The WAC ballcap atop a hockey stick is just one incongruity in the office of University of Denver athletic director Peg Bradley-Doppes. But it’s not nearly as out of place as an NCAA Division I school in a major metropolitan area in the Rocky Mountain region competing in the mostly rural Sun Belt Conference.
And consider this paradox: A school that abandoned football half a century ago has the most successful Division I athletic department on the Front Range.
“It’s OK not to be in the BCS,” Bradley-Doppes said of college football’s Bowl Championship Series-affiliated conferences.
For the fourth consecutive school year, DU scored higher in the Directors’ Cup standings than any Division I nonfootball school nationally and among all Division I schools ranked No. 54 — higher than any other Front Range school. The Directors’ Cup measures broad-based success of athletic departments. Stanford, which has 35 varsity teams, has won the Directors’ Cup for 17 consecutive years.
With hockey coach George Gwozdecky running DU’s flagship program when she took over as AD in March 2005, Bradley-Doppes turned her attention to upgrading men’s and women’s basketball and lacrosse. One by one, she has replaced coaches and improved programs.
“Bill Tierney, are you kidding me?” Gwozdecky said of Bradley-Doppes’ hiring of the men’s lacrosse coach away from national power Princeton. “I have to give tremendous props to Peg. . . . He’s the John Wooden of men’s lacrosse.”
Tierney, in just his second season, led DU to the Final Four this year.
Men’s basketball coach Joe Scott, whom Bradley-Doppes also hired from Princeton, deserves at least an assist in helping land Tierney, whom he knew well. Women’s basketball coach Erik Johnson, another Bradley-Doppes hire, is a former Boston College assistant who guided the Pioneers to the WNIT in his third season this year. He is 53-40 with three consecutive winning records.
Coaching in her background
While some athletic directors seem to need the spotlight, Bradley-Doppes is an intensely private administrator, wary around the media. She won’t take credit for much that is going well on her watch, other than arranging some key “bumps” during Tierney’s initial visit to school (including Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, a DU board of trustee member, helping to make a pitch).
She also jokes about “stalking” Western Athletic Conference commissioner Karl Benson for years to get DU considered as the WAC’s first nonfootball member. The Pioneers will join the WAC on July 1, 2012.
DU hired Bradley-Doppes, 54, from North Carolina-Wilmington, where she had been relieved of her athletic director responsibilities in what she described as a difference of opinion when a new chancellor was hired. She spent six years at North Carolina-Wilmington. A Cincinnati native, she graduated in 1979 from the College of Mount St. Joseph in Ohio.
In a throwback to more traditional AD coaching backgrounds, Bradley-Doppes moved into administration after a successful run as a volleyball coach, starting at Miami (Ohio) for five seasons (1979-83). She coached at North Carolina (1984-90) and Michigan (1990-91) and took her teams to four NCAA Tournaments en route to becoming the youngest coach in any Division I sport to win 300 games.
“In today’s athletic world, that isn’t happening as much as it used to be,” Benson said of Bradley-Doppes’ career switch from coaching to administration. “One of her real strengths is she gets it from a coach’s perspective.”
Which means, for the most part, letting her coaches do their thing and not micromanaging the Pioneers.
“I never sought the spotlight,” Bradley-Doppes said. “I have great coaches. You will see me at games, not in the locker rooms.”
She insists the win-loss column isn’t all that important, though it’s clear the DU coaches she fired weren’t matching up in that regard.
DU was adrift as a Division I men’s basketball program when Bradley-Doppes arrived. Scott, who made his name on the Front Range by taking Air Force to the NCAA Tournament, is trying to duplicate his miracle with the Pioneers. The season before Scott took over, the Pioneers won four games. They won 19 games two years ago but dropped to 13 wins last season.
“We like the challenge of building this basketball tradition. There isn’t a history,” Scott said. “It was like at Air Force. You have to energize yourself.”
“Do the little things right”
As a private school, DU isn’t required to reveal its finances. Bradley-Doppes volunteered that the Pioneers’ annual budget as an athletic department is about $28 million, which would be small for BCS-affiliated football schools but large for a school funding largely nonrevenue sports with no major television income.
In lieu of football revenue, Bradley-Doppes said corporate sponsorships, summer camps and facility rentals (including 29 high school graduations) help to offset expenses — but expenses far outweigh income.
“We do get support from our central administration,” she said. “We also have very generous benefactors.”
DU has high academic standards, which can affect recruiting.
“This is not a ‘win at all costs’ program,” Bradley-Doppes said. “We will do the little things right.”
To that end, Gwozdecky said his hockey recruits must be good on the ice and in the classroom.
“I’m sure we can probably finagle it if a Wayne Gretzky or Joe Sakic wants to come to DU (but isn’t academically qualified). But he won’t be able to survive in the classroom. It’s pointless for us to try to get him in,” he said.
Gwozdecky’s team is headed to a new league in two years, the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, while most DU sports are headed to the WAC next summer, thanks in large part to their AD’s pursuit of that goal.
Benson hardly needed an introduction to DU, which is just north a few miles on Interstate 25 from WAC headquarters in Arapahoe County. Former chancellor Daniel Ritchie, universally credited with the vision to lift DU to Division I status in all sports, first approached Benson in the mid-1990s.
“He wasn’t looking at the WAC as a possible conference. He was looking for counsel on what DU needed to do as a Division I school,” Benson said. “He and I agreed the West Coast Conference was their best landing spot.”
An invitation from the WCC never came, however. Benson lobbied for DU in 2009, but WAC membership saw no urgency to accept DU at that point. Then, last summer, four schools announced their departures from the WAC. Suddenly there was room for the Pioneers.
With all of DU’s recent success in athletics, it might indicate Bradley-Doppes would be a candidate for higher-profile AD jobs elsewhere. Her response? “I’m very happy here.”
The proof is the view of the Front Range from her office balcony. Her 7-year-old son Conor can come bounding in anytime he wants.
“She’s really highly thought of across the country,” Gwozdecky said.
For Benson, DU’s move to the WAC can’t come soon enough.
“Under the WAC umbrella, DU has the potential to become a Gonzaga,” he said. “They’ve been in the wrong conference for too many years.”
Natalie Meisler: 303-954-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com
