Are you people all idiots like the Athletic Director.
First off, if your plan is to win people over to your cause you're shooting yourself in the foot in the first sentence. Second, you need to end a question with a question mark.
She is a undermining ......!! She wanted Jeter out until this late run.
In this part, you're either A) Assuming that she was doing things to undermine the basketball program or B) You have direct knowledge that she is doing it. Either way, this post - and your entire presence on this board - are completely out of line.
She hasn't raised A DIME!
With Jenny Gryniewicz running the show, I'm actually not worried about the fundraising. If instead of raising millions of dollars out of one of our donors, she negotiated the construction of the baseball stadium with Bud Selig and Major League Baseball, I call that fundraising.
She now removes the best SID in the league.
As of 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 3rd, Kevin O'Connor remains on the staff directory as Associate AD for Communications, otherwise known as the title promotion he received previously as Sports Information Director. I heard rumblings, but I also have heard that AD's in the past were going to fire Kathy Litzau and John Stewart. They remain, thankfully. I hope Kevin does as well.
She's worse than any A.D. this school has ever had, and there have been some bad ones since Bud left.
I'm pretty sure that she hasn't threatened to cripple the basketball program by firing all the assistants and allowing the head coaches to only hire one back. I'm fairly certain that she hasn't been dimming the lights in her office and popping pills because the brightness hurts. I have no doubt that she wasn't the empty shirt that failed to fire a coach who used racial slurs to their players and others, used players grades to reprimand them publicly to the team, or drug test certain players so frequently as to the point of harassment in order to kick them off the team. If I'm not mistaken, she wasn't the genius that moved games from the U.S. Cellular Arena to the Klotsche Center without so much as setting foot inside the arena.
So let's not get melodramatic.
You dopes, don't be so naive. She is destroying what could be special.
Once again, I can't help but want to help you with such welcoming language. Where's the evidence she's "destroying what could be special?" The fact here is that you either are hearing things secondhand and have no such knowledge, or you have direct contact, you've seen it firsthand, and sharing this could tip who you are. In either case, as I said before, THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU TO AIR THIS PROGRAM'S DIRTY LAUNDRY. Do you think I convince people to follow what I say by saying "Oh I know things you don't, this person is bad?" No, of course not, I lay out facts that support my argument in extremely long blog posts on PantherU. You have to either be an employee of the program, a disgruntled donor, or a friend of an employee of the program. No matter who you are, though, you are not helping things by coming on here and throwing sh*t against the wall hoping it sticks.
Ask the corporate sponsors that want NOTHING to do with her!
She's done such an awful job in this area that she has gotten the university, which has never been willing to put more money into athletics, to open up completely new positions in External Operations just to accomplish this. Corporate sponsors don't need to deal with her! In any case, the corporate sponsors that we have now are loyal to the Black and Gold. Many of them have been around long enough to have had deals with the university closed by Bud. They're not going to run because they don't like Amanda. I'm not going to assume that they are so petty as to cut and run just because they don't get along with Amanda, right as the positive benefits of those corporate sponsorship deals are hitting a peak.
If they want to lodge a protest, perhaps they and donors would better put their money towards donating to the Black and Gold Club.
Please, I beg you all so called Panthers fans and experts, she is a terrible mistake.
Have you considered, for perhaps one second, that some of the people on this board may agree with you? That they may have heard the same things or had similar dealings with Amanda? Perhaps these people are not so "naive" as you so put it as to masquerade on the fan message board throwing out broad accusations.
This message board has participants that are more than just fans, students and alumni. There are university employees, athletic department employees, donors and even a coach or two. And it's read by all. Truth be told, I know the identity of most. Is that because I'm using my super moderator powers? No. It's because for nine years, I've done my thing in the arena and in the UWM Post and on PantherU, and over the years have built a rapport with the people who make up this Black and Gold family. I've got credibility here. Fran has credibility, Freak has credibility, ghostofdylan, Hack, SRT4Driver, the list goes on. This is because we've all participated in the discussion for a very long time.
