Let’s ask the (literal) 1 million dollar question: who should run USA Swimming? Late into my vacation, when I was knee deep in Spanish tapas and slathering my third layer of sunscreen, the news came. The axe had fallen at USA Swimming. Tim Hinchey, with reportedly a year left on his contract, done. Lindsay Mintenko, the erstwhile Director, sacked.
The reasoning isn’t a secret to anyone. Perhaps a USA Swimming CEO might be able to survive barely winning the medal count at the Olympics or possibly explain away the financial disastrous straights the organization found itself in, but he couldn’t do both.
For Mintenko it’s is a bit blurrier. A decision was made some time ago to de-emphasize the position of “Director”. Prior to Mintenko, the position had always been a coach of some note. Mintenko had little coaching experience but had been a loyal soldier within the organization. Her predecessor, Frank Busch, was known for promising a lot and delivering little to membership, at least. Mark Schubert was primarily known for being evil, cutthroat and hiring a private investigator to stalk Sean Hutchison. In both cases, the US maintained their dominant position at the Olympics, however.
Alongside Mintenko’s hiring came a re-imagining of the role as less of a big ego coaches position and more of an administrative role. It’s hard to see how in any measure Mintenko failed in that mission, unless there’s some adminsitrative fuckup I haven’t heard about. Still, restlessness from an off Olympics has fueled speculation that putting someone with little to no coaching experience at what was once the pinnacle of coaching was a bad move. I can’t say I disagree, based on the results.
All of that begs the question: what now. If you agree that Hinchey was not a good leader for USA Swimming, what would you replace him with? And who is the ultimate coaching badass who can replace Mintenko and command the respect of an entire country of swim coaches? That’s the question I’ve spent days thinking about.
Wielgus’ Golden Days
There’s a pretty obvious choice to run USA Swimming. When I type his name in a second, keep in mind that I always reveal my biases.. In this case, my bias is AGAINST this person. If I was on the hiring committee, I’d be urging everyone else to pump the breaks on the salary offer. Despite my reservations, there’s an obvious choice for the next CEO of USA Swimming:
Mike Unger.
Unger was Chuck Wielgus’ heir apparent. My guess is that he was probably considered at the time Hinchey was hired, but ultimately Hinchey looked too enticing on paper. Or perhaps the stink of Wielgus’ long term organizational malfeasance around sex abuse poisoned his disciples. Hinchey had the promise of someone “outside of swimming” who nevertheless had a connection to the sport.
Unger was the boring, internal pick. That is precisely what will help him now. How much do you want to bet that the people making this decision would love to have the “boring” golden days back? For Unger it’s almost too perfect. He gets to be Wielgus’ right hand man while he steers the whole ship into an iceberg of sexual abuse lawsuits, then gets to walk away while Hinchey deals with that mess for the better part of a decade, then swoops in to save the day.
Unger’s reputation for smooth handling of the sponsorship and corporate partnerships proceeds him. That acumen made Wielgus so highly paid and the lack thereof definitely played a role in Hinchey’s axing. So the thought would be that Unger can turn back on the money hose that Wielgus built and do more than stop the bleeding that has seen the organization shrink important services.
I’m not qualified enough to know who could possibly be interested in the position from the “outside”, but one would think that the roughly 1 million dollar salary could command good candidates. However, I do think they have a recruitment issue if Hinchey was one of the top candidates the last time. Much like a board run swim team, there is very little long term vision within the USA Swimming board and I’d be curious to see how prepared most of them are for this situation.
Wherefore Art THOU, BOB BOwman?
Now that we have the easy question out of the way, let’s tackle the hard one. Who could possibly be the next National Team Director (the title before it became “Director”). Because this one is less obvious, I’m going to go with qualifications before speculation.
