Troy Dannen's departure for Nebraska is stunning, but shouldn't send you reeling

Athletic directors come and go. Washington will find another.

Photo courtesy of UW Athletics.

Troy Dannen spent Tuesday evening at the Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., meeting with Washington boosters at the school’s “Desert Social” event. The “intimate program” featured a moderated conversation with the athletic director, football coach Jedd Fisch and UW president Ana Mari Cauce. 

Tickets sold out for what was billed as a “thoughtful discussion with UW leadership at this unprecedented and exciting time for UW athletics.”

I’ll say.

There is — err, was — no precedent, after all, for a UW athletic director leaving their post less than six months into the job, some 12 hours after meeting with donors, and in the middle of a search for a new men’s basketball coach. 

At least Kalen DeBoer put in two seasons, right?

That Washington might lose its athletic director to Nebraska is not altogether surprising, considering resources and tradition, if not recent football performance. The Cornhuskers are fully-minted members of the Big Ten, and reported more than $200 million in athletics revenue in the 2023 fiscal year. Dannen’s new contract will pay him an average of $1.85 million per year — plus a $1 million signing bonus — compared to his $1 million salary at UW. Beyond that, Dannen, an Iowa native, is returning to the Midwest, a move ESPN described as “deeply personal,” citing a source close to the AD, and there appear to be family considerations.

It makes sense, and yet it is shocking all the same. Dannen, at 57, sat next to Cauce at his introductory press conference in October and said this would be his last job, and that he didn’t want to move again, “God willing, president willing.” You know by now, though, that coaches and administrators mostly say what needs to be said, and only until they need to say something else. That’s the game. We can’t know whether Dannen believed he was being genuine in his Day 1 remarks, but we do know that only a fool would take them at face value.

Keep that in mind whenever UW introduces its next AD. 

I thought Dannen was a quality hire, and that his experience — and his frank assessment of where college athletics is headed — made him an ideal candidate to navigate Washington’s transition to the Big Ten. Also, the Midwest had been good to UW athletics. Don James and Mike Lude came from Kent State. DeBoer made his name in South Dakota. Dannen spoke of watching Jack Sikma on television and cheering for the Sonics while growing up in Iowa. He had just worked eight years at Tulane, in New Orleans, so it’s not as if he’d never branched out.

His Seattle tenure was eventful, even if historically brief. Dannen couldn’t get DeBoer to agree to a new contract, though I’m not sure anyone could have talked the coach out of the Alabama job, and I thought Dannen did well to pull Fisch from Arizona. As expected, he moved on from men’s basketball coach Mike Hopkins, and is — err, was — in the middle of hiring his replacement. 

In a six-month period, Dannen would have watched his football program play for a national championship, then hired head coaches in both revenue sports as the school transitioned to the Big Ten.

Of course, he wasted no time acknowledging the challenges UW would face as it prepared to face Big Ten competition. It’s no secret. Washington (and Oregon) will receive about half of the media-rights money enjoyed by 16 other Big Ten schools — like Nebraska — and UW’s athletics budget still must reckon with looming stadium debt. The Huskies receive strong donor support and can pay well for football coaches, but balancing the budget is a greater challenge than it is at wealthier schools. Maybe Dannen took stock of that reality, in concert with any personal reasons, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

I did wonder how well he might grasp the local landscape, and was reminded today about a moment during his first press conference, when he was asked about the future of the Apple Cup amid conference realignment. Dannen tried to respond diplomatically, but his reference to budgetary considerations and the need for a seven-game home schedule — reasonable concerns — could have been interpreted to mean that maintaining the rivalry was not a priority.

Cauce, seated to Dannen’s right, clearly sensed how those words might play with her colleagues across the state. She interjected, smiling: “I would just add that we are having some conversations, and Troy isn’t 100 percent up to speed on them, because he’s been here 26 hours.”

A little more than a month later, UW and WSU announced they would continue the series for at least another five years.

A popular narrative has emerged that in light of whiffing on Dannen, UW must now prioritize local connections in the search for his replacement. I get it, but don’t necessarily agree. Knowledge of the university and region are important, of course, but there are plenty of viable candidates working in other parts of the country who would probably stay in the job longer than five months, and university leadership would be wise to not overreact to Dannen’s exit. The guy Dannen is replacing, Trev Alberts, just left his alma mater to work at Texas A&M. There are no sure things. 

It’s plenty fair to believe Cauce and her advisors — and any search firm the school chooses to waste money on — should do more to ensure they aren’t hiring another flight risk. It’s fair to wonder, too, about the potential candidate pool, considering only one of the four finalists last time around was a sitting AD at a Power 5 school, and now UW is selling a job that two people chose to leave in the last seven months. Potential candidates are going to want to know why.

But I’d humbly suggest triaging the matters that consume your worrying hours, and filter any hand-wringing over an AD search to the bottom of the pile. Administrators establish culture, hire coaches and steward resources. A bad athletic director can tank a department; a good one can elevate it beyond expectations. Getting it right matters. But Dannen’s departure won’t impact Washington’s 2024 football roster, just as Cohen’s exit did nothing to prevent the Huskies from winning 14 consecutive games last season.

Soon enough, UW will find another administrator eager to fill one of the 34 AD positions in the two largest conferences. That person will sit next to the president at a press conference and tell you some of the same things Dannen said in October. Disregard any proclamations of lengthy tenure, and instead simply hope that said person performs their duties in a way that helps your favorite team(s) win more games for however long they’re here. When that person leaves, rinse and repeat.

It all has me thinking about something defensive lineman Faatui Tuitele told me earlier this year, addressing DeBoer’s departure.

“Husky Nation and Washington football is more than a coach,” Tuitele said. “It’s the history, it’s the culture, it’s the fans, it’s the players that make up Husky football.”

It’s funny: he didn’t mention any athletic directors.

— Christian Caple, On Montlake