Nobody wants to disclose the specific words.

Here’s the abridged version: Sorry, Nancy.

Jim Boeheim had gone an itty-bit too far, dropping three expletives on live television to defend the beloved Gerry McNamara against claims the guard was overrated. While the basketball coach’s rant worked long-term – Syracuse won its next three games for the Big East tournament title in March – it turned the university red short-term.

An apology to the boss of all bosses, Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor, was in order.

Such is the scope of sport today. Any publicity from an athletics program, positive or negative, translates, fairly or unfairly, to the entire university. Cases in point: Interest in George Mason increased after the basketball team made this year’s Final Four while Duke needs to quell a renegade image after two lacrosse players were arrested for their roles in an alleged rape in March.

Chancellors and presidents across the country have played an increased role in athletics in recent years because of sports’ clout. At Syracuse, Cantor instituted two seemingly innocuous yet significant changes shortly after her arrival in the fall of 2004 to keep pace. She appointed new Director of Athletics Daryl Gross to her cabinet and had him report directly to her instead of a vice chancellor.

But perception isn’t the only factor Cantor and her counterparts are concerned about. It’s reality, too – wins and losses. This fall Fox’s eight-year, $240 million deal to televise BCS bowl games starts. CBS is in the middle of an 11-year, $6 billion deal to showcase the NCAA Tournament. The more a university plays in those games, the more money it receives.

Athletics figures prominently in Cantor’s initiative – now in its silent phase – to raise $1 billion in the next 10 years. Syracuse’s survival as a competitive Division I athletics university, and thus, as a noteworthy institution – similar to how a major league baseball team qualified a city as major in the early 20th century – depends appreciably on clean athletic success.

Harry Edwards, a sociologist at California-Berkeley and for years a leading authority on many issues in sports, including the state of college athletics, said Cantor is right to establish a close relationship with Gross and encourage fund raising as much as possible.

‘Today the chancellor and A.D. are the point people in the collegiate arms race,’ Edwards said. ‘This is amateur sports – we should be talking about academics. Sports should not be the point of a university’s image. But there are also people who believe in the Easter Bunny.’

Six months after Syracuse was not accepted into the Atlantic Coast Conference in September of 2003, former Chancellor Buzz Shaw created an ad hoc committee in the University Senate to examine all aspects of athletics on the Hill. The committee, chaired by the university’s Athletic Policy Board Chairman Michael Wasylenko, issued its final report on April 19.

The report states the inevitability of a subvention at Syracuse, which is the amount of money the university must cover for the deficit of the athletics department. Subvention has been $12 million in recent years, the report states.

But when the department suffered a $2.5 million deficit in 2003-04 despite the $12 million subvention, SU was no longer one of 30 schools in the country to have a self-sustaining athletics program, according to University Senate records.

When former Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel announced his retirement shortly after Cantor’s arrival, Wasylenko – who chaired the committee for Crouthamel’s replacement – determined a devotion to fund raising had to be one of the new A.D.’s top three concerns. Gross was the committee’s only recommendation to Cantor.

Projections in the report show the athletic department will almost balance in 2005-2006 for the first time in three years, but will face a $1.2 million deficit in 2007-08. Wasylenko said Gross’ challenge is to stay competitive without overly exceeding the $12 million subvention.

‘The issue is to stabilize that subsidy, keep it in a certain range and then to grow revenues around it,’ Wasylenko said. ‘That’s where we are right now. Should you worry about it? Yeah, but it’s not an immediate worry.’

For the most part. Projected direct revenues are lower in 2006-07 in the report because of the football team’s 1-10 record last year, Wasylenko said. But overall revenue is predicted to increase in 2006-07 because of fund raising.

The pressure is on Gross. He didn’t wait for football to improve on the field and in attendance before following through on Crouthamel’s ideas for a new weight training facility and FieldTurf in the Carrier Dome. Gross still needs donors to cover all the costs. He didn’t have time to just correct the deficit left by Crouthamel; he needed to build right away as well.

Cantor, with her Big Ten background as provost at Michigan from 1997-2001 and chancellor at Illinois from 2001-04, recognized the risks in that plan and is aware of the fiscal challenges going forward.

‘Mounting major athletics programs are very expensive – it’s always a concern,’ Cantor said. ‘We always have more good ideas at Syracuse than we have money. Absolutely we have to watch carefully.’

Gross isn’t finished; facilities are at the crux of his ‘SU Tomorrow’ fund-raising campaign. He won’t disclose a monetary goal, but he said there are preliminary designs in place for more facilities. Time in the Carrier Dome and in weight rooms has long been scarce.

To cover the costs – along with ticket plans like the courtside basketball seats installed last season and new luxury boxes currently under construction for football and basketball – Gross swelled his fund-raising arm by hiring Scott Sidwell, the new associate athletic director for development. Sidwell said his department should eventually expand.

Cantor’s blessing has been required for everything. Gross said she has been receptive to his relentless demands for money. From her first official day as chancellor on Aug. 2, 2004, when she attended Football 101 – a free clinic for women conducted by former head coach Paul Pasqualoni – Cantor has placed a high priority on athletics.

