In the weeks before he fired Al Bohl as athletic director at Kansas University, Chancellor Robert Hemenway turned to friends and colleagues from KU and around the country for advice.

From some, he heard Bohl was doing exactly what he’d been hired to do: rebuild a moribund football program, build excitement around it and be a more outgoing salesman for KU athletics than his predecessor had been. Others told the chancellor that if Bohl were still athletic director at Fresno State University, he would be fired because of allegations of financial misdealings and academic misconduct while he was in charge there.

One topic never came up.

“We didn’t talk at all about his relationship with Roy Williams,” said Bill Tuttle, a KU professor and member of the KU Athletic Corp. board. “We were there to talk mostly about his financial situation and the charges of academic misconduct at Fresno.”

There had been speculation that Williams would leave his job as KU’s basketball coach and return to North Carolina, in part because of his displeasure with Bohl. But Bohl had problems other than Williams’ ruffled feathers.

Not long after he came to Mount Oread from Fresno State Aug. 1, 2001, Bohl was linked to an improper transfer of athletic department funds at FSU. The funds-transfer brouhaha was overshadowed this year by news Fresno State had received a letter of inquiry from the NCAA about alleged rules violations, mainly in men’s basketball.

Reggie Robinson, former counsel to Hemenway and now president and chief executive officer of the Kansas Board of Regents, called Wednesday’s firing “disappointing” and “difficult.”

“I’m assuming the chancellor didn’t fire him for reasons that were apparent” at the time KU offered Bohl the job, said Robinson, who was chairman of the search committee that recommended the hire.

That’s because, Robinson said, Bohl was the personification of the criteria the search committee had been instructed to look for in an athletic director.

“As a committee, we and folks in the athletic department were thrilled to be able to bring in Al Bohl and put on his lap the challenge of bringing some success to our football program — and pursuing excellence across the board,” Robinson said. “When you go from that to a point in just a couple of years where, for whatever reason, things aren’t running smoothly, you’re disappointed.”

Tuttle agreed.

“A lot of people felt it was time for a change, and it was time for a change primarily because they wanted someone more outspoken,” Tuttle said. “He did exactly what people wanted him to do. … He had the personality KU was looking for at the time.”

But the questions about problems at Fresno State continued to hang over Bohl’s head, as did his apparent inability to get along with many in the athletic department.

“No matter how much you try to have a good fit, and make sure you have somebody who has the capacity, and will fit in the environment … as much as we try to make it science, there’s a lot of art and a lot of hope that’s a part of the decision you have to make,” Robinson said.

Tuttle said the situation — reaching from the athletic department to university administration — was unique in his experience.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it that would go all the way to the top,” he said. “I think the chancellor perceived a bigger problem to be not firing Al Bohl and then Williams leaving. And in a situation like that, even the chancellor’s job could be in jeopardy.”