Nebraska Magazine - Summer2010

PROFILE OF A TOUGH PROFESSION: TEACHING | Can She Quote you on That? | From the Cornfields … to the Field of Dreams

for members of the alumni association of the UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN

SUMMER 2010

By Aaron Babcock

June 11, 2010 will go down as one of the most historic days for the University of Nebraska, marking the moment the university officially became the 12th member of the Big Ten Conference.

While the headlines in recent weeks have been littered with talk of expansion, contraction, movement and the dissolving of conferences, expansion is not something the Big Ten takes lightly. Nebraska is its first new member in 20 years, since Penn State was added in 1990 and just the second new member in 60 years.

This is an exciting day for Nebraska. Beginning in 2011, the Huskers will share the gridiron with some of the greatest programs in college – programs like Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. And they can have a border rivalry with Iowa.

Husker fans across the country will benefit from this move. The Huskers will now be easier than ever to follow. Have you seen the Big Ten Network?

It’s incredible. You can watch every Big Ten game each week. Not enough? They show replays of those games during the week.

There are so many exciting stories ahead in the coming months. How will the divisions shake out in the Big Ten? What will Nebraska’s 2011 schedule look like? Will Nebraska and Iowa play on Thanksgiving weekend?

This is just the beginning of a proud new start for the university.

Bo Knows

Who better to address the issue of Nebraska’s joining the Big Ten than Bo Pelini, a Youngstown, Ohio, native and Ohio State grad, class of 1990?

Oh yes, he also got his coaching start as an Iowa grad assistant.

“It’s a great conference. It has a great reputation. We’re excited about it,” Pelini said.

“But we’re in a situation where everybody knows my philosophy; we concentrate on the task at hand and the task at hand is what we have coming up here in September. Our full concentration right now is on being the best football team we can be in the fall.”

As for leaving traditions behind, “I’m not a real emotional guy,” he said. “You all know that.”

The answer was vintage Pelini, according to Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

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Left to right: UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, Athletic Director Tom Osborne.

Way-back Machine

Nebraska’s first out-of-state opponent was Iowa. Teams representing the schools played in 1891, the second year Nebraska fielded a team.

Iowa won 22-0 in Omaha.

The schools were members of the Western Inter-State University Football Association (1892-97) as well as the Missouri Valley Conference, established in 1907. Iowa, which joined what became the Big Ten in 1899, was briefly a member of the Missouri Valley Conference as well.

Iowa was a regular non-conference Husker opponent in the 1930s and 1940s, but the neighboring states’ football rivalry has been renewed only six times since then.

Nebraska won three of four in a home-and-home series with the Hawkeyes from 1979 to 1982. Former Cornhusker Barry Alvarez, the athletic director at Wisconsin, was an assistant on Iowa coach Hayden Fry’s staff back then, and “when it was over, he (Alvarez) said, ‘Man, I’m glad that’s over’ because he was a Nebraska guy and he was trying to beat us,” Tom Osborne said.

It Was Unanimous

Athletic Director Tom Osborne polled Cornhusker coaches about moving to the Big Ten, twice. And the vote was unanimous in favor of the move both times.

“I was just really surprised,” said Osborne, who expected a 60-40 or 70-30 split.

“I didn’t try to frame it in such a way that they would feel I wanted them to do that. So we voted one time, and then about three days ago, after I came back from the Big 12 meetings, I repeated the question. I got ‘em all in one room, and I said, ‘Now, this is getting serious now. This isn’t just speculation, and I really need to know,’ ” he said.

“You would’ve got the same response if we joined the NFL,” said Perlman.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks for this content goes to Aaron Babcock and Huskers Illustrated.

By The Numbers (http://tinyurl.com/HuskerBigTen) Founded (AAU Join Date)

Undergrad Enrollment

Champaign, Ill. (75,254)

1867 (1908)

30,895

Indiana University

Bloomington, Ind. (69,291)

1820 (1909)

30,394

University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa (67,062)

1847 (1909)

20,907

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich. (114,024)

1817 (1900)

26,083

Michigan State University

East Lansing, Mich. (46,525)

1855 (1964)

36,072

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minn. (388,020)

1851 (1908)

38,645

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lincoln, Neb. (251,624)

1869 (1909)

18,526

Northwestern University

Evanston, Ill. (74,239)

1851 (1917)

8,284

Institution

Location (Population)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio (747,755)

1870 (1916)

40,212

Pennsylvania State University

University Park, Pa. (38,420)

1855 (1958)

38,630

Purdue University

West Lafayette, Ind. (28,778)

1869 (1958)

31,290

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Madison, Wis. (223,389)

1848 (1900)

29,153

NEBRASKAMAGAZINE 3

By Mike Babcock, ’72

Without a doubt, Bob Devaney

would have looked at the historic proceedings at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Van Brunt Visitors Center and smiled.

The center is the university’s “front door,” welcoming visitors, alumni, guests and students. It is the “gateway” to the campus.

It officially welcomed Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany in late afternoon of June 11. And Delany, in turn, officially welcomed Nebraska to his tradition-rich conference.

Devaney would have approved. He would have delighted in the drama.

The Hall of Fame coach was responsible for restoring Cornhusker football tradition, beginning with his first season in 1962.

And he came from Big Ten country, by way of Wyoming.

