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http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/18323314.html?showAll=y&c=y

LSU A.D. expects plenty of victories

* By JORDAN BLUM
* Advocate Capitol news bureau
* Published: Apr 28, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Tucked in a cramped, windowless storage room serving as his transition office, Joe Alleva is flanked by stacks of LSU national championship Coca-Cola cans.

The lack of stellar décor holds little significance to LSU’s new athletic director. He’s too busy to notice his surroundings as he prepares to succeed Skip Bertman.

Alleva, 54, is preparing for the official move to LSU from basketball powerhouse Duke University on July 1. He describes the last few weeks as a “whirlwind.”

He was first contacted about the LSU job on a Friday —March 28 — and he accepted the job offer one week later.

Then he flew to the Final Four in San Antonio, where he interviewed and quickly helped hire new men’s basketball coach Trent Johnson of Stanford University.

“I’m glad it happened fast, because I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it,” Alleva said about leaving Duke after 32 years.

Now, Alleva is ready to meet the LSU community and fans.

“I’d like them to get to know me as a good person — as a good leader and a person who is passionate about the kids,” Alleva said.

“And I want to win,” he said.

“One of the big reasons why I came here is I believe LSU has the opportunity to win in anything they put their mind to.”

Alleva has a background in business and finance, but he doesn’t like to pigeonhole his areas of expertise that way. He touts his fundraising abilities, his administrative acumen and his ability to gauge people’s strengths and best utilize their strong points.

But Alleva doesn’t intend to bask much in the limelight of LSU sports. That isn’t his style.

“I believe my job is to help our coaches win championships and help our student athletes,” he said, “and make sure we do all that with integrity and within the rules.”

Chris Kennedy, Duke’s new interim athletic director, has worked with Alleva for about 30 years. Kennedy said Alleva is a relaxed, friendly guy and a man of great integrity.

“His philosophy is to hire good people and get out of their way,” Kennedy said. “Don’t micromanage. Let people exercise their talents.”

Alleva grew up in Suffern, N.Y., a village about an hour north of New York City’s Wall Street. He went to play football and baseball at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

He worked as graduate assistant football coach at Lehigh to pay for his master’s of business administration degree — an experience he said taught him he did not want to coach football for a living.

When it came time to finding a job, Alleva went to the Lehigh placement office and came across a Duke opening for a business job on the academic side of campus.

Alleva was actually planning for a career in hospital administration. But he was summoned to help with financial problems in the athletic department.

“That really proved to be a perfect situation,” Alleva said.

He ended up as the department’s finance director in 1980 and he became athletic director in 1998.

Jack Winters, director of Iron Dukes — the equivalent of the Tiger Athletic Foundation — said Alleva was great for Duke and he “hates” to see him leave.

A “great deal” of Duke’s fundraising and facilities growth happened because of Alleva, Winters said.

Not everyone at Duke is upset to see him leave.

Upon news of Alleva’s departure, Duke’s The Chronicle student newspaper wrote, “Goodbyes are never easy — well, except for this one.”

Author and Washington Post columnist John Feinstein said, “I’m grateful to LSU, speaking as a Duke alumnus.

“I just thought he was overmatched in the Duke job,” said Feinstein, a frequent Alleva critic.

Those criticisms are a combination of frustration over Duke’s football failures — two wins in the last three years — and the 2006 coverage surrounding the rape allegations against three lacrosse players, all of whom were eventually cleared. The local district attorney was disbarred.

Feinstein even admits that Alleva only deserves “minimal” blame for the lacrosse issue. But Feinstein said Alleva was never the right person for the job.

“He’s just not a leader in any way, shape or form,” Feinstein said.

LSU could be a better fit for him though, Feinstein said, because LSU has a strong department that Alleva only has to manage.

Alleva can only discuss lacrosse so much because of pending lawsuits. He said he is not being sued but may have to testify.

But Alleva does argue the right decisions were made to cancel the lacrosse season given the limited information available at the time.

“You just can’t believe everything you read,” Alleva said.

Kennedy said a lot of people even in the Duke community still have the wrong impression of how things played out.

“His (Alleva’s) role was not to make decisions,” Kennedy said. “It was to carry out.”

A bad 2006 for Alleva got worse when he needed 42 stitches after a boating accident. His son J.D. Alleva plead guilty to operating the boat recklessly in exchange for an alcohol-related charge being dropped, according to reports.

Alleva admitted they made the mistake of speeding, but they were hurrying to get to shore during a thunderstorm.

“There was no alcohol involved,” he said.

Alleva said he thinks LSU can win national championships in all of its 20 sports.

“I want to do everything I can to help those Olympic sports coaches win,” he said, “but not to the detriment of football, because I know football is king, and I want it to stay king.”

Alleva said he is eager to attend his first game in Tiger Stadium, joking that LSU’s spring game attendance exceeded Duke’s best-attended game all year.

It was “frustrating” that Duke lacked the “university commitment” for football, he said. That changed with the recent hiring of former Ole Miss coach David Cutcliffe, he said.

“At Duke, without that being a university priority, there’s only so much an athletic director can do,” Alleva said.

But now, Alleva wants to focus all his attention on improving LSU.

“That’s my goal — to try to make this place a little bit better every day,” he said.