This Wichita State departure is the end of a 34-year era

A young Joe Kleinsasser was so afraid of his loud-talking teacher at Hillsboro Elementary School in 1960, he used to run three blocks back home as soon as he got to school.

“My parents had to keep hauling me back,” he said. “People don’t realize how insecure I was. . . . You wonder, how does a guy end up reffing basketball and being a spokesperson for a university?”

Kleinsasser, 67, has been Wichita State University’s spokesman for 34 years, and he had a 40-year career as a top prep basketball official.

“I still doubt myself at times,” he said. “It never completely leaves, but maybe that’s been a positive in a sense.”

Kleinsasser’s WSU career, which will end with his Dec. 18 retirement, has been somewhat oddly bookended by two major sports announcements: the end of the school’s football program and the end of basketball coach Gregg Marshall’s tenure.

“I suppose you could look at it as kind of ironic,” Kleinsasser said.

Though he’s not always the one to make the announcements himself, Kleinsasser often is the media’s first stop to get information at the school.

“I personally like others to be quoted more than me. Less chance to put foot in mouth.”

When he is quoted, Kleinsasser employs humor when appropriate, such as when the school’s name was misspelled as “Wichita Staty Universite” on a water tower, and he echoed a social media post: “Does anybody have any way of finding 10 gallons of Wite-Out?”

Mostly, though, he’s known for being truly one of the nicest guys you may ever meet.

“Nobody would yell at Joe if they had even an inkling of how nice he really is,” said Elizabeth King, president and CEO of the Wichita State University Foundation, referring to Kleinsasser’s reffing days.

“He has that quirky sense of humor, which most of the time isn’t all that funny, but he thinks it’s funny . . . and that makes it funnier.”

Though Kleinsasser likes to joke he’s the Rodney Dangerfield of WSU — he gets no respect — his humor lets him get away with a lot.

“I had a boss one time who was giving me a hard time about something,” Kleinsasser said.

It was a serious conversation, but then he stopped at his boss’s door on the way out and said, “You can be replaced, you know.”

His boss laughed and said, “You’re always here, and everyone else keeps leaving.”

A Hillsboro homebody

Just as some people have a never-ending wanderlust, Kleinsasser is unceasingly a homebody.

The Omaha native moved to Hillsboro, where he still lives, when he was five and his parents took jobs at Tabor College.

After he eventually graduated from Tabor with a degree in business communications, Kleinsasser worked on air and as a news director in Newton radio — sometimes working such grueling time slots, he’d stick his head out of his car window on his way home to stay awake — before becoming director of information services and publications at his alma mater.

“Well, this will be perfect now,” he said he thought. “I can spend the rest of my life here.”

His wife was able to attend part of college for free, but then the school had cutbacks, and Kleinsasser lost a portion of his salary.

When WSU’s coordinator of news and media relations position came open, Kleinsasser was chosen out of more than 70 applicants. He was told it was because he’d worked in both media and higher education, though there was concern about him being from a smaller market.

His first task was fielding media calls about the possible end to football.

“I thought, wow, walked into this one.”

While it wasn’t a happy topic, Kleinsasser said being frank with members of the media about why he couldn’t confirm or deny anything before the president’s official announcement helped establish his relationship with them.

“In a way, it was a good way to start my career.”

When big news would break, Kleinsasser said that rapport and trust meant “I could often buy time.”

The speed of his job changed as technology changed through the years.

In 1993, the school hosted a July 4 fireworks celebration, and there was a shooting that killed a woman as people were leaving the event.

“We had overnight to actually get some sleep and meet early the next morning to discuss how we were going to proceed,” Kleinsasser said.

“It would be so different if it happened here recently.”

Similarly, WSU emeritus associate professor of marketing Dean Headley, co-author of the Airline Quality Rating that gets worldwide attention annually, remembers Kleinsasser and his helpers “literally burned up a fax machine” one year while getting out the report.

Headley said he didn’t know anything about the media when he first started the report, and he said Kleinsasser’s help was crucial. At the time, WSU also had an outside media consultant.

“He said, ‘Joe Kleinsasser is the best university media consultant I’ve ever worked with,’ and that’s a guy who did this for a living for universities all over the United States,” Headley said. “It took no time to understand that Joe was the man when it came to dealing with the media in a professional and caring way.”

However, sometimes he had to be coaxed along with technology.

King remembers when Kleinsasser was printing campus news and hand delivering it to people’s mailboxes. She suggested that the new e-mail system might be more efficient.

“He was just kind of amazed we could do that.”

Kleinsasser said he wasn’t shy about asking others for help, such as when U.S. Sen. Bob Dole was bringing Boris Yeltsin to WSU, and he called another school that had hosted a dignitary and asked for advice. The person told him when it came to dealing with visiting national and international reporters, “It doesn’t hurt to have a good impression of their time there at the university.”

So Kleinsasser had food and beverages awaiting them since the media were running from one event to another.

He said they told him, “We don’t get treated nearly this well in Moscow.”

The lessons of reffing

Before deciding to retire from WSU — which itself took about five years of making up his mind — Kleinsasser gave up reffing. It was seven years ago, and he said he decided to stop because he didn’t want to be accused of staying too long.

“I know my wife and a bunch of coaches thought it was time.”

Tom Shine, KMUW, 89.1-FM, director of news and public affairs, knows Kleinsasser as a spokesman and a referee.

“I think some of his demeanor comes from reffing,” Shine said of Kleinsasser’s professionalism and patience.

“Every call you make, you’re making half the people unhappy.”

Shine once spotted Kleinsasser before his daughter Alaina’s basketball game.

“I’m thinking, sweet, Joe’s going to do the game. We’re going to have the best referee in Kansas doing a girls’ game.”

After the game, Shine met his daughter outside her locker room and mentioned the luck at landing Kleinsasser for the game.

“She says, without missing a beat . . . ‘He wasn’t that good.’ ”

Kleinsasser still writes a sports column for the Hillsboro Free Press, and he doesn’t have plans to retire from that.

“Well, they haven’t told me to stop. We’ll see.”

For years, Kleinsasser has been known for giving away bright yellow WSU reporter’s notebooks, but he said there aren’t many left.

“They are definitely keepsakes and will be obsolete at some point, I suspect.”

Though King said with every change, there’s always opportunity, she said it will be hard to replace Kleinsasser as a person.

“I just don’t think you replace Joe ever.”

This story was originally published November 24, 2020 at 10:34 AM.