Bob Kustra has never been shy about creating a stir or speaking his mind. The Boise State president did the former Wednesday, announcing the firing of longtime Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier, but without a hint of the latter.
Kustra announced the canning of the father of the blue turf in a post-business hours statement released by the school. It was a decision he informed Bleymaier on Aug. 4, yet held off making public for what was an agonizingly painful six days for the athletic director.
In a letter to boosters sent Wednesday afternoon, Kustra explained his decision, said he was vacationing in the Midwest, left them his cell phone number and said he was available at any time.
But Kustra did not return messages left by the Idaho Statesman. The former Illinois lieutenant governor surely knows something about staging, timing and perception.
Asked about the relationship between him and his boss Wednesday, Bleymaier said: “We don’t need to talk about that.”
Kustra identified the ongoing NCAA infractions case — Boise State went before the Committee on Infractions in June to defend itself against 22 violations, including lack of institutional control — and the coming probation as the reason for the changes. He shifted the compliance department to his office, removing it from athletics as the case was building, a sign of how seriously he took the investigation.
Some boosters thought Kustra could use the issue to dispense with Bleymaier — there have been signs of strife in their relationship.
“If ultimately lack of institutional control sticks, I would think he would either get fired or resign. Kustra is not going to be afraid to pull that trigger,” one prominent booster told the Idaho Statesman earlier this summer. “Nobody goes for the throat until there’s a lot of blood in the water.”
The NCAA is expected to issue its report on the case in the next month.
Kustra indicated he — and he alone — would conduct a top-to-bottom review of the department after the NCAA case became public, another sign that he wasn’t willing to sweep Bleymaier’s involvement
under the rug. That review ultimately led right to the head of the department.
“We had a couple of meetings and talked about the organizational chart,” Bleymaier said of the summer review.
Did he expect changes?
“Not at the top,” Bleymaier said, during a rare moment of levity in his interview with the Statesman on Wednesday.
Not once did Bleymaier refer to Kustra as anything but “the president.”
Kustra, who made more-than-occasional steps into the athletics realm, became president in 2003 — more than 20 years after Bleymaier became the school’s athletic director. The president found ways to assert his influence on the (too?) independent athletic department.
Kustra slipped a clause into Bleymaier’s contract during 2008 negotiations that provided extra financial incentive for scheduling games against college football’s elite programs. Bleymaier was not consulted about the bonus, which was eventually removed from his five-year extension. The not-so-subtle message? Schedule tougher.
It was Kustra who took the lead in indicating that Boise State had no desire to schedule Idaho in football once the Broncos made the move to the Mountain West, again usurping the football-scheduling powers of the athletic director — and creating a widely publicized dispute between state rivals.
And yet on the day the long-serving and respected athletic director was shown the door, the president not known for keeping his opinions to himself was silent.
Whatever trust and faith Kustra had in Bleymaier, who guided the department to unprecedented heights, was gone.
And now Bleymaier is, too.