Devaney was from Saginaw, Mich. He coached in Michigan high schools. And he began his college coaching career at Michigan State, under Biggie Munn and then Duffy Daugherty.

Daugherty was a Big Ten legend, like Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler. And he recommended Devaney when Nebraska went looking for a coach following the 1961 season.

Devaney built the program early on with athletes from the Big Ten region, from Ohio and Minnesota, from Illinois and Iowa as well as from Michigan. Bob Brown came from Cleveland; Larry Kramer from Austin, Minn. Walt Barnes was from Chicago; LaVerne Allers from Davenport, Iowa.

Wayne Meylan, a 1960s version of Ndamukong Suh, came from Bay City, Mich.

Devaney laid the foundation with a victory at Michigan in the second game in 1962. Before the season, he and his staff pointed to that game as essential to long-term success.

“We set a team goal that if we didn’t accomplish much else during the year, we were going to go up there and beat Michigan,” Devaney said looking back, many years later.

Michigan, 6-3 in 1961, had been hit hard by graduation. The Wolverines would finish 2-7 in 1962, their only victories against Army and Illinois. Even so, they carried the weight of the Big Ten. Winning at Ann Arbor gave the players belief in the coaches, who “felt that to get the program going again, to sell people on

4 summer2010

what we were doing, we had to beat Michigan,” Devaney said.

Cornhusker Athletic Director Tom Osborne, a graduate assistant on Devaney’s staff in 1962, used the word “culture” in talking about Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten. “I just think that it’s a comfortable fit,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re going to agree 100 percent of the time, but I do think that there’s a lot of similarity, an emphasis on work ethic, a lot of people are fairly blue-collar, pretty good values throughout the Midwest.

“So I think that’s going to help (in the transition).”

Work ethic, blue-collar, Midwestern values – such qualities characterized Nebraska football long before Devaney arrived. But they were obscured to some degree during the two frustrating decades that preceded his arrival. Winning brought them back to the surface.

Throughout Cornhusker history, there has been talk of membership in the Big Ten, in the early years wishful thinking because of the conference’s prestige; later as interesting but unrealistic speculation, based on geography and some shared history. Iowa was Nebraska’s first out-ofstate opponent. Minnesota was a nonconference constant on the schedule into the mid-1970s.

The culture of the Missouri Valley Conference (Nebraska’s first home) through the Big Six, the Big Seven and the Big Eight was significantly altered with the formation of the Big 12. Tradition gave way to expediency.

When Osborne and Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman first met with Delany to consider the possibility of membership in the Big Ten, “I was impressed by the fact he said, ‘You know, we’ve seen so many conferences just kind of get smashed together without any preparatory work, any idea of how you’re going to merge these cultures of these philosophies,’” Osborne said.

“And he said, ‘This is a big deal, and the reason some of these (conferences) don’t work so well is because that forethought and that preparation didn’t occur.’ ” Delany was right, said Osborne, “that sometimes the reason conferences come apart is you assume everybody understands each other and you assume the culture’s common, and all of a sudden you get thrust

together and you realize it really isn’t the way you thought.”

Nebraska’s culture, like its geography, is that of the Big Ten. “Fit is very important,” Delany said.

What those words reflected undoubtedly would have brought a smile to Devaney’s face.

An Academic Partnership The Big Ten is more than just an athletic conference. Big Ten schools share a wealth of academic ties – ties that make the move an even better and more exciting opportunity for Nebraska.

On June 16, UNL faculty and staff received the following communication from Chancellor Harvey Perlman: his afternoon we received notice that the University of Nebraska–Lincoln has been invited to join the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The CIC is a group of Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago. I am told the vote was unanimous; that all 12 CIC provosts affirmed the invitation.

This affiliation will bring many academic benefits to UNL. Our full membership in the CIC begins July 1, 2011, the same time as our membership in the Big Ten, however, the CIC will be working with our academic leaders and faculty during the coming year to connect UNL with the resources and networks of the CIC. The letter indicates that the membership of the CIC believes “the University of Nebraska will be an excellent fit with our academic values, collaborative spirit, and strategic initiatives.” We will of course formally accept the invitation. Kudos to all of you who have worked so hard over the last several years to put our academic programs in a position to be so recognized.

Many UNL faculty have ties to the Big Ten and CIC schools. Approximately 302 UNL faculty members of all ranks have received their highest degree from a Big Ten institution, plus 13 more from the University of Chicago. Approximately 30 percent of our tenure-line faculty earned their highest degree at a CIC institution.

We are honored by this invitation and grateful to the CIC for its quick action to extend this invitation for us to become a member. n

T

After more than 40 years as an awardwinning consumer affairs journalist, ace reporter Trudy Lieberman still gets her kicks by asking tough questions all along Main Street.

by Tom Nugent

T

rudy Lieberman (BA, ’68) was back in Lincoln, Nebraska, the other day – and doing the thing she loves most.

Armed with a reporter’s notebook and a Bic pen, she was pounding the downtown pavements in search of a good story.

For the 63-year-old Lieberman, a veteran consumer affairs journalist who’s won 26 national and regional reporting awards over the past four decades, there is no joy like the joy of knocking on doors and buttonholing strangers on the street ... in order to conduct interviews that will shed clarifying light on the urgent issues of the day.

Lieberman said she can’t get enough of it.

