Crunch Time for January 20, 2010

Former president Frederickson got ball rolling for Eastern's FCS championship

By PAUL DELANEY

Staff Reporter

There were many people who played a huge part in Eastern's national championship win.

Rather than name names, suffice it to say there was a tremendous overall effort both on and off the field in the Eagles' 20-19 victory over Delaware at Frisco, Texas on Jan. 7.

Earlier in the afternoon outside the Eastern Alumni Association gathering in the Fanfest area at Pizza Hut Park, there came the brief glimpse of a face that may have had more to do with getting the team to this point than anyone.

No, former coach Dick Zornes was regrettably home ill and watching on television.

But former Eastern president, Dr. H. George Frederickson did make the 500-mile trip to Texas from his home in Lawrence, Kan. where he now serves as a Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at the University of Kansas.

“Oh I follow (Eastern athletics) very, very carefully and I have for many years,” Frederickson said. “I got pretty personally invested in Eastern affairs – although I've been away and have not intervened in any form with the respect to the work of my successors – I have followed it closely and Eastern has always meant a lot to me.”

The 76-year-old Frederickson was obviously still quite pleased with the result of the work he started upon his arrival in Cheney in January 1977.

“Oh yes, that was very, very exciting,” he said of Eastern's championship.

Frederickson came on board at Eastern in a time of huge change. Not only was he trying to run herd over the school's controversial transformation in athletics from NAIA to NCAA Division I, but the change from a teacher's college to university designation as well.

“The prior president was a wonderful and beloved man,” Frederickson said of Emerson C. Shuck. “But he was relatively passive and risk-averse.”

The board of trustees were looking for someone who had more of a public presence and was more inclined to take the risks necessary to build Eastern's new brand. “That's what they wanted and that pretty much suited my preferences and personality,” Frederickson said.

The risks he took on behalf of the trustees put Frederickson up for criticism and ridicule. “In many circles I was not held in very high regard in those days,” he said.

One of those bold moves was what turned out to be traveling the seemingly endless road to get Eastern into the Big Sky. Without a history of having played schools in the conference before, Eastern needed to prove, as Frederickson said, “they were a good partner, and reliable and stable.”

Up until that time Eastern's athletic traditions had all been what Frederickson referred to as “western.” They generally played only state schools such as Central Washington and Western Washington, plus a sprinkling of the Whitworths, Pacific Lutherans and Puget Sounds. “We didn't compete looking eastward and southward,” he explained. “We were sort of a stranger to them so that was part of it.”

So were some regional turf wars.

“Remember that Gonzaga was in the Big Sky in those days as a so-called basketball-only member,” Frederickson explained. “Idaho was the last university holding out and the reason they were holding out was purely no more than competition.”

The sense was if Eastern got into the Big Sky they would eventually be real competition for recruiting players and the attention of the fans. When the vote finally came in 1986 it was unanimous, Frederickson said. “A vote required six or seven,” schools to approve, he added.

It was Eastern's women's basketball team, at the time coached by Bill Smithpeters, that may have played a large part in gaining the trust of conference members to allow the new pledge to the fraternity.

“We got a lot of credibility from the athletic directors in the Big Sky because of the effectiveness of our women's basketball program,” Frederickson said. “We can trust them, they're reliable, when we schedule them they show up,” was a big factor in the vote.

As for Zornes, the man hired to guide the move to D-1 on the most visible sport of football, “We asked him to do something extremely difficult,” Frederickson said. “We asked him to be competitive when he had many fewer scholarships and without the resources of the other schools in the Big Sky, particularly Idaho, Boise State and the two Montana schools.”

Upping the ante of athletics was one thing, but Frederickson also ruffled the fur of the Cougars in Pullman with Eastern's push into Spokane. But that's an entirely separate tale of trailblazing.

Despite having been removed from the school nearly a quarter-century – he left Eastern in 1987 – Frederickson still keeps up to date on the school in which he invested so much of his heart and soul.

While he knows the part he played, he's more than satisfied with a place in the background, mindful that, “The players that played in that game in Texas, none of them were even born yet,” when he last set foot on campus. Frederickson and his wife Mary plan to return to Cheney for Friday's celebration.

Sounding tongue in cheek, Frederickson said, “Believe it or not there have been weeks and months go by when I didn't even think about Eastern.”

Jan. 7 was not one of them.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].