‘I get a lot of attention for the fact that we have new fields, and the Dome has a new field,’ Gross said. ‘None of that would’ve happened without Nancy’s support. She’s very supportive of athletics – she’s definitely a huge part of whatever momentum we have.’

A permanent roadblock lies in place: Syracuse is a private school. Few private schools strive for a title in football or basketball, let alone both.

Southern California, Notre Dame and Miami are close to championships on the gridiron each year but not the hardwood. Vice-versa for Duke, Wake Forest and Syracuse.

Boston College – which became a much more prominent school after beating Miami on a last-second Hail Mary from Doug Flutie on national television in 1985, according to the ad hoc committee’s final report – is the most versatile program now. Football is coming off a 9-3 season and basketball a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

From 1986-1997, Syracuse was the gold standard. Football annually competed for a New Year’s Day bowl game, winning nine or more games seven times. Basketball won either regular season or postseason Big East titles five times and went to the Final Four twice.

Cantor makes no mistake she wants to return to those days.

‘I think that obviously we’re a place of excellence,’ Cantor said. ‘We want to win as much as possible and be competing with our women as well as our men in a field of excellence.’

But given the changing nature of money in athletics, Wasylenko said that level of accomplishment will be hard to attain again in football because SU is private.

Even though Syracuse is consistently in the top two in basketball attendance each year, football generates the most money for the country’s largest athletic programs. Wasylenko said last year’s football attendance of 40,252 remains far from sufficient. Still, the Carrier Dome’s 49,250 capacity and few luxury boxes create an inevitable limit.

Syracuse can’t add more seats every year like Penn State can to Beaver Stadium, now with 107,282 seats following a seventh renovation in 2004. Though in a small market like Syracuse, Penn State still averaged 104,859 for seven games in 2005. Gross has the right idea by trying to make Syracuse the state team of New York, but a private school will have a difficult time attracting that type of fan base.

‘Go to a bowl game every year? Probably a tough proposition,’ Wasylenko said. ‘Go to a bowl game, I don’t know, 70 percent of the time. I think so.

‘You want to go to the BCS? We’re not going to do that every year, let’s face it.’

Neither will Syracuse field as large a team as a program like Texas each year. Syracuse head football coach Greg Robinson, who was the Longhorns’ defensive coordinator in 2004, said Texas typically had 25 walk-ons. Because of Syracuse’s tuition, Robinson said he only has 12-14. The larger rosters appear significant. Private schools accounted for only six of 56 bowl teams last season.

Boeheim said the private school factor is a non-issue in basketball because there are only 10 scholarship players.

Also, private schools have more stringent admissions policies. Gross isn’t about to sacrifice grades. When Syracuse last made a bowl game in 2004, it tied for the second-highest graduation rate of the 56 teams selected for postseason play at 77 percent, according to NCAA releases.

‘There’s a balance you have to have at a school like this,’ Robinson said.

The financial instability of SU factors into the discussion. Syracuse is not one of the approximately 50 schools with an endowment above $1 billion. Syracuse trails many schools, such as Grinnell College in Iowa, which are much smaller. Hence Cantor’s $1 billion plan.

At USC, where Gross served as an associate athletic director for 10 years prior to SU, all 85 of the football scholarships allowed by the NCAA are endowed by the university, Wasylenko said. That scenario is implausible at Syracuse because of the low endowment. Even among private schools, Syracuse is at a disadvantage.

Men’s rowing coach Dave Reischman said his team did not have the full 12.6 scholarships until this season. On a whole, the ad hoc committee’s final report states Syracuse has 279.5 scholarships for its approximately 600 athletes on 21 teams – 12 women and nine men.

As much as Gross talks about winning championships in all sports, he understands Syracuse’s circumstances – a private school with a small football stadium in a small market with little room for fiscal error.

‘At SC, we wanted to win national championships at everything. Here I’ve set the bar at we need our student-athletes to get the experience of the NCAA tournament,’ Gross said. ‘Just to get to the dance, just to get that feel.

‘Once we’re in the tournament, who knows?’

Surely he wants to do better than that in the revenue sports; he has to.

It isn’t going well so far, though it’s hardly his fault. Under Gross – and by extension, Cantor – football is at its lowest point ever, basketball has lost in the first round two straight years and men’s lacrosse’s 22-year semifinals streak ended. But turning around the department takes time.

‘It’s not hard to win,’ Wasylenko said. ‘It’s hard to make it work financially.’

OK, so it’s not all about the money. With Cantor, it also comes back to image.

After the women’s lacrosse team qualified for the NCAA tournament last year, Cantor sent the team flowers. Head coach Lisa Miller said Shaw never did that. Cantor’s hands-on approach is trickling down. Senior midfielder Meghan O’Connell said Senior Associate Athletic Director Mark Jackson makes an effort to visit practice several times a week.

Cantor herself was in attendance when Syracuse hosted No. 1 Northwestern on March 31. Miller said she was impressed by a female chancellor who is active not just with the revenue sports, but the non-revenue women’s sports as well.