For many journalists, of course, wandering the crowded streets of a city in a quest for revealing insights and killer-quotes would be regarded as work – as a tedious exercise in asking repetitive questions, scribbling down repetitive answers and wearing out your shoe leather.

But Lieberman doesn’t see it that way.

“After 40 years of doing it, I still look at on-the-street reporting as great fun,” said the longtime contributing editor at the highly regarded Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). “Whenever I can, I grab my notebook and hit the street.

“For a long time now, I’ve been convinced that news media coverage of healthcare reform has been leaving out ordinary folks – many of whom will tell you that they don’t really have a clue about what the new healthcare reform act [the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] actually contains, or how it will affect their lives in the years ahead.

“In recent months, I’ve been doing a lot of on-the-street interviewing about healthcare reform in smaller towns like Scranton, Pa., and Columbia, Mo. So when I was invited back to Lincoln in early April [to receive the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications Outstanding Service to the Profession Award], I decided that I’d take some time to do some interviewing in the old Haymarket District downtown.”

With her reporter’s notebook at the ready, Lieberman spent several hours wandering around the Lincoln historic district near the old Burlington Train Station, which first opened for business way back in 1898. While drifting among the shops and restaurants that flank 9th and 10th Streets, she came upon several citizens who told her they were less than pleased by the March 23 enactment of healthcare reform.

Example: Near the Old Chicago “beer and pizza joint,” Lieberman met up with a 50-year-old shopper named Cindy who was less than enchanted by the new healthcare legislation.

“She was eager to chat,” Lieberman later reported on her “Campaign Desk” blog at the CJR (April 15, 2010), “and [she] didn’t like the legislation one bit. Why, I asked? ‘It doesn’t fix the problem and will end up costing people more money. How can they pass something nobody read and is based on [similar healthcare reform in] Massachusetts,’ she wondered. ‘I know it’s a fairly hot topic in Massachusetts, and it is not particularly well liked up there.’

“I pressed her on what would fix the problem,” Lieberman went on to tell her CJR readers. “‘Tort reform,’ she replied. ‘I don’t think you are going to fix it [the high cost of healthcare] until you do that. Small towns can’t get doctors. In rural Nebraska there’s a doctor shortage. They can’t afford malpractice insurance.’”

Good quotes! Once again, the intrepid reporter had found journalistic gold on a city street, simply by walking up to pedestrians and asking them questions. But this particular reporting foray also provided Lieberman with some pleasing nostalgia. As the roving journalist ambled NEBRASKAMAGAZINE 27

Lieberman met with UNL students when she returned to campus to receive the Outstanding Service to the Profession Award from the journalism alumni.

back and forth across the historic old market district, she was also remembering her own years in Lincoln ... four exciting years during the mid-1960s when she’d often passed through the old Burlington Station en route to the UNL campus from her family’s home in Scottsbluff.

It was quite a homecoming, to be sure.

As always, however, Lieberman’s main focus was on her work ... and on the reporting she was determined to get done while she was in Lincoln.

“I felt some emotion, no question about it, and especially when I was in the area near the station,” she told Nebraska Magazine during a recent interview in New York City.

“As a kid growing up in Scottsbluff, I’d often taken the old Burlington line [the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad] to Lincoln for 4-H activities of one kind or another.

“And then later, at UNL, the station was a link between my life on campus and the world of my hometown. So that walk around town – more than 40 years after graduating and going on to my first consumer-reporting job in Detroit [at the morning Detroit Free Press, in 1968], was pretty special for me.”

Lieberman was touched by her recent Lincoln odyssey, but she didn’t let it get in the way of her journalism. After several hours of reporting in the Haymarket area, she sat down and wrote her column for the CJR. Along with quoting several highly critical Lincolnites on the costs and benefits of the new healthcare reform legislation, she reported how some of the citizens had disapproved of Senator Ben Nelson’s so-called “Cornhusker Kickback” ... a controversial trade-off in which the veteran legislator arranged to secure $100 million in federal funds for Nebraska’s Medicaid program in return for his “yes” vote on the reform legislation package.

Soon after the column ran on the CJR

28 summer2010

blog, angry readers began to take potshots at the U.S. Congress, the U.S. news media and Lieberman’s Columbia Journalism Review. Snapped one especially irate blogger named Hartley Lord: “The lack of intellect expressed by the health care commentary of the ‘man on the street’ [in Lincoln] ... is the fault of a terrible presentation by congress coupled with a ‘lazy’ media.

“Today’s journalist accepts balanced reporting of sound bites as a panacea – paying no attention that a lie told often enough often becomes gospel.”

For the delighted Lieberman, the snappish commentary by the miffed bloggers was sweet music, indeed. Far from being offended by a blogger who described her as “lost in CJR-land” and totally out of touch with the kind of down-home, anti-Washington sentiment that has been galvanizing the “Tea Party” movement of late, she was actually quite pleased to read the acerbic commentary that followed her April 15th column.

“Those kinds of comments are fine with me,” she said with a cheerful laugh. “I mean that’s the whole point of journalism, isn’t it – to get people talking and thinking about public issues of the day, and then to report that discussion as clearly and insightfully as possible?”

