Leadership and direction.

RAC staff and coaches have said Marion Creery told them it is a lack of those two characteristics that led to the firings of Interuniversity Sport Manager Terry Haggerty and Athletic Director David Dubois last week.

Dubois apparently lacked the leadership to run the Ryerson athletic department though he was president of the OUA, the league in which the Rams compete, for four years.

And Haggerty, it seems, lacked the ability to bring direction to the school’s varsity sports program, though winning percentage has improved and Ryerson has become a legitimate destination for provincial and national athletic events since he’s been a manager.

I interviewed a couple dozen people this week, both inside and outside the university, who worked for, with or around David Dubois and Terry Haggerty.

I heard many express shock at their untimely and undignified departure from the RAC, a heap of praise for their abilities as coaches and administrators, and no small degree of snickering at the idea that either Haggerty or Dubois was lacking in the skills or       temperament required to be successful athletic administrators.

Don’t get me wrong. Things still aren’t up to athletic snuff around here and never will be in my mind until there is a consistent stream of championship banners hung in Kerr Hall Gym. But under Haggerty and Dubois things were improving.

Consider: in the time Dubois and Haggerty have teamed in the athletics department, Ryerson has had more playoff appearances and top-10 individual OUA finishes than in the previous 10 years combined. Dubois and Haggerty were also key in recruiting the likes of men’s basketball standout Boris Bakovic, perennial volleyball all-star Ryan Vandenburg, women’s soccer phenom Tessa Dimitrakopoulos and Canada Winter Games gold medalist Joycelyn Ko.

Every coach, official and athletic administrator around the province that I asked told me they would hire Haggerty and Dubois in a heartbeat. But informed people with a tangible investment don’t always get to decide who runs athletic departments. At Ryerson, it’s Marion Creery, a bureaucrat with little or no experience in sports that determines who’s best equipped to run our athletics department. And apparently she doesn’t have to explain to you, me or even the people she fired why she did what she did.

So here we are once again in a Ryerson conundrum.

Dubois and Haggerty were fired by the school for ostensibly not doing their job. But everyone and their uncle say Haggerty and Dubois were good leaders and good men, and the facts back that up.

Marion Creery, on the other hand, won’t even admit the pair was fired – perhaps due to some misplaced aversion to the F-word. She has ducked questions about her own background in athletics and embarrassed the school with a ham-handed management strategy of the issue in the national press. Off the record, many officials have told me that they “don’t know what the hell,” Ryerson was thinking.

Me neither.

By any informed calculation, David Dubois and Terry Haggerty are quality athletic administrators. Ryerson will miss their dedication and leadership in the years to come.