Doug Knuth, Senior Aide to Embattled Utah Athletic Director Chris Hill, Lands Top Job at Nevada and Spews Gobbledygook About the Greg Winslow Scandal

Doug Knuth, a career college sports administrator, has taken the athletic director job at the University of Nevada after serving eight years as senior associate athletics director at the University of Utah. Where, as best I can tell, he was in charge of making money for the school.

Congratulations to Knuth. I don’t know enough about the principals to say whether this is an example of the Peter Principle (also known as “rising to your level of incompetence”). I just know that when asked about the cover-up of Utah swim coach Greg Winslow’s abuses at his introductory press conference in Nevada, Knuth served up a bunch of nothing rhetoric.

See http://www.rgj.com/article/20130322/SPORTS06/303220012/Knuth-Utah-swim-scandal-would-not-happened-under-my-watch. Before completing the hire, Nevada president Marc Johnson “told the board he was confident that his investigation found Knuth had no supervisory role” over Winslow.

Reversing field more than 1965-vintage Gale Sayers, Knuth said variously:

* “I wouldn’t have had to deal with” the Winslow problem if he had been in charge, because of “my relationship with my coaches and my relationship with each one of the student-athletes on the teams that I oversee.” I suppose Knuth was saying his superior skills and approach would have nipped the problem in the bud, before it reached the mountain of correspondence from athletes and parents complaining about Winslow, which his former boss, Utah AD Chris Hill, proceeded to blow off. On the other hand …

* Unfortunately, proper supervision “didn’t happen with our swim program at Utah and now I feel terrible for Chris Hill because he’s going through some tough times. He’s a good man. This was under his watch. He’s taken responsibility, but he doesn’t deserve what he’s getting.”

Huh?

Next here: Golden West College’s “outside investigation” of swim coaches Mark Schubert and Bill Jewell — a template for the kind of whitewash we can expect at Utah.

 
Irv Muchnick
tips@muchnick.net