As a journalism professor who’s taught the craft at several New York City-area universities in recent years (while also publishing scores of health columns in the Los Angeles Times and in-depth stories and commentary for The Nation, along with five books on consumer and media topics), Trudy Lieberman said she’s still a huge fan of that famously simple definition of journalism which was reportedly first uttered by the immortal William Allen White: “Find out what’s going on – and then tell people!”

INTERVIEWING PHIL SORENSEN: ‘I WAS PRETTY SCARED’ She was born and raised in Scottsbluff, and she said she will be forever grateful to her Polish-immigrant-father (Abe Lieberman) and her first generation-American mother (Belle Appel Lieberman, whose background was also East European) for teaching her what may have been the most important lesson of her life.

“Both of my parents were very thoughtful,

very open-minded people who encouraged me to think for myself,” Lieberman recalled.

“My father was a junk peddler who’d come through Ellis Island [as a recently landed immigrant], and he didn’t have a great deal of formal education.

“But he was an extremely intelligent man who was also wonderfully supportive of his daughter, and he was always telling me to go for it, and that I could be anything I wanted to be, if only I would work hard enough. When I was a kid he would always say, ‘You need to be seen and be heard,’ and I grew up believing that I could have a significant impact on the world.

“I can remember wanting to be a newspaper reporter by the time I was in junior high school ... and then later, listening to JFK’s inauguration speech [1961] as a freshman at Scottsbluff High School and vowing that I was going to do something in my life that would make the world a little better place.”

After landing on the UNL campus in the fall of 1964 (“My mother heard they had a really good journalism program”), Lieberman moved into Raymond Hall and began studying the craft of newspaper reporting in earnest. “I remember taking these really demanding journalism courses from Bill Hall [later the dean of journalism at The Ohio State University, and now deceased] and [the late] Neale Copple [R. Neale Copple, former UNL journalism dean],” she said, “and the two of them really challenged me. They taught me how to report, and I still use a lot of the lessons they taught me today.

“On one occasion – I was taking an in-depth reporting class with Neale – and he assigned me to write a profile of the then-lieutenant-governor, Phil Sorensen. I was 20 years old, and I didn’t have the faintest idea how to proceed. So I asked Neale what I should do, and he just said: ‘Why, call him up and ask for an interview!’

“So I did. And then I walked on over to the [Nebraska] State Capitol with my notebook and did the interview. I was pretty scared ... but Sorensen was very patient with me, and I wrote the story and it wasn’t too bad.

And I soon realized that I could do this stuff. I was going to be a journalist, and I could hardly wait to get started.”

She didn’t have to wait long, either. By the time the fleet-of-foot scribe graduated from UNL (May, 1968), she had already landed a fabulous job as one of the nation’s first-ever “consumer affairs” reporters ... at the 650,000-circulation morning paper in Detroit, the Free Press.

ON HEALTHCARE REFORM: ‘I DON’T HAVE A CRYSTAL BALL’ During the next eight years, the remarkably hard-working Lieberman earned a growing national reputation as one of the country’s most accurate and effective reporters. By 1977 – after spending a year studying economics and business at Columbia University as the winner of a prestigious Knight-Bagehot Fellowship – she was firmly ensconced at Consumer Reports, the hugely popular (as in, “4 million regular subscribers”) general circulation magazine dedicated to helping readers make informed decisions on such crucial financial topics as life insurance, real estate, retirement planning and health insurance.

She was fully launched. Having spent several months studying healthcare in Japan as a Fulbright Senior Scholar (1993) and now playing at the top of her game, Lieberman in 1994 signed on as a contributing editor at the CJR ... and also became a regular contributor to such esteemed publications as The Nation and the Los Angeles Times. Along the way, she won ten different National Press Club awards for her contributions to consumer reporting, in addition to seven citations from the Society of Professional Journalists and two National Magazine Awards.

Having published five books (including her 2000 study of modern journalism, “Slanting The Story,” already regarded as a classic by many print reporters for its incisive assessment of the impact of conservative think-tanks and lobbying organizations on contemporary news reporting), Lieberman these days divides her time between reporting for CJR, teaching university courses on journalism and giving frequent talks and lectures around the country on such subjects as healthcare reform. She is completing her sixth book – this one about health reform, to be published by the University of California Press – and has recently stepped down after five years as president of the Association of Health Care Journalists, which she helped build into one of the leading professional journalism organizations.

So what’s her bottom-line take on the groundbreaking new measure that Barack Obama signed into law late last March?

“At this point, it’s very hard to be sure exactly what will flow from healthcare reform,” she said. “I think the best thing

about the bill was the Medicaid expansion, which will undoubtedly make healthcare much more available for about 15 million lower- income people. And I think it’s also good that the law will apparently make it much more difficult for insurance companies to arbitrarily cancel policies on people who are ill.

“On the other hand, there are a lot of related issues that haven’t really been addressed yet – such as affordability and taming the cost of medical care. I think the economics of healthcare reform are an open question, and it’s by no means clear whether or not the ultimate costs of reform will be manageable. And at the end of the decade, 23 million people will still be uninsured. The system is not really universal.

“On balance, I think it’s probably better to have passed it than not to have passed it, but there are some very troubling questions that haven’t been answered. I don’t think anyone knows how it’s all going to play out at this point – and I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, either.”

