The Work
October 31, 2008 4:07 PM
Baker & Daniels: An Athletic Director Factory
Posted by Zach Lowe
When Indiana University told Baker & Daniels partner Fred Glass that he was in the running for the athletic director job--a development Glass admits he really couldn't believe--he knew exactly whom to call for advice.
After all, it was only two months ago that John "Jack" Swarbrick, a former Baker partner, took the job as athletic director at the University of Notre Dame--another Indiana school known for its rabid alumni fans.
"It's almost surreal," Glass says. "But Jack told me it's the greatest job he'd ever had. He just warned me not to underestimate the impact it would have on my family, and that was my real concern. It's an all-consuming job, and I know what those are like."
Glass (right), an IU undergrad and law school alumnus whose mother, wife, and daughter all graduated from IU, accepted the offer last week.
Thomas Froehle, Jr., the firm's chair and executive partner, says he's not surprised the firm has lost two of its stars to big-time athletic departments. Baker & Daniels has been at the center of Indianapolis's transition from a podunk basketball town to a hub of professional and amatuer sports over the last twenty years. Swarbrick and other Baker lawyers were at the table in the 1980s when the city convinced the Pan-American Games to come to Indianapolis in 1987, a major coup that spurred the building of a track and field stadium and a world class swimming pool that today annually hosts the National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championships.
Since then, several major amateur sports organizations, including the NCAA, have relocated to Indianapolis, and the city landed the 2012 Super Bowl thanks to the work of a Baker team led by Glass and Swarbrick.
"We thought sports could be a way to bring a lot of economic development to the city," Froehle says. "Jack was a leader in that."
Glass jumped in when he joined the firm in 1993 after a stint as chief of staff for former Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh (himself a Baker alum). Starting in 2000, Glass spent about 75 percent of his professional time working as president of the city's Capital Improvements Board, a volunteer position that put him at the front of the city's efforts to land the Super Bowl and negotiate a new stadium deal with their beloved football team, the Colts. Glass got the Colts, represented then by Mayer Brown, to pony up $100 million for the $700 million stadium, which opened this year. He negotiated deals to get the rest from taxes on food and beverages and hotel room rates. The latter strategy helped the city raise money from nonresidents, a tactic one economics professor criticized at a recent conference on stadium financing. (Glass's response: "Only an egghead professor would suggest that getting people from outside the city to pay for the stadium is a bad thing.")
That kind of work has prepared Glass for the hothouse of Indiana, whose basketball program has been in a state of disarray since the school fired legendary coach Bob Knight in 2000 over allegations he choked a player. Glass won't touch the Knight issue -- he feigned having poor cell phone reception when the Am Law Daily asked if he would have fired Knight -- but he says his first priority is making sure all coaches follow the rules. The NCAA is expected to penalize the basketball program "any day now" over allegations that former coach Kelvin Sampson made illegal phone calls to recruits.
The second priority is making sure athletes do well in school and holding coaches accountable if they don't, Glass says. Winning comes third -- and Glass says he has no plans to lower academic admissions standards to do it.
"I look to Stanford," Glass says. "We want to be a top-notch academic institution with a great athletic program."
As for Froehle, he's sad to see another great partner go, but he's getting used to it.
"I look at our list of alumni and I sometimes wonder how we've survived," he says.
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