Monday Morning Reading Room: Gartner, Stanzi, Lute, Alvarez

Michael Gartner, who had been a member of the Iowa Board of Regents for six years, had a lot to say about Iowa's state universities in an opinion piece he submitted to the Des Moines Register for its Sunday edition.

The essay covers all sorts of ground. Here is a passage involving athletics:

Athletics, too, has to be examined. Iowa has and Iowa State soon will have an athletic department that pays its own way, at least by some calculations. That's good, but beside the point. Athletic revenue is not part of the universities' general funds -- it is looked upon the way dormitory funds and hospital charges are accounted for -- but it should be considered the property of the institution, not the athletic department.

All university revenue should come into one pot, and every department should have to justify its spending. The University of Iowa takes in $66 million in athletic revenue, but that doesn't mean the department should have the unsupervised right to spend that. How can it justify paying the women's basketball coach a sum more than three times the revenue of the sport? Why shouldn't it return $10 million to $15 million to the general fund? Is it right that the four highest-paid state employees are coaches at Iowa and Iowa State? (One way of looking at it: The Iowa athletic department spends about $100,000 per athlete every year.)

Imagine the bloodcurdling screams that would come from every corner of this state if Gartner's proposal were seriously discussed, let alone pushed towards reality?

Sometimes I think people really believe the Iowa athletic department is a totally separate entity from its university. Sometimes I think I'm one of those who believe it.

In Dan Pompei's Sunday Blitz at the National Football Post, he looks at what most impressed the Kansas City Chiefs' general manager, Scott Pioli, about former Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi before the Chiefs drafted Stanzi three months ago.

The answer wasn't anything that you or I could have seen on television or at Kinnick Stadium. An excerpt:

Pioli, who typically makes more than 20 mid week visits to schools during the college season, is set up to watch tape in the Iowa football offices by himself in a quiet room. He hears someone enter the room next to the room he is in. Eventually, he pokes his head around the corner to see who it is. He recognizes quarterback Ricky Stanzi from the back of his head. Stanzi, who Pioli had met earlier that day, is watching tape at the front of the room with his back turned to the door. He doesn't see the general manager of the Chiefs, and Pioli says nothing.

Pioli keeps checking back throughout the afternoon. Stanzi doesn't budge for the next five hours. He is taking notes on a pad. Stanzi isn't listening to an Ipod. He isn't answering his cell. He isn't texting or emailing. He is focused on the tape.

We heard and heard and heard about how much time Stanzi spent in the film room the last couple years. Sometimes, those stories are exaggerated a bit. It would appear this isn't one of those times.

Some college basketball coaches apparently got taken for a lot of money by an investment adviser who also founded a summer basketball program in Houston. That adviser died of an apparent suicide on Sunday.

This passage is from the CBSsports.com blog post on the matter:

Former Arizona coach Lute Olson, Baylor coach Scott Drew, Texas Tech coach Billy Gillispie and former Utah coach and current Gonzaga assistant Ray Giacoletti are among those CBSSports.com has confirmed invested with (David) Salinas. A document obtained late Sunday by CBSSports.com has testimonals from other coaches who invested with Salinas -- specifically Nebraska coach Doc Sadler, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi coach Willis Wilson, former Houston and Nevada coach Pat Foster, former Duquesne coach and current United States Merchant Marine Academy coach Danny Nee and Augustana College coach Grey Giovanine.

"But the list is much longer," a source said. "Lots of coaches had money with him, but they're going to try to deny it and just hope it doesn't come out."

Wow. And oh by the way, some of the coaches recruited and signed players who passed through Salinas' basketball program, as the story details.

Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez became the first of Hall of Famer Hayden Fry's Iowa assistant coaches to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. That happened Saturday night.

Alvarez compiled a 118-73-4 record while at Wisconsin and captured three Big Ten Championships. His Badgers teams won three Rose Bowls.

I suspect Kansas State's Bill Snyder, who was Fry's first offensive coordinator at Iowa, will join his old boss and Alvarez as an inductee. And, one would think another of Fry's assistants from the 1980s, Kirk Ferentz, has a good chance of ending up there himself sometime in the 2020s.

Other former Iowa head coaches who are in the Hall of Fame are Howard Jones, Eddie Anderson, Slip Madigan and Forest Evashevski. Former Northern Iowa Coach Darrell Mudra and ex-Iowa State Coach Johnny Majors are also enshrined.