As for her own future ... Trudy Lieberman at 63 says she has “no plans whatsoever” for retirement, and that she hopes to “go right on doing what I’ve been doing for the past 40 years, which is just trying to shed a little light here and there, so that people can make better choices about the things that affect their lives.”

Happily married for the past 36 years to Andrew Eiler, currently the director of legislative affairs at the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, Lieberman has a 25-year-old daughter (Kirsten) who works for NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. She’s also a totally committed New Yorker, these days. “I loved growing up in Scottsbluff,” she said with a smile of quiet nostalgia. “People in the town were very supportive and encouraging. But I’ve been living here in New York for so long [she and Andy inhabit a rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment located just off fabled Union Square] that I can’t imagine any other lifestyle.

“As a journalist, I’m grateful that I wake up eager to learn new things each day.

After all these years, I’m still charged up about reporting and I’m still eager to hit the street with my notebook, whenever I can. Having a reporter’s window on the world is the best job someone can have.” n “Trudy Lieberman is one of the leading investigative journalists writing on health-care issues in America today.

Many of her reports have had wide national impact, attracting the attention of policymakers, academics and the media.” — Business Wire

Lieberman Blasts “Incoherent” News Media For Lousy Reporting On Healthcare Reform During her 40-year career as a consumer affairs reporter, Trudy Lieberman has published thousands of articles and authored five books (now working on a sixth) aimed at helping ordinary readers to understand key issues that affect their wallets and pocketbooks.

Along the way, the indefatigable Lieberman has also nailed down 26 different national and regional journalism awards for her clear, precise, accurate reporting.

As a longtime contributing editor at the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) – the gold standard for news media criticism in this country – the former UNL student often writes in-depth critiques of mainstream print and electronic coverage of major issues.

So how would this feisty, tell-it-like-it-is news analyst grade the U.S. media for their reporting on the recent struggle to pass healthcare reform?

Her answer doesn’t require a whole lot of space on the page: “F!” To understand why she gave the newsies a flunk on this issue, all you have to do is read the first three grafs in “An Rx for Reporting” – an essay by Trudy Lieberman in the March/April issue of the CJR. (http://www.cjr.org/feature/an_rx_for_reporting_1.php)

An Rx for Reporting “Press coverage of the effort to reform health care has been largely incoherent to the man on the street. The three hundred or so posts I have written about health-care reform for CJR.org over the past two years tell the story of media coverage that failed to illuminate the crucial issues, quoted special interest groups and politicians without giving consumers enough information to judge if their claims were fact or fiction, did not dig deeply into the pros and cons of the proposals, and gave tons of ink and air time to the same handful of sources.

“By now it’s a familiar critique – the press did not connect the dots, there were too many he said-she said stories, not enough analysis, and so on. And yet, after a decade in which the inadequacies of traditional press strategies – objectivity, top-down coverage, the primacy of the ‘scoop,’ etc. – became ever more apparent to those of us who care about these things, those very strategies failed the country again on a story of monumental importance to every citizen.

“Traditional journalism as practiced by the nation’s major news outlets, even as it has been recreated on the Web, is just not good enough for a story as big and complex as health care. n

NEBRASKAMAGAZINE 29

Gene Budig, whose first few months were spent in a Nebraska orphanage, went on to become the president of three major American universities and then the “baseball czar” of the American League. While raising almost $1 billion for college scholarships and distinguished professorships – and while deciding several on-the-field disputes that had a major impact on the Great American Pastime – the actionloving Budig thrived on the kind of high-adrenalin decision-making pressure that would leave most people looking for an exit. His take-home message, at the age of 71: “Life is a marvelous gift, and I’m the most fortunate man I’ve ever met.”

By Tom Nugent

0 1 0 2 30 summer2010

ig d u B ogs Gene D r e v i R n rlesto Cha

“I remember the moment when he arrived,” Budig said during a recent interview in New York. “He came in unannounced, and he scared the entire staff. He didn’t say anything to them – he just stormed in. There was this long hallway, and I’m there at the end of it, and suddenly there he was, bigger than life.

“So I offered him a chair. I said, ‘Please sit down.’” And he said: “That won’t be necessary; I won’t be here very long.’ And it was then that he told me what he thought of baseball executives.

“It wasn’t pretty. He also pointed out that as a former university president, I was obviously ‘over-qualified’ to serve as the president of the American League. Of course, I had already been warned by some of the other team owners that I would be ‘tested’ by Steinbrenner, and that he could be a real bully, if you allowed yourself to be pushed around by him.”

Budig wasn’t about to let that happen, however.

“I listened to him carefully and politely,” he recalled. “Then I thanked him for taking the time to drop by and offer me some advice on how to do my job as president of the American League.”

While gazing calmly at the snappish Steinbrenner – and while refusing to be rattled by his intentional mispronunciation of “Budig” (as BUD-ig, rather than the correct BYOO-dig) – the steely-eyed AL president refused to blink.

In the end, it was The Boss who seemed to lose his cool. Intent on proving that his tirade had achieved its desired effect (even though the target had remained poker-faced and unaffected throughout), the irked Yankee owner barked at a Budig staffer as he departed the premises for his limousine down on Park Avenue: “Well, I think he got the message, all right!”

But Budig wasn’t intimidated by that first encounter, as it turned out.

