The last time I saw Jay McGowan, we talked briefly about his plans to start a football program at Bellarmine University. In one sense, it was a pragmatic decision – he wanted to attract more male students. But he also had seen what the success of Coach Scott Davenport’s basketball program had done for the student morale, community profile, and national visibility.
Now those plans will have to be put on hold, at least temporarily. On Tuesday morning, the university and the higher education community were shocked by the news that McGowan, 71, had died after a short illness.
I met him in 1990, shortly after he had accepted the job at what was then Bellarmine College. The connection was my dear friend Mike Barry, former editor of The Kentucky Irish-American and sports columnist for The Louisville Times. McGowan’s wife Maureen was one of Mike’s nieces.
After Mike died in 1992, Jay and I maintained a special bond. I will not tell you we were close friends because we weren’t. But every time we would cross paths, we would remember Mike, one of the most colorful characters either of us had ever known, and share a laugh or a story.
His 26-year tenure as Bellarmine’s president will be remembered for its well-planned growth. New classroom buildings and dorms began popping up on the hillside campus on Newburg Road. Enrollment grew and academic programs were added. I was particularly interested when McGowan hired Ed Manassah, former publisher of The Courier-Journal, to start a communications program.
But McGowan really caught my attention when he hired my friend Davenport to coach the men’s basketball team. Around 2009 or so, I went to Knights Hall to see a game and immediately fell in love with how Davenport’s team played the game. I got so excited, in fact, that I called Bob Knight.
“If you’re ever in Louisville and have some extra time,” I told the former Indiana University coach, “you have to go to Bellarmine and see a game. They way they play defense and set picks and look for the open man, they look like the teams you used to coach.”
Knight never saw a game, but I did take him to Bellarmine when he was in town for ESPN and he talked to the players in their locker room for a half-hour or so. A few weeks later, the Knights won the 2011 NCAA Division II national championship.
I’ve been a Bellarmine season-ticket holder since that first time I saw Davenport’s team play, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to introduce Davenport to Steve Fehder, the president and CEO of the Louisville Catholic Sports Network. They hit it off and one thing led to another.
Today the Louisville Catholic Sports Network, under the auspices of parent company The Sports Media Group, owns the radio rights to all Bellarmine basketball games, both men and women. It also owns the rights to Davenport’s radio show, and helps Athletics Director Scott Wiegand with other programs.
President McGowan approved and supported the relationship, but the had one caveat: He wanted the atmosphere in Knights Hall to remain as pristine and non-commercial as possible. He insisted on maintaining the proper balance between academics and athletics.
Over the last five or six seasons, Davenport’s program has been a consistent national championship contender while also graduating the vast majority of its players. With McGowan nodding and smiling in the background – and sometimes even leading cheers from the floor – Bellarmine has become a national model for doing college athletics the right way.
Last December I saw McGowan in the locker room before a game. His guest that day was Jerry Abramson, the longtime Louisville mayor and former lieutenant governor in the Beshear administration. Abramson’s wife, Madeline, also is one of Mike Barry’s nieces. The three of us had some laughs.
In our educationally poor state, there is never a good time to lose a strong advocate for higher education. But this is a particularly bad time considering Gov. Matt Bevin’s Draconian budget cuts for all public universities, and his antipathy for the sort of liberal-arts education offered at Bellarmine, Centre, Transylvania and other private universities and colleges.
Like any successful college president, McGowan was an effective politician, salesman, and advocate. He surely would have been a forceful spokesman for the value of a liberal-arts education. His voice and leadership will be sorely missed at a time when many Kentuckians seem to care less and less about the importance of education.
It was impossible to ignore the fact that the C-J placed McGowan’s obituary on the front page, below the fold and just under another higher education story with the headline: “Ramsey’s backers block vote of no-confidence.”
That story, of course, was the latest accounting of University of Louisville President Jim Ramsey’s battle to keep his job – jobs, actually, since he also is president of the U of L Foundation – amid a myriad of scandals and investigations that go to the highest levels of the university administration.
The point is not to pile on Dr. Ramsey, whose office issued a kind and complimentary statement about Dr. McGowan’s passing. But the juxtaposition of the stories brought home the importance of ethical, credible, and honorable leadership in higher education at a time when our young people, now more than ever, are desperate for educators they can trust.
Bellarmine today is a far better place for having Jay McGowan as its president. His legacy will endure, and his successor will be held accountable to a high standard and great expectations.
I’d like to see Jay’s plans for a Bellarmine football team move forward. And if they do, I hope the powers that be seriously consider naming the stadium in his honor. I’m sure Mike Barry would drink a beer to that.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby