Happy Hour with John Gaskins

Some things have changed drastically at Augustana in the eight years Josh Morton took the reins as athletic director in 2018.
 
Other things have remained the same at the private Lutheran liberal arts university in the middle of Sioux Falls.  
 
In both cases, it's been a pretty good thing.
 
The Vikings applied to move up from Div. II and into the Summit League, where they would join old North Central Conference rivals SDSU and USD, but the application was denied.
 
Instead of just doing nothing, Morton, Augie president Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, and other university leaders decided to pivot.
 
Oh, what a pivot it was.
 
Augustana created a Div. I hockey program — which in three years has exploded into a Top 20 operation — and raised money to build a $74 million state-of-the-art hockey arena while remaining in Div. II in all other sports. Most of those teams continued to perform at or near the top of the Northern Sun conference. 
 
But you knew that. What you may not know is how Morton and company accomplished it.
 
It starts with being able to raise money. Lots and lots and lots of money from wealthy individuals and companies. 
 
Augie hired Morton from Michigan State, where he was assistant athletic director and raised $23 million in major gift commitments in his five years there, according to his Augustana website bio.
 
Before that, as associate athletic director at North Dakota — a long-time Div. I hockey powerhouse — Morton had a front row seat to that school's transition from Div. II to Div. I in all sports besides hockey, a process that required — you guessed it — raising a lot of money.
 
Surprisingly, Morton had zero fundraising experience prior to that UND job, his first in athletic administration. He had spent over a decade as a local TV sports anchor and reporter in Fargo and Charleston, South Carolina.
 
But what Morton did have is a background since birth of the life and "language" of college athletics as the son of a head football coach who won a Div. II national championship at North Dakota State (1979-83), bolted through a couple of winning seasons at Div. I Tulsa (1985-86), then got swallowed in the quicksand of Big Ten football from 1987-89 at Wisconsin.
 
Don Morton made his own pivot before age 50. He transitioned into the business world and became the chief of staff the CEO of a Fargo software company that Microsoft eventually bought in 2001. That CEO is Doug Burgum, former North Dakota governor and current U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
 
By age 16, Morton saw first-hand the peaks and one valley Don had navigated in high-stakes college sports. And he witnessed his father's successful pivot firsthand.
 
Hear all about how all this played out in Happy Hour's 76-minute conversation with the former walk-on quarterback at UND.
 
Plus, plenty of updates and views of major happenings in Augie athletics over the last few years:
 
* Hockey coach Garrett Raboin's decision to eschew interest (if not an offer) from blue blood Minnesota and stay at Augie
 
* 20-year national championship softball coach Gretta Melsted's recent departure to coach the Gophers and the hiring of replacement Colleen Powers from Div. III St. Catherine
 
* Why did Augie hire as its new volleyball head coach Erika Bute, a 25-year-old who was playing for the school just three years ago?
 
* The Elmen Center's $3 million renovation and the pivot of basketball games back to campus from the Sanford Pentagon
 
* The 2024 departure of 21-year men's basketball coach and 2016 national champion Tom Billeter and the decision to replace him with assistant and former player Cody Schilling
 
* The hiring of women's basketball coach Nate Vogel, which came after the decision to fire Jillian Flores Bennett after just one season (7-20). The latter replaced legend Dave Krauth, whose teams produced 33 winning records in his 34 seasons

Imagine, if you will:
 
One of the greatest, most electric, most prolific football players in South Dakota State University history almost never played football.
 
That was a shocking revelation during Cade Johnson's 72-minute Happy Hour chat on Tuesday.
 
In the first 28 minutes, we catch up with Johnson's life now. He's in pro football limbo while working in Omaha, the metro area he grew up.
 
Hear what it was like to be the son of a Husker football legend, Clester Johnson, who was also a state wrestling and state hurdles champion both men's high school alma mater, Bellevue West.
 
Why did Cade not hit a gridiron until he was 16? How did he become such an elite player so fast?

He shared plenty of stories about the Jackrabbit A-listers he played with (and for) during his 2016-19 career, making the hour-plus chat worthwhile:
 
John Stiegelmeier
Dan Jackson
Jason Eck
Eric Eidness
Taryn Christion
Dallas Goedert
Jake Weineke
 
The explosive wideout from the Omaha area was a first-team All-American in his third and final season wearing blue and yellow in 2019, and he owns the school records for most receiving touchdowns in a game (4) and a season (17). 
 
Johnson burst onto the season as a redshirt freshman in 2017 by setting the single season SDSU record for kickoff return yards (839) and was the first Jackrabbit to score more than one touchdown on a kickoff return in a season in 54 years. One of those scores came on a 95-yard bolt in the third game of his career. 
 