In the years that lay ahead, until the end of his presidential term in 2000, Budig fined The Boss several hundred thousand dollars in total penalties for throwing high-profile tantrums of one kind or another – usually during season-ending playoff games when Steinbrenner was desperate to win at all costs.

In one celebrated incident during a Yankee AL championship matchup with the Seattle Mariners in 1995, Budig slapped Steinbrenner with a whopping $50,000 fine for suggesting that an umpire calling balls and strikes was in urgent need of an eye exam.

Budig reviewed the scorching post-game comments by the Yankee Mugwump, and it didn’t take him long to decide that Steinbrenner had crossed the line.

One morning back in the spring of 1994, an angry man named Steinbrenner decided to pay a visit to a soft-spoken, mild-mannered gentleman from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Steinbrenner’s first name was George ... but most of the people who worked for him – or read about him almost daily in the New York City news media – referred to him simply as The Boss.

George Steinbrenner was the billionaire owner of the fabled New York Yankees professional baseball franchise, and he was famous for pushing people around. Get in his way, and he’d roll over you like a runaway 18-wheeler and never look back.

On this spring morning 16 years ago, the rumbling 18-wheeler was about to make a surprise visit to a gentle-voiced educator for whom he’d already devised a thoroughly sardonic nickname: The Doc. The showdown took place inside a high-rise office building on stately Park Avenue – the elegant headquarters of the American League’s newly installed president, one Gene A. Budig (B.S., ’62; M.A., ’63; Doctorate, ’67). A diminutive man who wears thick, steel-rimmed spectacles that give him the look of a cheerfully meditative owl, Budig was a former UNL English major who’d already served as the president of three major American universities.

Only a few months before Steinbrenner’s trek along Park Avenue, the American League team owners had surprised the baseball world by selecting the low-key, self-effacing Budig as their brand-new president.

Predictably, Steinbrenner had been appalled by the selection.

What the hell did a college “egghead” know about the rough-andtumble world of pro baseball? And where would this “ivory-tower professor” find the steely nerve required to discipline pitchers who threw at hitters’ batting helmets ... or to overrule the incompetent umpires who’d undoubtedly be making stupid decisions that would cost the Yankees important victories in the days ahead? (Describing the new league president to a Big Apple sports reporter, The Boss soon made headlines by thundering: “I’m not sure what Dr. Budig’s experience is, [and] I’m not sure when the last time he wore a jockstrap was!”)

Showdown.

On this mild spring morning 16 years ago, Steinbrenner had decided on impulse to drop by the AL president’s office and put the fear of The Boss into him.

NEBRASKAMAGAZINE 31

Newspaper Cub Lands Blockbuster Interview!

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spaper reporter never forgets. t was the kind of moment a youthful new reporter was one Gene A. Budig.

The year was 1961, and the youthful king as a cub on the Lincoln His assignment: find a way – while wor an interview with one of the get to Star and attending UN L on the side – e Hall, the founder of the mighty titans of American business: Joyce Clyd Hallmark greeting card empire, who had , recently returned to his native David City . for a brief visit , Budig, barely 22 years old at the time An . him nst knew the odds were agai intensely private man, the millionaire entrepreneur rarely granted newspaper interviews. But Budig’s editor at the Star was had insisted ... and the reporting tyro h. trut of ent mom now facing the Standing on the front porch of the Hall home in David City, the jittery Budig took a deep breath. Then he rapped on the door.

Thirty seconds passed ... and the imposing front door finally opened. It was the titan’s sister Marie ... and she did not look happy to see the cub.

“I identified myself and asked if I l– could have a few words with Mr. Hal ’t do that,” the didn just l Hal Mr. that d and she explaine a door swung open behind her, then t 71-year-old Budig remembered. “Bu and then he nodded and said: ‘Come and there he was. He listened to me ... on in and let’s talk!’” ed up and talked at length about “It was a remarkable exchange. He open of Hallmark, and he told me how his life and times, and about the founding cards on the streets of David City.” he’d gotten his start by selling penny post l would also have an For Budig, the interview with Joyce Hal and soon after becoming the ... unforgettable sequel. Twenty years later the former cub reporter would call chancellor at the University of Kansas, s needed to build a major new on Hall’s son Donald in search of fund pus. academic complex on his university cam lt was the architecturally resu the Donald was happy to help ... and ies on the KU campus, toward magnificent Hall Center for the Humanit million dollars. which the Hall family donated several life,” said Budig. “That meeting “It’s amazing how things work out in me to go see him in Kansas City two with Don’s father opened the door for us launch a terrific academic decades later, and that meeting helped resource. career, and knocking on that door “I think I’ve been very fortunate in my moves I ever made.” n in David City was one of the luckiest

“I knew that if I allowed him to get away with blasting our umpires – while referring to them by name – I would lose all credibility with the rest of the owners,” said The Doc. As the embattled AL president mulled his decision, he felt no fear. Why should he? Gene Arthur Budig, who had spent the first few months of his infancy in a Nebraska orphanage, and who had gone on to become a Nebraska gubernatorial aide and then the president of three major American universities (Kansas, West Virginia, and Illinois State), had already overcome some formidable odds in his extraordinary life ... and he would not be cowed by the glowering visage of the roughest and toughest man in American sports.

“I saw what I had to do,” Budig remembers with a quiet smile, “and I knew that I didn’t really have a choice.

