Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Ticket buyers, donors and corporate partners were asked in recent years to increase financial support as Arkansas State increased its commitment to athletics. Minimum Red Wolf Club donation requirements for parking and seating buy-ins have been on the rise. Season ticket prices went up for all levels outside of general admission.

“Fans seem to understand the price of winning has gone up,” Dean Lee told me in a March interview.

Turns out fans aren’t the only ones paying the cost.

Lee became a casualty Tuesday of the expectations he helped create, getting reassigned from the athletic director position he held for 10 years. During his watch the Red Wolves added quality coaches in football (Gus Malzahn), basketball (John Brady) and baseball (Tommy Raffo), but could never seem to break through with fans and donors at the level it takes to sustain success.

If you’ve been paying attention to the goings on within the Arkansas State system, Lee’s reassignment to a position elsewhere in the university shouldn’t come as a total surprise.

If you haven’t been paying attention, let’s get you up to speed: Arkansas State welcomed new system president Dr. Chuck Welch in April of 2011. Welch named Tim Hudson chancellor of the ASU campus in Jonesboro a little more than a year later.

That’s a good bit of change at the top within the last 16 months.

Changes in leadership are often a precursor to adjustments elsewhere. It’s likely happened in your office. We see it all the time in coaching when a new hire brings in guys with which he has a certain level of comfort.

There was not an appropriate level of comfort with Lee as it pertained to athletics.

ASU will soon invest milliions into new facilities, particularly for football. Its head coaches are among the highest paid — and in Malzahn's case THE highest paid — in the Sun Belt. There's a need for better money for assistants and recruiting budgets.

Lee, who verbally agreed to a three-year extension in 2011 that wasn’t official until last month (and still honored by those in charge), had yet to convince those around him he was capable of achieving his vision for the athletic department.

Hudson ultimately made the call to replace Lee. He had the full support of Welch and had convinced many on the board of trustees and major donors that change was needed. They'll get their choice in place, and the new AD will begin evaluating those working in the athletic department. That is how these things work.

It’s now or never for the Red Wolves.