A case of horrible timing

It really is a shame.

It’s a low down, dirty and unavoidable shame that the Athletic Department was trying to avoid – and it has nothing to do with Bruce Weber.

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Like a footnote on the front page of Wednesday’s Daily Egyptian sat was what was supposed to be one of the biggest stories of the year.

A man came all the way from Dallas and gave $4.5 million – no, that is not a typo – to the Athletic Department.

Thomas Wittmann, a former football scrub and now a stinking rich alumnus, gave SIU Athletics $4.5 million – only $2 million short of the department’s annual budget – out of his pocket.

But because of Webergate, he left Carbondale in obscurity.

In a way, that is what he wanted. When I interviewed him Tuesday, he did not seem like a guy who accepted praise very well.

But at the same time, he gave the department more than the average salary of a major league baseball player and deserved attention for helping SIU continue to climb out of its former black hole of failure.

Last week I listed all the things Weber could do with $900,000.

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Multiply that times five, and that’s what SIU Athletic Director Paul Kowalczyk and company can do, because instead of putting a down payment on a Lear jet or sponsoring 150,000 starving South American children, Wittmann gave a generous kick-back to his alma mater.

But ask a random student who Thomas Wittmann is and you will receive a stare as blank as the paper my final exam is supposed to be written on. All anyone could talk about or read about, judging from the way you guys cleaned out nearly every stack of Daily Egyptians on campus, was Weber and those pompous cake-eaters in Champaign.

Word leaked just in time to kick Wittmann from the main stories and broadcasts across the region. But, I assure you, it was not due to a lack of effort on behalf of the Athletic Department.

We (the dozen or so people responsible for Wednesday’s Weber story such as Jens Deju, who did not receive a contributing credit) received a call from a source at about 9 p.m. saying Weber was leaving, and the road to confirmation was like reading a Bill Walton column – difficult.

In the next hour we were able to get confirmation from Jamaal Tatum, Gary Reinmuth of the Chicago Tribune and though we did not receive confirmation from SIU media services, we did not get a denial either. I think he knew the Department did not want to leak word of the Weber hiring before newspaper deadlines.

Other outlets like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and ESPN.com had begun to report it, so we went straight for the jugular – Coach Weber himself.

Obviously, he did not want to talk to us. It is well-known in Champaign that Dictator Ron Guenther does not like leaking anything to the press. Weber left the Arena without talking to reporters, so – and don’t ever say this newspaper staff doesn’t do anything for you – we went to his house.

Believe me, it was not easy to find Weber’s residence. He lives out in the country in a confusing subdivision, and the search was complicated by the fact we left the directions in the newsroom.

Four of us – myself, our editor-in-chief, another reporter and a photographer – found his place at about 11 p.m. It was right at deadline, but we were able to hold the presses for a while.

Weber would later mention the following incident at his press conference in Champaign to illustrate the insanity of the last few days.

We walked past Weber’s three-car garage to his door and softly knocked. He took one look at us through the window, shook his head, turned out the lights and walked away.

We began to walk away as well. But in a move of true journalistic soullessness Brian Peach, normally a city reporter, pulled a 180 and walked back to the door and knocked again.

Weber, who had every right to pull out an AK-47 under the circumstances, politely pointed out that we woke up his kids. We knew he was telling the truth because his wife was yelling rather loudly in the background.

But we stuck to our guns and eventually got a few very brief comments out of him, as well as a confirmation.

It was 11:10.

The Athletic Department had failed in its attempt to give Wittmann’s donation prominence in the newspapers by less than an hour, and we had a beautiful Weber quote to use as a headline.

Close, but no giant novelty comb.

Wittmann was doomed to play second-fiddle, and had his story’s picture pushed back to page 14 next to the classified ads.

That goes to show just how huge of a force Weber was at SIU, that his departure is more important than any amount of money anyone can throw around.

It was unfortunate that Wittmann did not receive his accolades and even more disastrous that Bruce Weber left, even after Kowalczyk offered him a hefty pay raise.

But on the bright side, SIU has millions of dollars laying around and a six-figure compensation check from Illinois in the mail.

Wittmann, and the Athletic Department, can take solace in that.

Michael is a junior in journalism. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.