Maturi in Motion
1/23/2003 | | Joel Maturi, with U President Bob Bruininks, congratulates senior Renato Fitzpatrick before Fitzpatrick's final home game. Photo by John Noltner |
By John Rosengren
Forty-five minutes to kickoff, Joel Maturi takes the microphone inside the athletics director’s tent. Through a skylight, the sun spotlights him in the middle of the white-clothed tables outside the Metrodome’s Gate D. Maturi introduces the football coaches’ wives, thanks them, then leads the boosters and other VIPs in what’s becoming his signature cheer. “We are—” he shouts with the left side of the room. “Minnesota!” he answers with the right side of the room. Again, “We are—Minnesota!” His voice roars, his neck strains. “Go, Gophers!”
Less than four months into the job, the University of Minnesota’s new athletics director has already proven himself an indefatigable supporter and vocal cheerleader. Whether he’s high-fiving Goldy or shaking hands with the Metrodome ushers, Maturi, born and raised on the Iron Range, infects others with his enthusiasm for Gopher sports. Early returns of that energy suggest a successful debut.
While the football Gophers run through pregame drills before their final home game in mid-November, Maturi, 57, works the sidelines. He shakes hands with several of the players’ parents, congratulates newly appointed University President Bob Bruininks, and thanks some fellow Rangers for sending the potica, a Slovenian holiday bread. As the players run off the field, he slaps them on the shoulder pads—“Great opportunity, here!”—and follows them up the tunnel into the locker room. Members of the U marching band waiting to take the field clap the new A.D. on the back.
Maturi slips up a back stairway, cuts through the press box and pays a quick visit to the associate athletics director visiting from the University of Iowa. Next, he ducks into Suite 122A to see the Hawkeyes’ A.D. He checks his watch and strides briskly back to the locker room to hear Coach Glen Mason’s remarks and to wish the staff luck. “I’ve been very impressed with Joel,” Mason says of his new boss. “He’s very straightforward, very matter-of-fact. He’s a good communicator.”
Back to the field, standing on the 20-yard line, Maturi greets each senior football player with a handshake and wide smile. Then, up an obscure elevator to the main concourse, Maturi pulls a crib sheet of suite numbers from his jacket pocket and pops in and out, schmoozing boosters and Big Ten officials. Between suites, he’s got a handshake or arm around the shoulders for everyone he recognizes—or who recognizes him. A man in a blue apron behind the counter of the Viking Freeze concessions calls out, “Hey, Joel!” Maturi turns without breaking stride, answers, “Hi, Tom!” and waves.
***
The Gophers’ new A.D. admits that the first couple of weeks on the job he got lost, but in a short time, he has learned to navigate the Dome’s hidden maze with quick confidence. Whisking swiftly through the concourse, Maturi peeks at the game action on the TV monitors. Two minutes and 10 seconds into the game, he times a perfect stop at the top of the stairs leading to the field just as Iowa snaps the ball. He watches Hawkeye running back Fred Russell scoot 10 yards into the Minnesota end zone and then turns without expression to continue his rounds. “The hardest part is that I want to sit down by myself to watch, but I know that’s not my job,” Maturi says.
That’s the coach in him talking. After completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1967, Maturi coached football and basketball for 20 years at Edgewood High School in Madison, Wisconsin. He wasn’t above pulling out the bleachers, setting up the concessions stand, and restocking the toilet paper in the bathrooms for the Catholic school on a skinny budget. Whatever it took to help the kids in the program. He completed his master’s degree in educational professional development at University of Wisconsin–Platteville in 1985 and served stints as an assistant A.D. at the University of Wisconsin (1987–96), athletic director at Denver University (1996–98) and at Miami University of Ohio (1998–2002), before taking the Minnesota job. Despite missing his coach’s role, Maturi is in his element as A.D.
Rushing past a chafing dish of boiled hot dogs in the press box, he comments over his shoulder, “Smells good, huh?” Maturi loves the whole ambiance of the stadium and thrives on the job’s peripatetic pace. He started the day early, picking up Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney at the airport and gobbling a quick breakfast before heading to the athletics director’s brunch. After the football game, Maturi will head over to Ridder Arena to watch the women’s hockey game, take in the men’s tennis match, and close out the day at Mariucci Arena with the men’s hockey game. He makes a point to attend every home athletic event and often travels with teams to away contests. At Miami, he missed only one home game in four years.
This guy, who runs to unwind and needs only four hours of sleep a night, is well-suited to the rigors of the job. Moreover, others describe Maturi as a man of integrity, honesty, and compassion—traits prerequisite to the challenges of streamlining the men’s and women’s athletics departments, reducing budget shortfalls by raising more money or trimming programs, and steering University athletics out of its probationary period.
“He was the perfect person to come in and deal with the transition from two departments to one,” says women’s hockey coach Laura Halldorson. “He’s very fair and has high values.”
Maturi finally joins his own supporting cast in box 141B, which includes Lois, his wife of 28 years. She plans to attend the two hockey games with her husband later that day but will skip the tennis match to tend the dog at home. The Maturis have three children: Mark, 26, Katie, 25, Anne, 22. Following in his father’s footsteps, Mark is working on a master’s in sports organization at Miami, Ohio.
