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Post by bizzork on Aug 16, 2019 7:14:14 GMT -6
Agree with both Paul and Fran above. It is totally appropriate to make our views known. We do care but at some point one has the right and sometimes obligation to "vote with our feet" when a situation becomes intolerable. This is not endemic to just Panther hoops. I agree that this is an extreme situation. Personally I still love and care deeply about this program as I know you guys do but in good faith voting with my feet also. Actually, I started in 2015 as I got fed up and tired with the whole Rob Jeter tenure of 5th place finishes and unfulfilled potential one game over .500 over 11 years in D 1 . A new voice was needed. Was that better than what we had now ? Yes. History will bear out in the long run but the one thing I think we can agree on is that Braun is a disaster. Not sure it can survive her tenure . One area where I do disagree is that this was an intentional plan by the administration and Braun to torpedo mens basketball. That would be like saying the search committees that hired such stalwarts as Koonce, Costello, Geiger and Braun intentionally tried to hire horrible people to sabotage the program. Just a long pattern of gross incompetence. I wish Coach Baldwin and the team well. I will follow and maybe occasionaly attend a game but until Braun is gone not going to give the satisfaction of buying season tickets again or donating. I have a hard time believing that there wasn't some degree of "let's de-emphasize men's basketball" on either the administration or Braun's part. Primarily when Braun had most of her budget going toward someone she had an ax to grind with. I don't think it was well thought-out, or that either the administration or Braun realized what a dumb idea that was, but I do tend to think that they weren't equipped to deal with a good men's basketball program and all that comes with it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2019 10:10:05 GMT -6
I went to a high school that shutdown and they hired a "shutdown specialist" principal for the final year. It was only publicly known that the principal was known for his experience in managing closing high schools- after the school year was over and the closing had been announced.
'Not saying I am certain the AD wants us in D-II (though that would take a tremendous amount of pressure off the AD), but stuff like that does happen..
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Post by Duct_Tape_Pounce on Aug 18, 2019 0:41:33 GMT -6
I went to a high school that shutdown and they hired a "shutdown specialist" principal for the final year. It was only publicly known that the principal was known for his experience in managing closing high schools- after the school year was over and the closing had been announced. 'Not saying I am certain the AD wants us in D-II (though that would take a tremendous amount of pressure off the AD), but stuff like that does happen.. Braun was hired in 2013. One of her first moves as an athletic director with regards to the men’s basketball program was to move them from the D-2 or D-3 facility in the Klotsche Center to a legit D-1 facility in the (then called) US Cellular Arena. One would think that she would have stayed at the Klotsche Center instead of signing a 10 year lease at the arena if her plan was to go to D-2. Plus, it’s been 6 years since she was hired. If her plan was to lower the university’s athletic profile to D-2, it wouldn’t have taken 6+ years when the baseline is calling a glorified high school gym the men’s basketball home. And it sounds like you’re suggesting that Braun wants to move to D-2 because it would lower the pressure on her? Would that lowered pressure be enough to offset the (much) lowered salary involved? The (much) lowered profile? If the university (as opposed to the AD) wanted to move to D-2, it would have made so much more sense to just keep Andy Geiger, who (from what I remember) wanted to stick around in some capacity. He was already at retirement age and has a tarnished career from Ohio State already, and that would seem to be the profile of somebody installed mainly to lower a program’s status. Not a younger associate AD who (at the time, at least) had a potential bright future ahead of her. When I read conspiracy theories like these that make absolutely no sense, it makes it harder to align with the biggest anti-Braun people on this board. Right after Rob Jeter was fired, I was agreeing with the people saying that she had to be fired ASAP, but the more I hear things like this, the more it seems that that argument is based largely on irrationality and maybe her departure isn’t as important as I originally thought.
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Post by ghostofdylan on Aug 18, 2019 9:19:07 GMT -6
Dear God!!! She's been here since 2013?!?! So what exactly are her "accomplishments?"
