Tamboni to Penn State

[KeithK]

I don't disagree with you Jim.  I was just suggesting that it could be true that Cornell lacrosse makes money, depending on how you do the accounting. Even if it is in the black it doesn't mean that we should ditch all of the "minor" sports in favor of pouring cash into lacrosse or basketball or hockey.  (Well, maybe hockey :-D).

[Jordan 04]

It strikes me as more insulting to call Michelle Tambroni a "crappy coach" than it is to suggest Cornell attempt to find a role for her within the current field hockey program in order to retain her husband.

(But if Kyle has personal knowledge of her coaching abilities, than I do apologize).

[ugarte]

Wait, did Kyle and I just agree about something?

It happens. It's weird at first but you should remember that it is just as weird for him.

It strikes me as more insulting to call Michelle Tambroni a "crappy coach" than it is to suggest Cornell attempt to find a role for her within the current field hockey program in order to retain her husband.

(But if Kyle has personal knowledge of her coaching abilities, than I do apologize).

Kyle wasn't commenting on Ms. Tambroni at all. He was responding to the general "fuck the things that aren't important to me" attitude in CUontheslopes' post, in which he was essentially indifferent to how good a coach she was as long as Jeff stuck around.

The Ivy League does encompass the New York, Boston and Philadelphia TV markets. That's 3 of the top 10 markets covered by 8 teams. If the Pac10+2 is excited about adding the SLC TV market, it's reasonable that if athletics were given more priority, then the League could score a sizable TV contract.

That would be important if the people who live in those cities but didn't go to an Ivy league school gave a fraction of a shit about Ivy league sports. They don't. Most Ivy League graduates grow out of the obsession that we all have.

[billhoward]

Kyle Rose has a vitally important point about the difficulty Cornell, Dartmouth, and other world class rural universities have attracting faculty when the spouse has a significant career also. (So long as the divorce rate stays around 50%, there's hope for Cornell.) I fantasize about what Ithaca would be like if Corning Glass was headquartered here.  

If lacrosse makes money, I bet it's with the help of the endowed coaching positions. Both the heading coaching position and Ben DeLuca's former associate head coach position are endowed. If that's not part of the P/L, lacrosse could be in the black. Adding concession stand revenues to ticket sales is more like a rounding error on the head coach / asst coach salaries.

When Steve Donahue left, Andy Noel (or was it David Skorton?) said that a top coach's salary has to be in harmony with the salaries of top faculty who are at the pinnacles of their professions. It would be interesting if an alumnus was willing to raise the ante on a Jeff Tambroni or Mike Schafer to $250K or $350K. Would Skorton say, $250K yes, $350K no way? I suspect he would.

Some couples (real world people, not coaches) have a deal that this move is for his career and the next one is for hers. In academia it might mean that a rising star prof at Lafayette takes his next job at Columbia or Penn not Cornell or Dartmouth so the spouse has better career opportunities. Re the Tambronis, "We know who wears the pants in this family" is one way to see it. The other is that both are committed to each other and their joint success.

In Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," the 1999 book about a poor Carolina girl on scholarship at a Harvard-with-a-touch-of-Duke institution near Philadelphia, the DuPont U president believes that you don't make money on sports and you don't get more contributions in winning years, but somehow the prestige a successful program exudes makes it all worthwhile in ways you and the world appreciate but can't calculate. Cornell wouldn't be Cornell without hockey, basketball, lax, wrestling and even football, and the freaks of nature such as Colin Greening and his 3.95 GPA.

[Rosey]

It strikes me as more insulting to call Michelle Tambroni a "crappy coach" than it is to suggest Cornell attempt to find a role for her within the current field hockey program in order to retain her husband.

(But if Kyle has personal knowledge of her coaching abilities, than I do apologize).

Kyle wasn't commenting on Ms. Tambroni at all. He was responding to the general "fuck the things that aren't important to me" attitude in CUontheslopes' post, in which he was essentially indifferent to how good a coach she was as long as Jeff stuck around.

QFT.

[Jordan 04]

Ok, then it appears quite the straw man since I read CUontheslopes specifically speaking of retaining Tambroni, which would mean giving his wife, an all-American field hockey player and previous coach at this level, a coaching job in that sport. I didn't get the sense that if Tambroni was married to a blind monkey who had never picked up a field hockey stick in her life, that CUontheslopes would have been advocating handing her the head coaching job in order to retain Jeff.

In the end, it seems pretty simple: Penn State likely offered more a good bit more money, was able to offer Tambroni's wife a spot on the coaching staff, and Cornell, likely unable but even if able to match the financial package, saw a perfectly competent replacement in DeLuca such that "playing politics" with the field hockey coaching position was unnecessary.

Best of luck to all 3 new coaches.

