Another Member of the Old Guard Goes Too Soon

There aren’t many people outside of the old Big Eight (or even the state of Kansas) who would be familiar with the name Bob Frederick. That’s okay. Frederick was the former athletic director at Kansas, presiding primarily in the ‘80s and ‘90s. His primary accomplishment? Hiring a non-name assistant from Nortth Carolina named Roy Williams.
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↵Unfortunately, Frederick was killed in a freak accident, sustaining fatal head injuries in a bicycle crash on the streets of Lawrence Thursday night. He hung on through the night, but passed away Friday.
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↵An avid bicyclist and fervent bike safety advocate, Frederick was most certainly wearing a helmet and adhering to all other safety practices. Helmets can only do so much. sadly; there are just some things a human body of any age can’t take.
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↵Frederick was a KU man from the beginning.

He played basketball at Kansas, ended up earning three degrees from the school, then coached there (among other schools) before stepping in at AD in 1987. Even after his resignation from the post in 2001, he remained a professor until present day.
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↵But yes, that resignation. He did so after deciding to cut men’s swimming and tennis from the athletic budget, then being beseiged by pressure from alumni and a campus protest. The scrutiny just wasn’t for him:↵↵⇥“Sports-talk shows, the Internet, chat rooms -- all those things have↵⇥made it more difficult for head coaches and ADs and even for↵⇥chancellors,” he said at the time. “I’m looking forward to being out on↵⇥the farm and spending more time with my family.”↵↵This is not to say he was an unscrupulous man; he was far from it. As a matter of fact, Roy Williams eulogized him in the exact opposite fashion:↵↵⇥To me, when you think about an athletic director that has the complete↵⇥imagination, the complete resolve every day to do things for the good↵⇥of the student-athlete, I can’t imagine anybody being more concerned↵⇥about doing things the right way than Bob,” Williams said. “He was the↵⇥most ethical, the most moral person I’ve ever known.”↵↵But the days of those being the guiding the defining characteristic for an athletic director are starting to end. It’s now expansion and running a business, the athletes turning into more of employees than students. That’s not to cast all athletic directors in a negative light, just an acknowledgment that their priorities have changed. Now, sadly, one maiinstay of that era (and one of the great college towns: Lawrence, Kansas) is no longer with us.↵