Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/368554
rectors' Cup six times. And it wasn't only in the Olympic sports that Cal excelled. The football team attended seven bowl games, while the men's basketball team made the NCAA tournament five times and the NIT four times. In addition, the school built a $153 million sports facility, the Simpson Student-Athlete High Per- formance Center, which opened in 2011 and which Barbour called "beautiful." But there were difficulties, too, and much of the media and fan commentary following her appointment to succeed Dave Joyner focused on those. During her tenure, Cal came under fire for poor aca- demic performance in its revenue-pro- ducing sports, as the football and men's basketball programs compiled the Pac- 12's lowest graduation rates in the most recent NCAA survey. There were also concerns about the school's handling of a long-delayed con- struction project aimed at making Me- morial Stadium more earthquake-resis- tant. Critics claimed the funding plan was overly optimistic, and the team's on- field struggles exacerbated a budget crunch that, coupled with the expense of the Simpson Performance Center, left Cal with an estimated debt of $445 million in 2013. Barbour ended up stepping down by mutual agreement this past July, and she later conceded that "I stayed too long." Still, the mood at her Penn State intro- duction was celebratory. Barron said she was the unanimous choice of the seven- member screening committee and called her "the ideal candidate." "I was impressed by her hands-on ap- proach to things, her strategic thinking and her ability to combine sports, business and education in an effective and ac- countable way," he said. An Annapolis, Md., native and the daughter of a Navy aviator, Barbour, 54, officially took over on Aug. 18, with Joyner staying on as a consultant to help with Franklin eager to work with new AD James Franklin took some things on faith when he agreed in January to be- come Penn State's head football coach. The university hadn't yet hired a succes- sor to outgoing president Rodney Erick- son, and without knowing who would inherit the big chair in Old Main, there was no way to know how long Dave Joyner would stay on as athletics direc- tor. But in the past three months, those questions have been answered; Eric Bar- ron took office in May as president, while Sandy Barbour assumed her duties as athletics director on Aug. 18. Franklin is relieved to finally know who his per- manent bosses are. Said the first-year coach, "I'm just happy that all the pieces of the puzzle are in place and that we can continue moving forward." Franklin said he wasn't consulted dur- ing the search process that led to Bar- bour's appointment. The university had formed a seven-member screening committee chaired by David Gray, sen- ior vice president for finance and busi- ness. Also on the committee were ath- letics administrators Linda Caldwell, Julie Del Giorno and Charmelle Green and university vice presidents Robert Pangborn and Tom Poole. Penn State coaches were represented by Coquese Washington of the Lady Lion basketball team. Franklin met with Barbour at Barron's house prior to her introduction on July 26, and their working relationship will begin to take shape in the coming weeks