[ugarte]

Ok, then it appears quite the straw man since I read CUontheslopes specifically speaking of retaining Tambroni, which would mean giving his wife, an all-American field hockey player and previous coach at this level, a coaching job in that sport. I didn't get the sense that if Tambroni was married to a blind monkey who had never picked up a field hockey stick in her life, that CUontheslopes would have been advocating handing her the head coaching job in order to retain Jeff.

Really? Because what Kyle - and I - read was this:

I understand the money was probably key and an opportunity for his wife to coach, but damn you Cornell, fire the field hockey coach to keep Tambroni. Who the hell cares about field hockey?

In a subsequent post he hailed her adequacy (it would be a stretch to call it a ringing endorsement since he didn't care enough about women's lax to look up her resume until he got called out) but in a prior post, Jim Hyla stated that he didn't think much of her as a coach.

It will be interesting to see what his wife does. She was never a great coach at CU and it must have been hard to not coach and stay in Ithaca.

That's the context in which you should read Kyle's response to CUots, not with the hindsight of the discussion that followed. Discussion, I'll point out, in which CUots hasn't budged from caring more about getting to watch a winning lacrosse team than about any of the other priorities Cornell - as a school and as an athletics department - is supposed to have.

Team Kyle.

[amerks127]

Elie and I interviewed both Larry Quant, Associate Director of Athletics for Financial Operations and Anita Brenner, Associate Athletic Director during our junior and senior years for various reasons.  They told us (on the record) that Athletics runs over $1 million operating budgets each year.  Even if lacrosse turns a small profit, it gets lost in the larger Athletics budget.

The university made up the difference in years past, but considering the financial state of Cornell right now...well let's just assume there isn't any extra dough to pass around for raises.  It's also my understanding that larger donations have essentially dried up, unless your last name is Weill, Tata or Dyson.

[Rosey]

Ok, then it appears quite the straw man since I read CUontheslopes specifically speaking of retaining Tambroni, which would mean giving his wife, an all-American field hockey player and previous coach at this level, a coaching job in that sport.

What does that mean?  Brian McCutcheon: 'nuff said.

And what Charles said above.

[Towerroad]

While I deeply regret the loss of Tambroni my respect for him has risen. I think he probably told it like it was, the opportunity for his spouse first and money second were the driving factors. There are things in life that are important than beating Harvard, taking care of your mate is very high on the list. Taking care of your children is as well. I suspect he was looking at the same 50k+/yr tuition that many of us have had to pay and wanted the money to provide for his children. Yes, I know that if he stayed at CU his kids would have received a big discount but maybe he wanted more options for them.

Cornell does have a "What will my spouse do" problem. Upstate NY has been an economic backwater for decades and New York in general is not a place business are knocking down the door to move to, quite the contrary. If Corning moves it will be out of state not up Rt 13.

Good Luck Jeff, you have my gratitude for the great seasons you and the team had.

[billhoward]

Good points and you made them well enough without having to suggest there are more important things than beating Harvard.

Let's hope for more Cornell private sector spinoffs that employ MBAs and HR people and lawyers and analysts.

Let's hope the divorce rate stays aorund 50% and we catch big-city professors at Penn and Georgetown on the rebound, looking for a change of scenery.

[Scersk '97]

Well, the obvious answer is high-speed rail.

[Towerroad]

I certainly don't want to diminish the unrivaled joy in a Cantab smack down.

[Towerroad]

Good points and you made them well enough without having to suggest there are more important things than beating Harvard.

Let's hope for more Cornell private sector spinoffs that employ MBAs and HR people and lawyers and analysts.

Let's hope the divorce rate stays aorund 50% and we catch big-city professors at Penn and Georgetown on the rebound, looking for a change of scenery.

I grew up outside of Albany and Rochester in the 50's and 60's when NY was the largest, wealthiest state in the Union. Sometime in the early 60's Nelson Rockefeller decided to create a European Welfare State in NY and raised personal and business taxes. I lived outside of Rochester when Xerox Exec's finally decided to move their HQ from Rochester to Stamford because the tax savings were so large. When I arrived as a newly minted Freshman in 1970 Morse Chain and NCR were large employers in Ithaca. They left.  

The reality is that unless you use massive amounts of electricity upstate NY is not an economically attractive place to locate or expand your business, quite the opposite. High taxes, dis-functional State Govt, and balkanized local govt, and strong unions have lead to a steady decline particularly upstate. New York is one of the slowest growing states in the union. Between 1960 and 2000 NY ranked between 35th and 50th in population growth in the country. I live in Mass and we in Taxachusetts are a beehive compared to moribund NY.

Don't get me wrong, I love NY and remain a Yankees fan but I do grieve for the disastrous policies that have slowly eroded the Empire State.  So I think the prospects for significant others employment in the area is particularly bleak, particularly if they are professionals or have specialized skills.

[Tom Lento]

Let's hope the divorce rate stays aorund 50% and we catch big-city professors at Penn and Georgetown on the rebound, looking for a change of scenery.

As long as they're either under 25 or not looking for a significant relationship with a person of their own age, Ithaca should suit them just fine. :p