Maturi watches the action from the back of the suite. After a third-down Minnesota pass falls incomplete, he reaches for the nut dish. “I want to eat because I’m nervous,” he says. “I’m not hungry.”
When the Gophers score a touchdown of their own in the first quarter, he pumps his fist and shouts, “All right! What a great effort!” He high-fives his nephews.
***
Seven minutes before halftime, Maturi is back out pounding the concourse. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Maturi’s memory of his life-altering moment begins with him in motion. He remembers striding across the Notre Dame campus in February 1964. It was a cold day in northern Indiana, with flurries in the air. A 5-foot, 9-inch wide receiver and defensive back, Maturi was a recruited walk-on out of Chisholm High, but a neck injury in a varsity basketball game ended his hopes of playing for the Fighting Irish. The small-town freshman was frightened, not sure he belonged on the big campus, but he headed to the Knute Rockne Memorial Building with Rudyesque determination to introduce himself to Ara Parseghian, the new football coach.
Inspired by his high school basketball coach, Bob McDonald—the winningest coach in Minnesota high school history, with 793 victories over 47 years coaching track and basketball—Maturi, a three-sport varsity athlete, had declared in the 1963 Chisholm High yearbook his ambition to be a coach. He told Parseghian his ambition and asked to be involved with the team.
Parseghian took him on as a student assistant, which gave the young Maturi access to coaches meetings and other situations not accessible to players. “That helped me far more in being a coach than playing would have,” he says. “I learned a lot more.”
Believing everything happens for a reason, Maturi views his injury as fortuitous. But the story doesn’t end there. In typical fashion, he uses that anecdote today to boost the spirits of injured athletes.
Against Iowa, time runs out, with the Gophers on the losing end, 45-21. Maturi is back down on the field patting backs and clapping. “Good job!” he calls to the players jogging off. “Nice effort!”
He follows the team to the locker room. Iowa fans swarm onto the field and tear down a goalpost, but it’s not Maturi’s job to chase them off. He’s a supporter, not an enforcer. He spends 15 minutes making his way among the players in the privacy of the locker room, trying to find some words of encouragement for each. His presence wins them over: We are Minnesota.
John Rosengren is a freelance writer who lives in Minneapolis.
 | | | |  | | Maturi at Rest: The AD pauses to discuss his hopes and plans for Gopher sports | Q: How will you increase financial support for Gopher athletics?
A: No one wants to give money to bail somebody out; they want to give money to enhance a program. If we can get budgets under control, I believe we will regain the faith of the athletic community and that will lead to an expansion of gift dollars because people will be giving for the right reasons.
Q: What other ways can you increase revenue?
A: We’ve had some substantial donors, just haven’t had a large number of donors. I want to increase that number. I also want to get more corporate sponsors into our athletics community. . . . Millions of dollars are left on the table in football. We need to do a better job of marketing and promoting and, quite frankly, winning, because everybody wants to come see a winner.
Q: Can Gopher football save endangered programs like golf and men’s gymnastics?
A: Football is going to have to be [a major source of increased revenue]. I’m putting pressure on myself, not on Coach Mason, because that’s my job. We need to do a better job of voicing the positive things we have going for us and expressing to fans that coming to a game can be fun, exciting, and entertaining. Since we don’t sell out very often, there’s an upside right now.
Q: You’ve said that you would rather eliminate sports programs than water down the whole department. Can you explain what you mean by that?
A: I do not want to be the athletics director at the University of Minnesota to eliminate sports. Now, having said that, if I’m put in a position where budgets are such that I have to reduce the number of scholarships or travel or recruiting to the point that it will not give a team the ability to be a champion, then I would rather not have that team. We’re about excellence.
Q: You came into a difficult situation, charged to consolidate the men’s and women’s athletics departments. What have you encountered so far?
A: I have definitely found two different cultures. It will be a challenge to come up with a common mission and one set of policies and procedures. There are certainly anxieties among the staff about who their boss is going to be, the role they’ll play, some even wondering whether they will have a job. I don’t want to hurry these decisions because then you’re going to make the wrong decisions.
Q: You’ve mentioned the importance of graduation rates. Does that mean you still believe in the student athlete?
A: I’d like to think so. Yet there are such great rewards in winning today that unfortunately some good people have made bad decisions. The pressure to win is greater than making sure students graduate, perform community work, and do the right thing.
Q: What is an acceptable graduation rate?
A: My goal is to get our department up to 60 percent. We’re at 54 percent right now, which is higher than the general student rate of 50 percent, but lowest in the Big Ten among student athletes. Those are the people we want to chase.
Q: What is the proper place for athletics at a major university?
A: Athletics is the front porch of the institution. It’s not the reason for the main building to exist. Yet, rightly or wrongly, in our culture, when we earn that trip to the Rose Bowl, that will gain more publicity than the University’s next Nobel prize winner. Northwestern will tell you that the greatest jump in admissions for general students came after their trip to the Rose Bowl [in 1996]. That’s the kind of impact athletics can have on a university. —J.R.
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