CLEMSON -- Earlier this week Graham Neff made the first major move of his months-old AD tenure by deciding to fire Monte Lee.
While there's been a dizzying array of high-impact things going on since he took over -- NIL, the direction of college athletics as a whole, facilities improvements, and adding new sports to Clemson's offerings -- this was his first time under the magnifying glass, so to speak.
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Since 2003, the lack of head-coaching turnover with Clemson's three most popular sports has been remarkable and probably even amazing.
The Tommy Bowden-Dabo Swinney transition in 2008.
The Oliver Purnell-Brad Brownell transfer of power in 2010.
The Jack Leggett-Lee moves in 2015.
That's it.
Three coaching searches for Neff's two predecessors, Dan Radakovich and Terry Don Phillips, over almost two decades.
Yeah, more amazing than remarkable. Pretty much unheard of.
After Lee's team got smoked in the ACC Tournament to make it seem likely that Clemson would miss out on the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row, some folks out there speculated that Neff would give Lee another year.
That idea was based in part on the fact that Neff decided to stick with Brownell a few months ago. Conclusion being that Neff, so early in his tenure after Radakovich's departure for Miami, was still getting a feel for the AD job and wasn't yet ready to make a "tough" decision.
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We never really understood that logic. The decision to stand pat with Brownell was based on a number of factors, including the late-season surge by the team and the presence of a franchise-type presence in P.J. Hall. It was not because Neff was too early in his tenure to make such a major move.
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If you're off the Brownell train and think Neff should've made a change in basketball, we're not here to tell you you're wrong or right. The point is more that it doesn't make much sense to compare the baseball and basketball situations.
Basketball is a few years removed from something it almost never does (Round of 16 appearance), and one year removed from something it seldom does (NCAA appearance).
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That, combined with the aforementioned factors (late-season surge, Hall's presence and promise), led Neff to side with the status quo with the fairly clear understanding that Brownell needs to reach the NCAA Tournament next season to remain in Clemson.
Again, if you want to argue he should've made a change that's fine. But you cannot argue that his premise for staying the course was not logical.
The failure of baseball under Lee is surprising. Full disclosure: We thought the decision to part ways with Leggett was the right move, and we thought Lee had everything the program needed to get the Tigers back into the business of going to Omaha on a regular basis.
Under Leggett the program had slipped. Then it tumbled under Lee.
Tradition matters, and Clemson's baseball legacy dictates NCAA Tournament appearances as the bare minimum. Under Lee, the Tigers went consecutive seasons without reaching that.
Neff's decision on baseball was based in large part on the belief that Clemson is a Top 15 program. Some might argue that times are so different now that the Tigers are no longer in that select group, but you can't rationally argue that they shouldn't aspire for far more than the results of the past decade.
A bit of an under-the-radar part of the decision on Lee: For all the positives he brought as Clemson's coach, and there were many, he wasn't as active and engaged on the fundraising end as you'd probably like your head coach to be in this era.
For all we've heard about the disadvantages of the Academic Common Market and other schools out there using their massive endowments to circumvent scholarship limitations, there are opportunities out there for Clemson to get creative in its own ways and maximize its resources.
If there are baseball donors out there who are eager to help in ways that include NIL and the head baseball coach doesn't appear all that enthusiastic about it, that's a fairly prominent unchecked box when you're the AD making a difficult decision on whether to make a change. It's certainly not the most important factor, but when the results on the field aren't there you need every piece of off-the-field capital you can get.
And if we're comparing the baseball decision to the basketball decision, it should be pointed out that Brownell checked that box through his networking with donors and relationships built in that realm.
As much as Neff respects his predecessor and mentor, it's clear he desires to go about his business in a more human way.
Radakovich was much more the CEO type, and that manner produced the feeling among some that he was perhaps more treacherous in how he went about handling some big decisions.
Neff seems a devoted disciple of the idea that Clemson's culture makes it different, a culture rooted in relationships and being nice to people.
That devotion was reflected in his treatment of Lee during and after the first major decision he's made as AD. Lee shared with SportsTalk's Phil Kornblut earlier this week that he was treated in a totally first-class way by Neff and sports supervisor Kyle Young.
This isn't to say Radakovich's way was the wrong way and Neff's is the right way; we won't be able to fairly evaluate Neff's job performance until years from now.
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But we can say Neff's methods are different from what some folks out there expected at this early juncture.
He's young. He's a nice guy committed to building relationships.
But he's also very much able to make the tough, bottom-line decisions that come with running a major athletics department.
You can have one and the other. That's what Clemson appears to have in its first-year AD.
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