I have tremendous respect for Sandy Barbour. She is a pro, extremely intelligent, a terrific leader and someone who has represented Penn State exceptionally well as athletic director for eight years.
If we're evaluating and grading her on likability, she gets an A+. And I doubt you'd find many people who know her who would disagree with that.
I am not, however, in the business of grading people based on likability. Or on how much respect I or others may have for said person as an individual.
People in big-time sports must be evaluated on their actions -- things that they have both done and not done -- and the results that we know of based on those actions.
Given that, trying to determine Barbour's legacy at Penn State as she gets set to retire this summer becomes complicated. Because as we evaluate what she has and has not accomplished and some of the decisions she's made, there's no denying that the results are still very much incomplete.
There should be and really cannot be any way to determine Barbour's legacy without taking the following two things into consideration and seeing how they ultimately play out:
1. James Franklin's success rate over the next 10 years, after receiving a massive and very lengthy new contract.
2. Where Penn State goes from here with its long-awaited (and delayed) facilities master plan, especially with regards to the extensive upgrades needed to Beaver Stadium.
What grade would you give Penn State AD Sandy Barbour, who is retiring this summer?
— Cory Giger (@CoryGiger) March 16, 2022
FRANKLIN'S CONTRACT
I have made no secret of the fact that I have a HUGE problem with Penn State giving Franklin a new 10-year contract. It simply was not necessary at the time, given how things played out, and as of right now, I think Barbour made a big mistake in how she handled the situation.
However ... it IS possible that Barbour made a brilliant decision, and we just won't know about it for another 5-7 years.
Revisiting last season, Penn State got off to a 5-0 start and was ranked No. 4, and Franklin's name was being mentioned for the USC and LSU jobs. It absolutely made perfect sense for Barbour and Penn State to be nervous about losing Franklin and trying to do whatever it could to keep him.
So, the two sides began negotiating. And for a while, Franklin certainly held the upper hand in those negotiations.
But then came the collapse, probably the worst one in program history. The Nittany Lions went from 5-0 and No. 4 to finishing 7-6 and unranked. At that point, there was NO WAY that USC or LSU still would have wanted to hire Franklin.
He. Had. No. Leverage. Left.
Except for, apparently, with Barbour. She totally failed to read the room and realize Franklin wasn't going to be able to get a better job than Penn State. Yes, she probably had already made some concessions with regards to a contract extension, but all of those concessions should have been made on the contingency that the Lions didn't fall apart the second half of the season.
When they did fall apart, the possibility of a 10-year contract should have been pulled off the table. Because there's no way any coach who went 4-5 one season and 7-6 the next should be given a 10-year contract, and one that also gives the coach all the advantages when it comes to buyout stipulations.
It was just dumb. Makes no sense whatsoever, because Franklin already had four years left on his contract at the time, and there should have been no reason for the school to feel compelled to give him anything more until he proves that he can turn this back around in the right direction.
As it stands, Barbour's legacy will be primarily tied to what Franklin and the football team do over the next 5-7 years. If they return to consistent national prominence, then a lot of the particulars of giving him a 10-year contract will be forgotten.
And while Franklin will be getting $8.5 million per year over the life of the contract, the one good thing about his deal is that his salary numbers are fixed. So, with the escalating salaries in the sport, if Penn State is highly successful in five years, then $8.5 million might actually -- gulp -- be on the cheaper side of major coaching salaries.
The danger for Barbour is: What if Franklin does not lead Penn State back to national prominence? Again, he's gone 11-11 over the past two years, and the 2022 season may not exactly be much better. So it is possible that we have already seen the peak for Franklin, and now he'll settle into some sort of mediocrity for a long stretch.
Recruiting is going well, so there are a lot of reasons for optimism. But again, he already had four years remaining on his previous contract, so Barbour could have waited patiently for another year to see how everything played out before gift wrapping the coach 10 more years.
If Franklin continues to struggle, Barbour's legacy at Penn State ultimately will take a massive hit.