The next National Team Director should be a coach. We, the people, need some kind of leadership at the top to organize elite level performance. If coaching were just purely about logistics, we’d just have team’s staffed by part time travel agents and practices written by AI. Coaching is an art and a science and organizing from the top requires somebody with an ego secure enough to step into a room with a bunch of (mostly) men who fluctuate from “I could probably improve the space program” to “there’s no point to anything I do” on a daily basis.
It has to be someone with a history of Olympic level coaching, preferably more than one Olympic games and multiple medals coached. Lest it sound like I am downplaying the organizational role, let me add this: the planning of an Olympic quad is actually quite complex. The Olympics is a culminating competition at the end of four years.
The US has been so dominant for so long because so many things have gone right, each one working in an unintentional harmony to produce a golden symphony. The next National Team Director has to have the vision to grasp which of these things USA Swimming can actually help promote, and which they are better off just staying out of the way of.
The obvious choice, if not for two very big reasons which I will illuminate, would have been Bob Bowman. Bowman has ascended beyond just being Michael Phelps’ coach, a laurel he could have rested on for the rest of his life. He is coming off an Olympics where he once again had the dominant male swimmer, and medalists all over the meet.
But Bowman has been at odds with USA Swimming ever since it was revealed that he made lewd comments to a National Team swimmer alongside world class groomer Sean Hutchison. He never faced appropriate consequences, never apologized. He almost seemed to dig in against USA Swimming, as if it was their fault, and relished developing a foreign athlete into a world class athlete.
The other, more obvious problem to people who haven’t been reading this blog, is that Bob Bowman makes too much money. Remember when I referenced that Mark Schubert peaked the position? What I meant was that in the Mark Schubert era, the job commanded a salary that was well in excess of any college coaching salary.
Now Bob Bowman’s reported pay package at Texas absolutely dwarfs what Mintenko was making. With USA Swimming in dire financial straits, I doubt they will be looking to double the salary to wrest Bowman away from Austin.
So with Bob Bowman out, what does that leave us? I guess no one can deny destiny: it must be Tyler Fenwick.
(an aside before we continue seriously, lest you think I’m being a dick to Tyler, which I am because, well, I am a dick. I like Tyler, we had a fun time hanging out in Herning, Denmark just days before my daughter was born. More power to him. He must be an excellent source for Swimswam to keep getting mentioned in everyone of their high profile speculation articles.)
So who is actually, seriously left? And who might actually take it?
Well, if you follow my qualifications there are only a few coaches available. David Marsh is one, and color me not surprised if he somehow made it in there. He’s certainly got to be hungry for it. Chris Plumb would set all the “Ron Aitken is underappreciated” fans into self combustion. He very well could make it, but I don’t personally think that he’d be the right choice and I can’t overcome my bias like I did with Unger.
Matt Kredich commands the respect of many, but perhaps lacks the absolute top end results to make the cut.
Therefore, there’s only two real possibilities left, the old partnership of Greg Meehan and Dave Durden. In both cases, a National Team Director position would be an upgrade salary wise. Base salaries are always hard to compare because of cost of living, but Durden’s reported $380,000 could be exceeded by an offer in Colorado Springs.
In Meehan’s case, we don’t know the salary but from what I hear, Stanford coaches are woefully underpaid. He had a nice bounce back from a tough cycle with his charge Torri Huske being the best performer at the games on the women’s side.
In Durden’s case, at this point he’s been doing it year in year out for quite some time. People always told me that the assistant’s carried a lot of the day to day coaching load at Cal. If that’s true, Durden is an even better candidate than he looks on paper. While coaching credentials are necessary to command respect, remember that even if we go back to having a true director, it’s about organizing a competitive four year strategy.
If USA Swimming wants to really reset, they’ll back up the dump truck of money to Durden and call it a day, with Meehan as a second option. As I’m typing it I realize the immediate criticism will be that either one is a college coach, and club coaches always feel especially slighted by USA Swimming.
Either one will have their work cut out to untangle the current dysfunction within American swimming. In fact, much of it will be beyond reckoning, even in the short term. But we might as well roll up our sleeves and get started.