Member Profile - M. Dianne Murphy
Murphy Calls for Patience from Fans, Alumni
By Anand Krishnamurthy - Columbia Spectator

After a prolonged search, Dianne Murphy replaced John Reeves as Columbia's athletic director. She began her tenure at Columbia by presenting her "Vision for Athletics" in her introductory speech. Last week, Spectator sat down with Murphy for a three-part interview, the third of which focused on Columbia's current athletic programs.
 
Spectator: "The football team is 1-7 on the season; there is a second-year head coach—what are your thoughts on that program?"
 
Murphy: "I think the football team is moving absolutely in the right direction. I have no qualms about what's going on there. I am very encouraged. Are we all disappointed? Do we all wish we weren't 1-7? Yes. We all wish we were 7-1. But I've been in this business a long time. A lot of times the second year is harder than the first. ... I am very pleased with what our coaches are doing. I'm very confident in Bob Shoop; I think he's absolutely the right coach for this position. I am very confident in what our young men are doing. I've been around these guys—and they really care. They're busting their tails. They're doing all the right things. It's not going to happen overnight. People are going to have to be patient."
 
Spectator: "Men's basketball is one of the programs that made a splash last season, with respect to the excitement that it brought to Columbia. How do you feel about men's basketball?"
 
Murphy: "I feel the same way. I am absolutely convinced we have the right coach. I think they're doing all the right things. I think he's got a really good coaching staff. I think he's recruiting outstanding student-athletes, outstanding young men. Right now, we haven't played a game, so there's a lot of optimism. I have a lot of confidence in what Joe's doing. I encourage people to be patient and be supportive."
 
Spectator: "Some of the teams which have struggled over the past few years have been the women's teams—volleyball, field hockey—teams which didn't win Ivy League games. Frankly, it was embarrassing. Historically, a lot of these women's programs have struggled at Columbia. What is it about the women's programs at Columbia that have made them so unsuccessful?"
 
Murphy: "Very simple. It's time and it's years as a varsity sport ... How long have we had men's sports at Columbia? A very long time. I don't think it's as complicated as people like to think it is—the number of years that Columbia has been a co-ed institution, the number of years the women's sports have been varsity sports. Some of them are relatively new sports. We're going to have to be patient.

If you look at some of these sports, there's no question that we've had disappointing results. But I also know we also have different coaches now. I also think that we, as administrators, have to take responsibility, in that we've got to help our coaches understand recruiting better—particularly in the Ivy League. And that's our job as administrators: to help our coaches."
 
"I think we've also got to do a better job with the [Columbia-]Barnard Consortium, in terms of being more creative and utilizing that partnership in a much more effective way. I'm not sure we've done as good a job as we can with that. I think that we, as administrators, have as much responsibility in helping our women's teams be successful. We have to be more supportive. We may need to put more recruiting dollars into our women's teams. They're at a disadvantage in some ways, because they don't have a lot of alumni that we can call on to help us in terms of our fund-raising. Sometimes their budgets, therefore, aren't as much as we need because we don't have the quantity of alumni who graduated from our programs that the men have."
 
"I think it's a combination of things. I don't want to make any excuses about this. This has got to change. It is unacceptable. There is no question—hear that loud and clear—what has happened is not acceptable. But I'm not going to say it's the coaches' fault. It's all of our responsibilities."
 
Spectator: "How much time will it take to see the manifestation of some of these changes put into plan? Do you anticipate them occurring by the end of the academic year?"
 
Murphy: "Some changes are going to be very slow and subtle. Some changes are going to be more dramatic and instant."
 
"By the end of this academic year, you're going to see some changes. What are they going to be? Probably—I don't want to be held to this—there are going to be some organizational changes. Different reporting structures in terms of who is responsible for which areas. I hope we begin to see some cultural changes in terms of how we're doing business, some infrastructure changes in terms of policies and practices and systems that we need to put into place or change or tweak. Those are the more immediate changes."
 
"I hope we can see some friend-raising and fan-raising come by the end of the year. It's been my experience, from being at Denver, those are the things which usually will come. How it comes? What comes after that? It could be any one of those things."