And if he succeeds, then Barbour's risky decision will pay off with a legacy boost.
FACILITIES MASTER PLAN
I attended the press conference announcing this thing back in March of 2017 -- FIVE YEARS AGO -- and it still seems like very little has been accomplished.
It was going to cost a ton to cover all the upgrades, including perhaps as much as half a billion dollars to do everything the school wanted to do to upgrade and renovate Beaver Stadium. The renditions shown at that press conference five years ago looked gorgeous. And yet, five years later, all of that stuff still seems like a dream.
All indications have been that Barbour has done extensive work trying to fundraise to get the projects done, but we still just haven't seen it come to fruition in a meaningful way with regards to the football stadium.
Should she be blamed if the project stumbled or never reached the levels the school had hoped? Look, we really can't know that, because Penn State has given very few details over the years about the project's status and who is doing what.
Certainly, the COVID situation set Penn State back financially, as it did most aspects of our economy. Had that not happened, the school certainly would be further along than it currently is with the master plan.
However, all of this smacks of the school promising too much and biting off more than it can chew, including Barbour. Just like Franklin raised the bar for himself with the "elite" comments three-plus years ago, this facilities master plan issue put Barbour in a situation where she is going to be judged based on whether or not the school could pull off a tremendously difficult feat.
All I know is that, when I walk into Beaver Stadium, I still see a facility that has a whole lot of problems and still is not very attractive from the outside. Yeah, the atmosphere is awesome inside during games, but all the upgrades we were promised five years ago still seem so far out of reach that it's much easier to believe that they will take a decade or longer to come to pass -- if ever.
Did Barbour do enough in her job as AD to maximize the project? Again, we just don't know. Maybe, if major improvements do start to happen in the next year or so, then yes, it will be clear that she did indeed do what she needed to do in that regard.
But if we're still sitting here 10 years from now wondering when the bulk of the facilities master plan will finally get done, then no doubt we will have to look back on Barbour's tenure and be critical of whatever progress she may or may not have made.
Here are some other random thoughts on Barbour's tenure:
* She has unified the athletic department and kept everyone on task while creating a solid leadership structure and foundation. All of that was extremely important following the scandal and fractures that existed within the department when Dave Joyner was AD.
* Despite all of the administrative advances, Barbour has not been faced with a bunch of extremely difficult decisions regarding the most prominent personnel in the athletic program. She didn't hire Franklin. Or Cael Sanderson. Or Russ Rose. Or Erica Dambach. Or Char Morrett-Curtis. So Barbour's legacy may not be tied to coaches she hired and their success, with one exception.
* That exception is Micah Shrewsberry. There is no doubt he was an excellent hire, and if he takes Penn State basketball to great heights, then Barbour will deserve a lot of the credit.
* But Barbour also takes a lot of heat for the way the school handled things with former basketball coach Patrick Chambers. Forcing him out a month before last season led to a near mutiny in the program, and there seemed to be very little leadership displayed when it came to keeping the players in the loop to some degree on why everything happened. Now, I personally feel that Chambers needed to be ousted for what he had done, and maybe nothing that Barbour or anyone else would have done could have made the situation any better. It was a very messy ordeal, and Barbour had to make a very difficult decision there. Still, I come back to how the players were treated and forgotten about during that whole mess, and that was inexcusable.
* The once-proud women's basketball program has become an afterthought during Barbour's tenure. Most of that blame falls on former coach Coquese Washington, who saw the bottom fall out beginning with a 6-24 season in 2014-15. Some blame Barbour for sticking with Washington too long, but I don't know about that. Penn State did go 21-11 in 2016-17, leading to hope that she could turn things around. It didn't happen, and Washington was gone two years later.
* Carolyn Kieger looked like a really good hire for women's basketball, and she's made some strides. But the Lady Lions went 11-18 overall and 5-13 in the Big Ten this season, bringing her record to 27-56 overall 12-43 in the Big Ten over her first three years. If she can turn around the program, then Barbour will get credit for that hire. If Kieger struggles, then Barbour will have missed on that hire.