Now a commercial realtor back in Omaha  — while still training for an NFL call that could come any day — Johnson ranks in the top 10 in every career receiving category and would have threatened the top spot in all of them had he played a fourth season of eligibility in Brookings.
 
Instead, COVID cancelled the 2020 season until the spring of 2021. By then, Johnson had decided to become eligible for the NFL Draft. He wasn't selected, but he signed an undrafted free agent contract with the Seattle Seahawks, whose uniform he wore for three seasons. He also recently tried out with the Los Angeles Chargers.

Imagine, if you will:
 
One of the greatest, most electric, most prolific football players in South Dakota State University history almost never played football.
 
That was a shocking revelation during Cade Johnson's 72-minute Happy Hour chat on Tuesday.
 
He shared plenty of stories about the Jackrabbit A-listers he played with (and for) during his 2016-19 career, making the hour-plus chat worthwhile:
 
John Stiegelmeier
Dan Jackson
Jason Eck
Eric Eidness
Taryn Christion
Dallas Goedert
Jake Weineke
 
The explosive wideout from the Omaha area was a first-team All-American in his third and final season wearing blue and yellow in 2019, and he owns the school records for most receiving touchdowns in a game (4) and a season (17). 
 
Johnson burst onto the season as a redshirt freshman in 2017 by setting the single season SDSU record for kickoff return yards (839) and was the first Jackrabbit to score more than one touchdown on a kickoff return in a season in 54 years. One of those scores came on a 95-yard bolt in the third game of his career. 
 
Now a commercial realtor back in Omaha  — while still training for an NFL call that could come any day — Johnson ranks in the top 10 in every career receiving category and would have threatened the top spot in all of them had he played a fourth season of eligibility in Brookings.
 
Instead, COVID cancelled the 2020 season until the spring of 2021. By then, Johnson had decided to become eligible for the NFL Draft. He wasn't selected, but he signed an undrafted free agent contract with the Seattle Seahawks, whose uniform he wore for three seasons. He also recently tried out with the Los Angeles Chargers. This means Johnson has excellent Happy Hour stories about: 
 
Russell Wilson
Pete Carroll
Jim Harbaugh
Josh Allen
 
The last of those names was the quarterback who threw Johnson's older brother C.J. plenty of touchdown passes at Wyoming. Johnson's younger brother, Keagan, played wideout at Iowa and Kansas State. 
 
Their father Clester was the leading receiver on Nebraska's 1995 national championship team, one of the highest-scoring and most dominant teams in Div. I history.
 
So why did Johnson almost never set foot on a gridiron? And who nudged him toward Jackrabbit stardom and living out his NFL dream? 
 
Hit play, and find out, Bucko! 
 
Cheers!

The Jackrabbits hoisting a comined 20 men's and women's basketball tournamemt championships in packed Denny Sanford PREMIER Centers, and their 20 subsequent memorable trips into March Madness.
 
The Coyote women going through four such experiences of their own.
 
SDSU football not just joining the FCS ranks, but becoming back-to-back national champion. USD finding its groove in Div. I and reaching the quarterfinals three times, including a near-stand alone game on ABC. 
 
John Daly, Ernie Els, Berhard Langer and other PGA Tour legends teeing it up in Sioux Falls for some of the biggest PGA Tour Champions crowds of the year, every year.
 
Div. I hockey regionals, an NCAA women's basketball Sweet 16 and Elite 8, and Div. II national championships in hoops, wrestling and volleyball.
 
The Huskers, Hawkeyes, Cyclones and Gophers basketball squads gracing the Pentagon along with other college powerhouses and Hall of Fame coaches in regular season games that count.
 
Iowa vs. Gonzage in a Top 5 tilt on CBS on a Saturday afternoon.
 
State of the art youth and high school sports facilities at a complex that make for training grounds of blue chip athletes from all over the region, boosting their college prospects.
 
We could go on. Sioux Falls and South Dakota has experienced a sports boom that was unthinkable 25 years ago. 
 
None of it would exist without T. Denny Sanford.
 
The credit card magnate and health care/community philanthropist is worth $2.4 billion and spent $2 billion on charitable pursuits in local medicine, the arts, and certainly athletics.
 
Sanford died on Saturday at age 90.
 
Sioux Falls Live editor Patrick Laley wrote a detailed obituary and joined Happy Hour fro. Orion Pub on Monday to discuss Sanford's legacy. 
 
It is a complicated and controversial one that goes beyond the rightfully glowing tributes so many of South Dakota's most powerful political and business leaders penned in the hours after the announcement of Sanford's death.
 
Lalley is not afraid to address the blemishes on the Sanford file.