work the air conditioning.

"I can cut the grass," he said, "but don't ask me to trim."

Maturi also is candid in acknowledging that he's batting 0-for-3 when it comes to eliminating sports. He was an assistant A.D. at Wisconsin when five sports were cut in the early 1990s. He was at Denver when baseball was axed. And three sports were eliminated while he worked at Miami.

The subject is a touchy one at Minnesota, where financial woes landed three sports -- men's gymnastics and men's and women's golf -- on the chopping block last spring before they were at least temporarily spared by a fundraising drive.

When a former Gophers wrestler asked Maturi this week how he expected to earn the respect of coaches and athletes considering his record, Maturi answered: "Good question." Then he explained himself.

He has told outgoing President Mark Yudof not to hire him for the purpose of eliminating sports, he said. He has assured coaches and athletes he wants to do everything he can to avoid such a scenario. He still feels the pain, he says, from looking athletes in the eye and telling them their sports were being dropped.

But Maturi also said a school can't have it all ways.

"If I don't have the resources to make them more competitive," he said, "quite frankly, I'd rather not have them."

Current and former colleagues say Maturi's refusal to sugarcoat, and his honesty, has helped him weather athletics-related storms.

It helped convince Kramig that men's soccer had to go. The sport was one of four that a Title IX consultant had recommended be dropped to bring the school into compliance with the federal law that mandates equal educational opportunities for women. At the time, women made up 55 percent of the Miami student body but received only 31 percent of athletic scholarships.

Maturi arrived in Miami shortly after the recommendations. He spent a year exploring other options. But eventually, he decided his budget would not allow him to comply with the law and keep all sports competitive.

"For years we had athletic administrators living in a fantasy world," Kramig said. "They were putting this off, putting this off. And by doing that, they were making it worse. Joel knew dragging it out wouldn't benefit anybody, and he was absolutely right."

Maturi raised enough money to save men's golf, but not enough to save three other sports.

"Joel did it courageously and openly," Garland said, "and while nobody was happy about having to do it, it was pretty well accepted."

A few months later, nine former members of the three eliminated teams sued the school, claiming discrimination. The suit eventually was dismissed when a judge ruled the university acted justifiably to fulfill Title IX requirements.

"I promise to do everything I can not to have to go through that again," Maturi said.

We are Minnesota

Toward the end of the balloon-filled announcement of his hiring Wednesday, Maturi stood up and led onlookers in an impromptu cheer: "We are Minnesota!"

It's a view the incoming A.D. prefers to take as the Gophers usher in a new era of combined men's and women's athletics. "A female student-athlete who competes is not representing the women's program, but Minnesota," Maturi said. "Male athletes represent not the men's programs, but Minnesota."

Maturi also inherited an emotional issue at Miami, which, shortly before his arrival, had changed the team name from Redskins to Redhawks.

The change left older alumni incensed -- some took to wearing "Redskins forever" T-shirts -- and many stopped giving.

"He kind of stepped into it," recalled longtime field hockey coach Lil Fesperman. "One of the ways he handled it was by talking about Miami, not the Redhawks, for a long time."

Said Maturi: "I was very respectful of that. That was who they played for at the time. . . . It's my job to bring healing to it and make one department work [at Minnesota]."

Maturi has a chance to do that if the personal turnaround by Jean Freeman, the Gophers' women's swimming coach, is any indication. A staunch opponent of the merger, Freeman agreed to join the A.D. search committee as a way to get over her anger.

With Maturi's hiring, Freeman says her confidence has been restored.

"There's a huge openness about him," she said. "Joel has convinced me by his words and actions that he's the right person for the job. I feel better now than I've felt in years."

Painful transition

Maturi has a penchant for stepping into difficult situations. Along with Minnesota and Miami, it happened at the University of Denver, which had decided to jump to Division I before he took the A.D. job in 1996.

Baseball was eliminated, a move that had been decided before his arrival.

Maturi had to crank up expectations for coaches, some of whom left when they saw the writing on the wall. Athletes sometimes were told they needed to ratchet up their commitment to their sport.

"I would say not a lot of people could have been successful, but Joel was," Gwozdecky said. "That's the balancing act that he's so good at."

During his tenure there, he also took part in a decision by the WCHA's executive committee to retain league commissioner Bruce McLeod, who had resigned as Minnesota-Duluth's athletic director after diverting thousands of dollars from the school.

Maturi stands by his support of McLeod.

"I've always had a lot of confidence and faith in his integrity, his love of the sport and knowledge of it," he said. "The WCHA is the premier conference nationally, and that's a compliment to the commissioner."

Getting around

Maturi likes to jog -- slowly. Once he takes over his new job Aug. 2, he might need his running shoes to keep up the pace he hopes to set.

His administrative style, he says, runs toward manic. In his four years at Miami, he attended parts of all but one home athletic event. Minnesota has four more sports -- 23 -- than Miami has.

"I want people to know I'm everyone's athletic director," he said.

Maturi developed a reputation of traveling with teams on the bus, visiting the locker room before the game and after. Afterward, he'd tell the players they played great if they won, good effort if they lost.

"So," he said, "you might wonder: When do I do the job I'm supposed to do?"

He answered his own question: "I'm blessed with a pretty good work ethic," he said. "And I only need about four hours of sleep a night."

best of luck to the new AD.