Jankovich Brings the Goods

With Sam Jankovich presiding as athletic director in the 1980s, Miami became a national football power, resurrected its men’s basketball team and quadrupled its athletics budget.

Jankovich, 64, seeks to achieve more modest goals as interim athletic director at Cal State Northridge. However, he will not underestimate the difficulty in identifying solutions for a long-troubled program.

“I’m on a fact-finding mission,” he said. “There won’t be abrupt changes and decisions. I will conduct a tremendous number of meetings with coaches, students, faculty and people in the community.

“I will ask them all, ‘What can we do to make this a truly great athletic program?’ ”

A financially sound one that complies with gender-equity laws without sacrificing men’s sports will satisfy some people.

Others believe Northridge should dominate the Big Sky Conference.

And find a conference for the baseball team.

And build a football stadium, a basketball arena, baseball stadium and softball stadium.

And . . .

Jankovich, introduced at a news conference Tuesday, gets the idea.

“If there weren’t problems here, I’d be home in Hayden Lake, Idaho, trying to shovel the snow,” he said.

Jankovich will fill the post at a salary of $9,334 a month until a permanent athletic director is hired, probably next summer. President Blenda J. Wilson of Northridge appointed a seven-member search committee Tuesday chaired by Tom Shannon, the faculty athletics representative.

Northridge coaches were ecstatic Wilson convinced Jankovich to come out of retirement and fill the position vacated by Paul Bubb, who resigned under pressure Nov. 3, a week after Michael Abraham, women’s basketball coach, was charged with selling crack cocaine.

“I’m blown away that President Wilson pulled this off and brought in a man of his stature and credibility,” said Mike Batesole, the baseball coach. “After all we’ve been through, it is hard to get excited about anything. We’ve been slugged in the mouth so many times. But with a move of this magnitude, it’s hard not to get pumped up.”

In a significant change, Jankovich will report directly to Wilson. Bubb reported to Ronald Kopita, vice president for student affairs, who in the summer of 1997 made the ill-fated recommendation to Wilson that Northridge cut four men’s sports because of budget and gender-equity concerns.

The baseball, soccer, volleyball and swimming teams were cut, but a community backlash prompted Wilson to reinstate them two months later.

A task force charged with taking an exhaustive look at the athletics program included among its recommendations that the athletic director report to the president. Until now, Wilson had rejected that recommendation.

“I need to be in close partnership with [Jankovich],” Wilson said.

Jankovich will have Wilson’s attention. His track record is impressive, from an eight-year stint as athletic director at Washington State to his accomplishments from 1983-90 at Miami to three years as chief executive officer of the New England Patriots.

The Hurricane football team won three national championships and was 84-13 in the Jankovich era, which included the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach in 1984. The Hurricanes were 36-20 in five years before Jankovich arrived.

Miami won national championships in baseball in 1985, in women’s golf in 1984, in men’s tennis in 1987 and in women’s tennis in 1986.

Jankovich had great success in fund-raising and developing facilities. He said when he arrived at Miami, the athletic department budget was $5.2 million, and all but $1.4 million came from the university’s general fund.

When he left, the budget was about $22 million and only a tiny fraction came from the general fund. Athletics fund-raising increased from $750,000 to more than $3 million.

“We were selling 55,000 season tickets for football and we were on TV all the time,” he said.

The Hurricane men’s basketball team, dormant for 14 years, was reinstated in 1984 and posted a .500 record in its first season. Also at Miami, Jankovich presided over the construction of a basketball arena, a sports hall of fame building, a 1,000-seat tennis center and a baseball clubhouse.

“At Northridge we are dealing with a program nowhere near as expensive,” he said. “Institutional and student funding is already at a pretty good level. Are we doing everything we can to raise money from outside sources? That’s an area I will look at hard.”

Only so much can be accomplished in seven or eight months. Time is of the essence, and Jankovich said he won’t spend it idly.

“People who succeed have vision, they take a risk,” he said. “I don’t care to hear complaints about the people who were in this position before me. I want to know, what are the strengths of this program and how can we build on those strengths?

“Coaches always tell their players they must play as a team in order to win. The same is true in an athletic department. There are no islands, no castles. All the coaches must work together.”

Since leaving the Patriots in 1992, Jankovich has made his share of motivational speeches and served as a consultant to a handful of athletic departments. In his role at Northridge, he would like to put an exclamation point on an illustrious career.

“I spend an hour a day looking at myself and say, ‘What can I do to truly make a difference?’ ” he said. “If I can make a difference here before I say goodbye to my professional career, I’ll be more than happy to do so.”

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Sam Jankovich Profile

Born: Sept. 10, 1934.

Education: Graduated from Butte, Mont., High in 1952; bachelor’s degree in business administration from University of Montana in 1958.

College career: Football letterman at linebacker and guard for Montana, 1956-58.

Coaching career: Head football coach, Butte, Mont., High, 1961-64.

Administrative career: Athletic director, Washington State, 1976-1983; athletic director, Miami, 1983-90; chief executive officer, New England Patriots, 1990-92.

Personal: Active in the Serbian Orthodox Church.