‘It was really nice to have the chancellor there,’ O’Connell said. ‘It showed the support she has for us.’

Unlike Miller, some other non-revenue coaches have never met Cantor. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t felt her influence.

Reischman, the men’s rowing coach for the past four years, feels Gross’ increased attention to winning and frequent discussions of a long-term vision at monthly head coaching meetings comes from Cantor. Seven-year tennis coach Mac Gifford senses the chancellor’s presence especially in fund raising and the expansion of facilities.

‘I haven’t seen her physically,’ Gifford said. ‘But I would say that I feel a sense of confidence that she is behind what we are doing over here.’

Cantor is no stranger to the power of athletics. The difference is her time at Syracuse has not involved any major controversies.

While Cantor was provost at Michigan from 1997-2001, the national runner-up 1993 men’s basketball team – which included NBA All-Star Chris Webber – was penalized for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a booster.

Cantor helped steer the athletic department into better academic responsibility. She also assisted in creating a program for athletes hoping to graduate years after leaving school early to play professionally.

Several years later, Cantor was Illinois’ chancellor when the NCAA discussed the use of American Indian mascots. She fought vigorously to have Chief Illiniwek removed as the university’s symbol in a brutal battle that divided students, faculty and local government. Ultimately, Illinois’ trustees voted to keep the Chief in 2004.

Susan Cohen, a professor of sociology who chaired Illinois’ athletic policy board from 2002-05, said Cantor will never back down from her set of values.

‘I think that the trustees were not ready to have the campus take orders from a strong woman from the East Coast,’ Cohen said.

Syracuse better be ready if needed. The university has suffered several public relations nightmares because of the athletic department. Cantor can’t have history repeat.

Shaw arrived as chancellor a year after Syracuse endured a one-year probation from the NCAA Tournament for recruiting violations in 1990. Shaw’s darkest hours were probably when the basketball team turned in six-year graduation rates hovering around 20 percent multiple times in the mid-1990s. Wasylenko said Shaw avoided image problems by preventing several basketball recruits with questionable resumes from attending Syracuse.

Wasylenko didn’t know how many similar issues in which Cantor has been involved, saying only he thought it wasn’t any more or any less than her predecessor. Certainly there has been nothing major.

If anything were to arise, Cantor will know about it. Having her athletic director on her cabinet means little should slip by. Just last week, Gross said Syracuse would not accept any transfers from the Duke men’s lacrosse team until the legal actions are resolved. Such a decision was likely made with Cantor in mind.

‘Who you bring to campus and how they behave is ultimately the president’s responsibility,’ Wasylenko said.

Of course, Cantor has not escaped controversy at Syracuse. Ever since she disbanded HillTV in October because of racist programming on ‘Over the Hill,’ students have booed her at football and basketball games – the times when she is in front of the most people from the community.

‘From my perspective, I hear cheers and I hear boos,’ Cantor said. ‘It’s always a mix. People have their views, and that’s good.’

The irony is inescapable. Cantor’s mission to maintain a positive perception of the university is challenging when she herself doesn’t have a positive image to many students on campus.

But that doesn’t concern Gross. He thinks bigger picture, long-term. In the end, he said, Cantor will work wonders for the university athletically.

‘More so than in the history of college sports the structure now places the emphasis at the CEO level – and it’s a good thing,’ Gross said. ‘It brings more credibility to college athletics.’

That will only increase. The risks of negative exposure are tremendous. When the sex-and-alcohol-for-recruits scandal broke at Colorado, the chancellor, Richard Byyny, eventually resigned in 2004. Gary Barnett, the football coach, wasn’t dismissed until a year later.

Though the cases have miniscule comparison, Cantor had to hold Boeheim accountable for his expletives on national television. Any up-to-date chancellor would have done the same.

Myles Brand, president of the NCAA, fired basketball coach Bob Knight when he was president at Indiana in 2000 in small part for embarrassing the university with expletives on television.

‘You are sending a stronger signal about presidential control and institutional control, which are big issues in athletics,’ Wasylenko said. ‘You’re saying, ‘Who’s in charge here?”

At Syracuse, Cantor, for sure. She is the one that controls the image. She is the one with final say on all of Gross’ initiatives.

Gross has endless ideas, but Cantor knows how it will all be completed: fund raising. The university needs money; so does the athletic department.

Gross would only say he has a head of steam in that area – and he better. Syracuse’s staying power as a strong Division I athletics program, starting with the struggling football program, depends more and more on external revenues – especially for a private school.

The benefits of positive exposure are tremendous, too. When Syracuse men’s basketball won the national championship in 2003, the ad hoc committee’s final report stated applications increased by about 1,500. Notoriety increased immeasurably.

Edwards, the sociologist from Cal-Berkeley, said since athletic success and integrity hold as much sway as anything in determining a university’s image, Cantor and Gross should be nothing less than close companions.

‘(Cantor’s) right in to take an understanding in everything,’ Edwards said. ‘From knowing the coaches to knowing where the money is coming from to making sure the culture is consistent with the ethics of the university overall.’

Published on May 7, 2006 at 12:00 pm