“I thought about it for a day or so ... and then I brought the hammer down.”

Although The Boss didn’t like it much, he paid the fine on time – and he even made a few suggestions about which charities Gene Budig should select to receive the $50,000, once the check had cleared.

“George and I went around and around for a few years,” said Budig with a smile, “but we became great friends in the end, and I was delighted to be able to profile him in my recent book about nine remarkable American success stories, “Grasping The Ring” [University of Nebraska Press]. He complained about my portrayal of him, of course – and then ordered 25 copies for his grandkids!

“George Steinbrenner is a tough, tough man, that’s for sure. But I also think he’s been very good for baseball. He’s brought a great deal of attention to the game, and that has helped to sell a lot of tickets over the years. Say what you will about George, he’s a truly dedicated baseball executive.

And what a lot of people don’t realize is that he’s actually got a kind heart.

“Every time I ever asked him to write a check for a charitable cause, he not only came through ... he often wrote that check for two or three times the amount I was hoping to get!”

AN AIDE TO THE GOV, AT AGE 24 orn in Lincoln in 1939 (“My first address was the St. Thomas Orphanage”), Gene Arthur Budig was

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soon adopted by a family from McCook ... where he grew up as the son of an underpaid auto mechanic and a nurse’s aide, both of whom struggled to get by on their slender earnings.

“My early days in McCook certainly weren’t easy,” the 71-year-old Budig recalled, “and as I grew up and went to school, I soon realized that my parents were locked into their situations by lack of education. My father was a kind, thoughtful man ... but he had quit school in the sixth grade, and he wasn’t going to be able to do anything more than work on cars for a living. Unfortunately, both my parents lacked the tools to improve their lot in life. Without higher education, they were in no position to dream.

“I remember as a kid thinking about how hard they worked and how little they had to show for it, and I realized that I wanted to do something with my life that would have an impact. Even before reaching high school, I think I understood that education is the great equalizer, and I was determined to get the best education I possibly could.”

Although he spent a lot of hours studying and working part time as a schoolboy, the youthful Budig also found time for what became one of his great passions: baseball.

“I played Little League,” he said with a glint of pride, “and if I may say so, I was a much better hitter than [Nebraska] Sen. [Ben] Nelson (B.A. ’63; M.A. ’65; J.D. ’70), who also grew up in McCook and was only a year ahead of me.

“By the time I hit the sixth grade, I already knew all the players in the major leagues. I knew their histories, and I knew their batting averages. I became a real student of the game ... never dreaming, of course, that one day I’d end up as the president of the American League.”

Along with hitting baseballs and earning high grades most of the time, the hard-charging Budig early on discovered another talent that would stand him in good stead: the ability to shape powerful sentences in English. That gift paid off handsomely, he said, after the local newspaper in McCook assigned him to write feature stories about student life in the westNebraska town of about 7,500.

“The Daily Gazette was very good to me,” he recalled with a gleam of nostalgia, “and the experience I got writing stories for them was extremely helpful in landing me a reporting job at the Lincoln Star, once I started taking classes at UNL.”

Somehow, the remarkably ambitious Budig found a way to work full time at the Lincoln paper while also taking a full academic load. Arriving on the UNL campus in the fall of 1958, he soon capitalized on his writing skill ... and on his connection to the local newspaper. “I was quite fortunate, really, because my professors in the English Department would often read my stories and comment on them.

“They would also offer suggestions on how I could go about making my stories deeper and richer, and the discussions we had were very helpful in broadening my outlook as both a writer and a newspaperman.”

Budig’s growing number of contacts in the Lincoln area soon paid off in another way: even as he worked on his UNL master’s degree and then a doctorate in education (1967), he was getting to know elected officials from one end of the Cornhusker State to the other. Within a few years, he was tapping those contacts with masterful skill ... en route to becoming a key administrative aide to Nebraska Gov. Frank B. Morrison (196167) ... at the tender age of only 24.

“Looking back, it’s a little hard to believe,” he said. “I was extremely fortunate, that’s all – but I soon found myself writing speeches for Gov. Morrison, and then a little later, I became one of a dozen or so gubernatorial assistants who would prepare speeches for LBJ and Hubert Humphrey. For me, being able to accomplish all of this while still in my 20s was a hugely important lesson – because it showed me the power of the written word, and how far your writing skill could take you, if you were willing to work hard at it.”

What followed was a meteoric career as a chief executive in the rarified world of higher education. After four years at ISU, Budig landed the top job at West Virginia University (1977) and then at the University of Kansas (1981). During his 22 years as a university president, he raised more than $900 million for student scholarships, endowed professorships and infrastructure development.

So how difficult is it to spend your days in a ceaseless quest for major financial contributions from well-heeled alumni?

“At first I felt a little uneasy about asking people for money all the time,” Budig recalled with a chuckle. “But then one day I suddenly realized: Hey, this money isn’t for me. I’m not getting any of it; these resources are going to be spent on helping students to get an education, and on building new classrooms and medical research facilities, and on bringing some of the world’s best teachers and researchers to campus.

“From then on, it was actually rather fun to travel all around the country, looking for ways to raise all of these endowment funds from hardened business people who wanted you to account for every single dollar.”

