Canzano: A price to pay for a change of leadership
The story behind the exit of Scott Barnes at Oregon State.
Oregon State gently ushered Athletic Director Scott Barnes into retirement on Thursday, sprinkling a trail of Benjamins on the road to his beach house.
The official announcement came just three hours after I wrote a column noting that there was smoke filling the Gill Coliseum halls and an inferno raging beneath Barnes’ chair.
Ready for another prediction involving Oregon State?
Oregon State gently ushered Athletic Director Scott Barnes into retirement on Thursday, sprinkling a trail of Benjamins on the road to his beach house.
The official announcement came just three hours after I wrote a column noting that there was smoke filling the Gill Coliseum halls and an inferno raging beneath Barnes’ chair.
Ready for another prediction involving Oregon State?
Brace for the bill.
It’s going to be a doozy.
Barnes, 63, leaves his post effective Aug. 31 as part of the amended agreement. He’ll stay on and serve as a “senior advisor” for athletics through Aug. 31, 2027. The dates jumped out at me on the OSU news release.
Terms of the amendment to Barnes’ contract to reflect his move to an advisory capacity were not disclosed. But he’s definitely getting an extra year of pay at his current base salary ($928,836). At minimum, he’s also due two retention bonuses, $300,000 on June 30, 2027, and $225,000 at the end of his contract.
My back-of-the-napkin estimate: ~$1.5 million for Barnes to exit.
Who’s paying that?
Athletics?
Or does that come out of the campus budget?
On top of all that, Oregon PERS, the state’s public employees’ retirement system, uses the average of an employee’s three highest-earning consecutive years of pay. Barnes gets a nice boost there, too, on his way out.
Yes, Barnes had to go. Yes, Oregon State needed a new direction. But his exit involved some extra lettuce, underscoring a financial picture at OSU that was already not great.
There were a lot of nice things said about Barnes on Thursday. OSU President Jayathi Murthy said she was “grateful to Scott for his many years of dedication and commitment to Oregon State.”
He was a stabilizing presence and essential to the Pac-12’s rebuild. It wouldn’t have gone as smoothly without him. I reached out to Barnes to tell him that after Thursday’s retirement announcement. He thanked me. The Pac-12 rebuild is definitely part of his legacy.
Oregon State was facing a difficult reality with Barnes. He’d lost the room. The fan base wanted him gone. Donors were reluctant to get on board. Coaches were distancing themselves. There was no way Barnes could be walking around Reser Stadium next season while football was trying to find traction in the new Pac-12.
What was Barnes guilty of?
Being aloof, mismanagement, fostering poor department culture, alienating fans, and brushing off coaches, some of whom hadn’t spoken to him in months. But Murthy didn’t fire Barnes for cause. She squeezed him into retirement.
Remember, Trent Walker, the school’s star wideout, spoke out after the firing of football coach Trent Bray last season and said, “They fired the wrong guy.” He refused to elaborate when I asked him about it. And outside linebacker Kai Wallin posted a GIF on social media after Bray’s firing with the caption “wrong person.”
They knew.
So did you.
I’m not clairvoyant. It was just a matter of time for Barnes, and I was hearing fresh rumblings behind the scenes. The search firms were buzzing. Insiders noted a shift in urgency and tone. One staff member told me on Thursday: “If there was ever a time for the ‘keep your head down’ philosophy, it has been the recent weeks.”
I shared what I knew with my readers on Thursday.
Three hours later, OSU made it official in a news release.
Now, I’m bracing for cries from OSU coaches who are going to wonder why the school has two athletic directors on the payroll next year while their programs are barely scraping by.
It’s similar to the drama playing out currently at Kentucky, where Mitch Barnhardt was handed a golden parachute by his bosses. Barnhardt announced he was retiring and was given a job with a vague title — “sports ambassador” — along with a salary of $950,000 a year.
One of UK’s biggest donors sent a letter to the university president earlier this week, urging the school to reconsider. When the financials are released, prepare for the same at Oregon State. I’m thinking Murthy settled on the idea that it was just easier to give Barnes an advisory role (which he is unlikely to fulfill) and be done with the soap opera.
The next athletic director needs to create some distance from Barnes. The hire won’t need his guidance. In fact, the next AD would be wise to do a 180. Murthy needs to move on from Barnes as well. She doesn’t need the perception that he’s still a close cabinet member, advising her. Remember, she’s only in this current pinch because her AD wobbled in the last 12-18 months.
After Barnes built the football schedule for the 2025 season, I noted a change of energy. He had to buy games and sew a schedule together. These were unprecedented times. It was a time-consuming task. Barnes confessed to me after the 2025 schedule was finally completed, “I hope to never have to do that again in 100 years.”
Barnes threw himself into the Pac-12’s rebuild, burned out somewhere along the way, and lost focus on his primary job — looking out for Oregon State. His football hire (Bray) was a disaster. He waited too long to fill his deputy athletic director position, botched the Blueprint Sports NIL deal, and his general manager, Kyle Bjornstad, made an ethical stand and quit on Barnes.
The AD also ‘fake-fired’ Brent Blaylock, his deputy AD. Blaylock quietly remained on the payroll after being thrown under the bus for the Blueprint Sports mess. I’m certain Blaylock, Bjornstad, men’s basketball coach Wayne Tinkle, and some others shook their heads at all the grace being afforded to Barnes on his way out.
He didn’t give that courtesy to his subordinates.
There was blue sky over OSU’s campus on Thursday.
The Beavers got a new direction. This is a pivot point. OSU must get itself ready for July and the relaunch of the new Pac-12. The school has two new head coaches in football and men’s basketball. It will also have a new AD. This was not the master plan, but we all know what Mike Tyson said.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Oregon State will emerge from this. Donors will come back. Fans will show up. Coaches will coach. Players will play. A new athletic department regime will take over and present a fresh vision, and that’s what OSU needed. But there’s a price to pay for any change of leadership.
Oregon State is still on the hook for that.
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