Unlike Others, Cohen Groomed to be UW Leader, But Biggest Challenge Lies Ahead
Jennifer Cohen brings an element to the job of University of Washington athletic director that none of her predecessors had.
She was raised on Husky football. Knows the attraction. Hasn't lost it.
Cohen grew up as a young girl going to games in Montlake with her father, posing for photos with coach Don James and others, and swept up in the deeply traditional extravaganza that mesmerizes Seattle and beyond.
She's emotionally invested in everything purple and gold, though she earned college degrees from San Diego State and Pacific Lutheran, which wasn't a connection for her UW predecessors.
Cohen has received high marks for acting swiftly to protect her big-money sports programs, hiring Mike Hopkins as men's basketball coach within a week of firing Lorenzo Romar, and elevating Jimmy Lake to football coach within a day of Chris Petersen resigning.
On her watch, the UW athletic program has enjoyed a College Football Playoff appearance, a return to the NCAA tournament and various championships.
Her true test of UW leadership, however, will be how well she restores the deeply damaged Husky athletic department and its weighty budgets to acceptable levels whenever the COVID-19 pandemic permits it.
Cohen, one of five women running Power 5 athletic programs, seems well received by donors and the general fan base, though former players aren't completely sold on her, thinking she could do more for them.
She follows in the ever distant footsteps of Barbara Hedges, a former USC athletic director turned Husky leader (1991-2003), who James and others felt sold out the football program during its 1993 conference investigation.
Athletic directors are supposed to be like good trial lawyers. In this case, Hedges let her client down.
She provided no cross examination, no objections, no pushback against a league determined to make an example out of the UW football program for a bunch of minor violations in the shadow of a national championship run.
James, who died in 2013, maintained that probation, scholarship losses and his resignation never would happened had Mike Lude remained as the Husky A.D. during the sudden upheaval.
Lude, of course, was pushed out in a 1991 power play following a victorious Rose Bowl season by UW president William Gerberding, who felt Lude and James both wielded far too much power and he wanted a more subservient person to answer to him. Hedges fit that role.
She never was going to find widespread acceptance among the UW fan base, especially after coming from USC and hiring former UCLA quarterback Rick Neuheisel as her football coach. The L.A. schools were supposed to be arch enemies, not cohorts, in Seattle.
Hedges left the UW without opposition.
Mild-mannered and scholarly Todd Turner next arrived from Vanderbilt to the UW (2003-2008) and made the school's worst coaching hire in modern times in the standoffish and stubborn Ty Willingham and he presided over the darkest era of Husky football — 1-10 in 2004 and 0-12 in 2008.
Wrong man for the wrong job. Willingham and Turner.
Scott Woodward came next (2008-2016) and to his great credit he engineered remodeling of Husky Stadium in grand fashion. Yet he was never going to stay anywhere long, especially so far away from the Southeastern Conference. He arrived from LSU and exited Seattle for Texas A&M in 2016 and he since has resurfaced as the LSU athletic director.
Which brings us to Cohen.
Sports Illustrated's national writer Greg Bishop elegantly profiles her here as this energetic, hardly bashful new-age athletic administrator who took an unconventional path to her job. Take a moment to read about her journey. She was patient, uncertain and then opportunistic.
She's done well in aiming big to bring success to a school often on the cusp of greatness, but never quite there.
She's not going anywhere.
She's deeply invested in the school.
She's going to defend Husky football at all times.
Her true legacy, however, will be what comes next.
Cohen and her athletic-director peers nationwide are tasked with a huge almost impossible challenge — righting multi-million-dollar operations that have always been insanely leveraged and are now staggering from the intrusion of coronavirus on packed stadiums and nonstop fund-raising.
She'll need all of her energy to fix it.
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