During his six years as American League president, Budig reconnected with his lifelong passion for baseball. While mediating numerous play-calling disputes on the field and presiding over continued growth in attendance at the nation’s major-league ballparks, he realized all over again that he loved the game with a deep and abiding affection. Three years ago, he made sure that his connection to the game will remain unbroken ... by purchasing a New York Yankee minor-league baseball affiliate, the Charleston RiverDogs.

Along with co-owner and business partner (and superstar movie actor) Bill Murray – whom he describes as both “the funniest man in America and a terrific businessman” – Budig said he’s now having the time of his life as a baseball owner in his own right.

He’s also very proud of the fact, he said, that his Charleston ball club not only admits kids under 12 to games free of charge on Sundays ... but also lets them consume all the hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn and soda they want without paying a single dime.

Along with urging the RiverDogs on to victory several times a week,

ENJOYING HIS NEW LIFE – AS CO-OWNER OF THE RIVERDOGS fter spending several years as Gov. Morrison’s chief of staff, Budig signed on as an aide to then-UNL Chancellor Clifford Hardin. Because of his earlier experience in the statehouse, he was perfectly qualified to serve as the popular Hardin’s liaison to state and federal government. By 1973 – and by now armed with his UNL doctorate in higher education administration – the upwardly mobile Budig emerged as a prime candidate to run a university ... and in that year nailed down the first of his three university presidencies, at Illinois State.

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NEBRASKAMAGAZINE 33

Budig On Baseball

American League (1994-20 00), During his six years as President of the e’s most revered superstars. gam Gene Budig got to know many of the from the American Pastime.

Here’s his take on six legendary figures ger-outfielder, who died of e, superstaAugr slug Mantlholi Mickey ust, 1995: “He was a human tragedy. tions from alco sm in complica ete in the history of sports, but he Mantle was perhaps the most gifted athl played five or six more years if he’d took no care of his body. He could have taken care of himself.” and the , batting legend for the Boston Red Sox illiams.400 Ted W was our “He 1): (194 on seas plete com a ng duri er to hit over

last play poken, and was also a hero in two John Wayne. He was big, strong and outs teams – the Boston Red Sox and wars as a [combat] pilot. He loved two a man of remarkable insight and the United States Marines – and he was courage.”

the Charleston-based Budig flies back to New York City frequently in order to work at his other job ... as the Distinguished Professor and Senior Presidential Adviser to the non-profit College Board, which advocates for better writing and science teaching in the world of higher education, among other national education goals.

In recent months, Budig has also spent a lot of time in New York as the chairman of the upcoming “Pinstripe Bowl” football game, which will later this year pit a top gridiron team from the Big East college ranks against a high-ranking team from the Big 12. In a twist of irony that he now finds delightfully amusing, the Pinstripe Bowl (to be played yearly from now on at the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium in late December) was the brainchild of none other than ... New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner!

of New York Yankee immortal, and one ggio, the Joe ’sDigreaMa k he thin ’t don I ... test legends: “DiMaggio was so complex

baseball that all of his fame would someday was ever truly happy. I think he feared driven a shrink crazy. That shrink be taken away from him. He would have aggio as a patient.” would have retired after having Joe DiM who received , a 22-year major-league hitting phenom but is now acknowledged as one little media attention during his career minimal media coverage until his of the game’s greatest players: “He had when his stats finally emerged and closing years [Aaron retired in 1976], e his achievements]. He was never challenged the whole world [to recogniz until after he retired. But he handled it accorded the recognition he deserved represented his sport with grace.” well, because he’s a humble man who

Hank Aaron

demeanor l of Fame pitcher known for his fierce bson, Hal Bob Gi en to driv was “He rs: hitte wing brushback pitches to intimidate and thro pitchers of all time. He was so excel, and he became one of the greatest he was actually menacing in that focused and so dedicated to winning the major leagues revered him as a his appearance. But every manager in ected.” professional who was universally resp

“The Boss,” the notoriously ner, akaNew einbren GeoredgeandSt York Yankees since 1973: blunt-spoken owner of the

hard-nos so mild-mannered and soft-spoken, “He would always kid me about being being that. But that’s the way he was, as if there was something wrong with t people did not like him on that especially on the first meeting ... and mos first meeting. talked issues that involved money “He was also very shrewd. And if you ever s that represented dollars to him – – like television issues or scheduling issue good friends eventually, but he wasn’t you’d better be prepared. We became office and demand to see you alone. easy to deal with. He’d walk into your of the room, He’d ask you to send your assistants out not them. you, see to and he’d always say: ‘I’m here American [as you ng payi e we’r I know my stuff, and League President] to know your stuff. ing!’” “‘Let’s get the cards out and start play

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Having raised three kids with Gretchen Van Bloom Budig [BA, ’71], his wife of 48 years, and having risen to the highly esteemed rank of eminence grise in both the sports world and the world of higher education, Gene Budig is today enjoying his life as an author who’s published half a dozen books on sports and higher education and also as a veteran teacher who’s proved that “America truly is the land of opportunity, for those who want to work hard and continue educating themselves throughout their lives.”

Above all, he said, his life is about “giving back,” and his message is a message of gratitude: “When I look back at what I came from – as a little baby living in an orphanage, and then as the adopted son of an automotive mechanic with a sixth-grade education – I feel very fortunate, indeed.

“Really, when I think about it ...

I’m the luckiest man I know.” n