I bring this up because you have no credibility. There are some pretty heady people that participate in the discussion, people who may be sympathetic to your cause, and they don't come forward because they know it would look ridiculous to side with an anonymous troll. Or maybe, MAYBE, they understand that this forum (excuse me) is not the forum for this kind of discussion. You're out of line.
I am not a blog person, never will be, I am only here because she is a damn joke, and wrong for this institution that I love.
We all love this institution. Some of us love it enough not to try and harpoon the entire damn program because we don't like the athletic director. Some of us don't hide behind a screen name and pretend to be big shots.
O'Conner is out, for no reason other than she doesn't know what the hell she is doing and wants him out.
Yeah. I bet Amanda Braun woke up, made a cup of coffee, read the paper, pet the pugs and said "You know, I don't know what I'm doing, but I want Kevin O'Connor gone so he's out."
She wanted Jeter out, until this magical run. Don't be blind. God .... it, wake up and realize what a freaking mistake Braun is !!!!
And here we come to it. You claim to want what's best for this program. You claim to love it. You care so much that you cannot stand by while Amanda Braun does things to it that you feel are so egregious that they must be stopped immediately. You must do something, and that something you've decided to do is create an anonymous screen name on the UWMFreak board and plead your case without any kind of evidence or credibility to back you up.
Would anyone here be surprised that she wanted Rob Jeter out? You must be new to the board, because until this March, it was pretty much just me who had Coach's back. I always will. But let's not act like an incoming athletic director in a program the level of ours would look at Coach's record over the past eight years and not want to get their own choice in there. That's what every AD wants at every position, not just men's basketball coach.
What is your goal here? Do you think that what we're going to do by hearing your childlike whining is pick up our torches and pitchforks and march on Chapman Hall, then get the outgoing chancellor to fire someone so his last act at UWM is to hire his third AD? Please.
Your plan is poorly thought out and poorly executed. You babble about how bad of an AD Amanda is yet you provide no support and nothing to prove your credibility, just wild accusations and a whole lot of hot air.
Let's say you get what you want, and Amanda Braun is gone. What does that say? It says that in five years, we are now searching for our fifth full-time AD since Bud retired, seventh if you include the interims. It says that we are the problem, not the athletic directors. It gives every one of those guys, especially Koonce and Costello, reason to point at this program and say "Look, no one can do that job." And they'd be right. Because the problem isn't the current AD, the problem is us. We are too willing to point at that chair and say "Everything needs to be fixed by that chair." We're not rolling up our sleeves and getting the work done.
That's why we need everyone to focus their efforts towards something based outside the program that is still about the program. We started the Black and Gold Club specifically for this purpose, to act as a lobbying and fundraising arm. Separately, our donors have decent voices. Our fans have almost none. But if we act collectively, get together and decide things for real, we'll be able to walk in and dictate how this program is run.
If this program's people have learned anything from the last five years, they should have learned that it should not matter who is in the AD's chair. What matters is us, and we should do everything in our power to make sure this program is run the way we want it to be run.
Put the big donors in a room, have them discuss funneling their donations through the Black and Gold Club, and the university will listen up pretty damn quickly.
The answer is not to hide behind a screen name and lob insults at the athletic director. The answer is not to walk into the athletic director's office and shout her down with some poorly chosen words. I think you get what I'm saying, Indiana81.
What's going to come of this post? Not a whole lot, if our fans, donors and AD employees continue to be downtrodden and prefer to cast stones than use those stones to build.
This program can go places, but not until we all understand that this is not a normal situation. A program like Madison can afford to have its fans cheer for the other in-state schools, we can't. Big programs can look to their AD for guidance at all times because the AD has the support system in place to get the job done.
Quit whining, quit trying to pass the buck. Everyone here who was here when Bud retired needs to take a look in the mirror and realize that we all need to do a lot more if we want this program to grow and succeed. If we're going to just throw up our hands and say "It's UWM, things never change," then that's exactly what's going to happen. If things are bad, let's get together as a collective, put our heads together and figure out what we're going to do about it. Don't just lob vague insults and accusations. Get to work.