Terry Tumey didn’t create the problems of Fresno State sports. He’s just the fall guy | Opinion

“The Fall Guy” is a new movie about a stuntman based on a 1980s TV series.

The fall guy is also a colloquial phrase that refers to a person who takes responsibility or punishment for something that isn’t their fault.

It’s an apt description for now former Fresno State athletic director Terry Tumey, cut loose this week by university President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval with more than a year remaining on his contract. The parting has been termed a “mutual separation,” which sounds gentler.

But unlike the movie or TV series, Tumey doesn’t get a Hollywood ending. Instead, we’re left with nagging questions and lingering problems piled atop undeserved blame.

The job of the Fresno State athletic director is not unlike being the manager of a restaurant with hands-on owners. You get to direct the kitchen and dining room staff, but you don’t get to write the menu, purchase the ingredients or control the finances.

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In this analogy, the restaurant owners are Jiménez-Sandoval and Debbie Adishian-Astone, the university’s vice president for administration and chief financial officer. Among her many duties, Adishian-Astone oversees the Athletic Corporation, the tax-exempt nonprofit created in 1983 to operate Fresno State’s intercollegiate athletics program, as well as the auxiliary that runs the Save Mart Center.

What are the duties and responsibilities of the Bulldogs AD? Mainly, it’s hiring and firing coaches (though not with a free reign), overseeing marketing and communications and serving as a public face/touchstone for the department’s fundraising efforts.

In those respects, Tumey largely performed well. In late 2019, he recognized Kalen DeBoer as the right person to take over the football program after Jeff Tedford stepped down for health reasons. That decision may look obvious now, but it wasn’t then. Tumey also hired volleyball coach Leisa Rosen, who in her first season guided the Bulldogs to their first NCAA berth since 2002, as well as promising baseball coach Ryan Overland.

Fresno State’s marketing efforts and social media presence have also blossomed. The Bulldogs consistently produce strong, compelling videos (see the 2019 Pride in the Valley campaign), and their numbers of followers and impressions rival those of some major conference schools.

Under Tumey, Bulldogs football games are once again the place to be on six Saturday evenings during the fall. Average 2023 football attendance of 39,939 paced the Mountain West Conference for the second straight year.

Speaking of Valley Children’s Stadium, Tumey had very little to do with Fresno State’s shortsighted naming rights deal with the Madera County hospital that resulted in severely reduced payments from the university’s media rights deal with Learfield Sports. That, I’m told, was the handiwork of upper-level administration.

Athletic department fundraising under Tumey has been less successful. The Bulldogs raised $5.8 million in 2023-24, roughly $2 million shy of pre-pandemic levels and below the $7.7 million necessary to cover scholarships for 373 student-athletes during the same academic year.

Problems predate Tumey

The Bulldogs didn’t go from a fairly self-sufficient operation to one that depends on nearly $20 million in annual university support overnight. That happened gradually and began long before Tumey replaced interim AD Steve Robertello, who replaced Jim Bartko, who replaced an interim pairing, who replaced Thomas Boeh. (Which gets us back to 2005, when the Red Wave was starting to recede.)

The big problems of Fresno State sports — waning fan interest outside football, the aging stadium, no revenues from Save Mart Center, miniscule TV revenues compared to major conferences, tepid in-house fundraising — existed prior to Tumey’s arrival. He didn’t solve those issues, sure. But he left the house in better shape than he found it.

My enduring memory of Tumey came outside our typical interactions at games and press conferences. On May 31, 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Fresno, I spotted Tumey on the street outside City Hall. He was dressed in a Bulldogs track suit.

Tumey, who is Black, wasn’t there to waive signs or march. He told me it was out of concern for a couple dozen Fresno State student-athletes who had joined the city’s largest civil rights demonstration in decades.

I remember the worry mixed with pride in Tumey’s voice and eyes as we spoke — even though the protest turned out to be 100% peaceful.

In the years since, Fresno State endured a Title IX scandal that revealed troubling details about how sexual harassment and discrimination claims are reported and investigated by the university. Joseph Castro, Jiménez-Sandoval’s predecessor, lost his job as CSU chancellor, but others in that failed chain of command (including Adishian-Astone) still have theirs.

The optics by Jiménez-Sandoval aren’t great, especially when this seemingly out-of-nowhere move comes so closely after Measure E’s second election defeat. Something else the deposed AD had little to no involvement in.

All of which make Tumey the fall guy for Bulldogs sports. Lower case.