The 23-year professional relationship between former athletics director Clarence Underwood and MSU officially ended June 30 as his contract expired.
Unlike his predecessors, Underwood, 68, left the department quietly - the same manner in which he achieved success. No groundbreaking final decision, no huge press conference and, most important to the university, no controversy or abrupt departure.
“He was never trying to get credit himself,” said Doug Weaver, who served as athletics director from 1980-89. “He was just trying to get the job done.”
Underwood, MSU’s 15th athletics director, headed the department for more than three years before completing his last day in the office June 14.
Weaver, who worked with Underwood from 1980-83, said he was impressive with everything he did at MSU.
“He was also one of the strongest academic assistants in the department for many years,” Weaver said. “He wrote the book on that area of athletics.”
During his MSU career, which was at times tumultuous, Underwood served as assistant athletics director, assistant athletics director for compliance, associate athletics director and senior associate athletics director before taking control of the department in April 1999 on an interim basis. From 1983-90, Underwood served as deputy commissioner of the Big Ten.
Underwood took over for former athletics director Merritt Norvell, who abruptly resigned after four years to take a position with DHR International, a Chicago-based executive-search firm. When Underwood stepped in, bringing unity to the department was one of his main goals.
“(Before) it seemed like everybody was going their own way,” Spartan baseball manager Ted Mahan said. “I think Clarence has brought the department together and made us all really help each other out more to make it a better place, not just try to help ourselves out more, but to try to help the entire unit.”
In addition to unifying the department, Underwood enjoyed one of the most successful athletics periods in recent MSU history. Since he assumed the reigns of the department, MSU has claimed a national title in men’s basketball and won two football bowl games.
His tenure also saw the reinstallation of natural grass in Spartan Stadium, the construction of the Alfred Berkowitz Basketball Complex - a practice facility for the men’s and women’s basketball teams - and the ongoing renovations at Jenison Field House and Ralph Young Field. The reconstruction of the track and field facility will include artificial turf for the women’s field hockey team.
Many felt Underwood’s assignment to athletics director was seven years past due. Underwood was one of five finalists for the position when Merrily Dean Baker became MSU’s first female athletics director in April 1992. During the process, Underwood had the support of two trustees, a minority student group and then-acting athletics director George Perles, who rehired him to MSU in 1990.
“I needed him,” the former football head coach said. “He’s an author, he’s a Ph.D. and he’s a brilliant man. Clarence is as good as it gets.”
Underwood earned a master’s degree in physical education and counseling in 1965 and his doctorate in administration and higher education in 1982 from MSU.
But Underwood’s career at MSU hasn’t gone without controversy. In February 1994, The State News reported the then-senior associate athletics director had written a confidential memo to MSU President M. Peter McPherson asking for permission to fire then-men’s basketball head coach Jud Heathcote. In his request, Underwood had skipped over two direct superiors, including the athletics director.
Underwood said in March 1994 that he wasn’t influenced by others at MSU, and in an April 1999 interview that he respected Heathcote but hadn’t talked to him in “years.”
“I just decided that I didn’t want to follow that route. I made that option,” Underwood said in 1999. “If folks want to linger on something that happened five or six years ago, that’s their problem.”
Heathcote, who led the Spartans to the 1979 NCAA Championship, declined to comment on his relationship with Underwood.
In May 1999, during his first weeks as interim athletics director, Underwood made headlines again. During an interview with The State News, he made comments some construed as sexist.
“Women don’t usually go out for sports because they love the sport,” he said. “Men go out for football, for example, because they love the game. Women go out for sports because of a scholarship.”
The report caused an uproar among students and trustees and endangered his prospects at becoming athletics director. Underwood said the comments were taken out of context and apologized for the remarks.
Then, in April 2001, Underwood cut men’s gymnastics from its varsity status to comply with Title IX codes, which require gender equity in athletics.
Men’s gymnastics was the only sport cut in Underwood’s term, but was the third men’s varsity sport cut in four years. Lacrosse and fencing lost their varsity status and women’s crew was added in 1997.
But field hockey head coach Michele Madison, who has spent a decade in her position, said Underwood deserves credit for MSU’s image on and off the field.
Underwood was the first athletics director appointed from within the department since Perles.
“I think that helped because he’s been here so long that he knew the history and he knew the people,” the field hockey Big Ten Coach of the Year said. “So he had insight into where the department came from and how it was at the moment.”
Mahan, who has worked with the baseball team for 11 years, said Underwood’s tenure had been superior.
Mahan said Underwood was great at talking to and building relationships with student-athletes.
“He related to the student-athlete,” Mahan said. “I think that was really important to us and that was what Clarence cared about the most - making sure our student athletes have a good experience.”
When Underwood’s chapter in MSU sports history closes, legendary hockey head coach Ron Mason’s began. “I’m inheriting a good staff, good coaches, and a lot of good things happening in terms of facilities,” Mason said.