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Post by Pantherholic on Aug 18, 2019 15:17:52 GMT -6
So even though it takes 1-2 years to cut a program altogether, it takes 6+ years to downgrade a program to D2? Wow.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2019 20:47:34 GMT -6
I did not say I endorse this conspiracy theory, I am just saying that it isn't out of the realm of possibility.
I think it is undeniable that some big mistakes were made and we are not being administered by a competent D-I athletic director. Later on all, and thanks for all the assumptions. I was just trying to make sense of this like you.
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Post by Duct_Tape_Pounce on Aug 18, 2019 22:17:13 GMT -6
I think we all want the program to succeed. It's just my opinion that bringing up far-out conspiracy theories, even if you don't totally believe in them, makes us lose our credibility as Panther fans. The fact that I was the only one to bring up the flaws in the theory makes me think I am in the minority on that opinion.
My opinion is that the most simple explanation is the most likely. I'm guessing that the following are the reasons the program is in the situation it is in:
- The athletic department has been plagued with really bad ADs since Bud Haidet retired.
- Beyond the bad ADs, there has been no stability with this position. I can't remember if Koonce was forced out or if he left on his own. Costello was fired amidst scandal. Geiger was meant to be short term and to stabilize the program, and I think it's safe to say, he did not.
- Each of the ADs listed above left the program in a worse position than they started it, which often happens with short term ADs.
- Athletics isn't a top priority for Mark Mone and the university's administration. Perhaps it should be a higher priority, but I can understand that given the budget cuts they have had to deal with, along with the steps needed to be a Tier 1 Research University, athletics is not the huge priority it is for other universities. In the end, the university's top priority should be academics.
- I'm guessing Mark Mone and the university's administration likes the stability. If Amanda Braun is fired, the next AD could be another George Koonce, Rick Costello, or heaven forbid, another Andy Geiger.
When you combine the need for stability in the department, an administration that has other priorities, and an AD who has, I suppose, done at least the bare minimum (moving the team back to a real Division I arena, putting up some fight to keep that arena in place when things looked bad with the Bucks' arena, filling positions that hadn't been filled for years, made the academics of the athletic programs stronger, etc.), they probably prefer the proverbial devil they know as opposed to the devil they don't know. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I suppose I don't have all the information either.
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Post by Cactus Panther on Aug 19, 2019 8:45:34 GMT -6
I think we all want the program to succeed. It's just my opinion that bringing up far-out conspiracy theories, even if you don't totally believe in them, makes us lose our credibility as Panther fans. The fact that I was the only one to bring up the flaws in the theory makes me think I am in the minority on that opinion. My opinion is that the most simple explanation is the most likely. I'm guessing that the following are the reasons the program is in the situation it is in: - The athletic department has been plagued with really bad ADs since Bud Haidet retired. - Beyond the bad ADs, there has been no stability with this position. I can't remember if Koonce was forced out or if he left on his own. Costello was fired amidst scandal. Geiger was meant to be short term and to stabilize the program, and I think it's safe to say, he did not. - Each of the ADs listed above left the program in a worse position than they started it, which often happens with short term ADs. - Athletics isn't a top priority for Mark Mone and the university's administration. Perhaps it should be a higher priority, but I can understand that given the budget cuts they have had to deal with, along with the steps needed to be a Tier 1 Research University, athletics is not the huge priority it is for other universities. In the end, the university's top priority should be academics. - I'm guessing Mark Mone and the university's administration likes the stability. If Amanda Braun is fired, the next AD could be another George Koonce, Rick Costello, or heaven forbid, another Andy Geiger. When you combine the need for stability in the department, an administration that has other priorities, and an AD who has, I suppose, done at least the bare minimum (moving the team back to a real Division I arena, putting up some fight to keep that arena in place when things looked bad with the Bucks' arena, filling positions that hadn't been filled for years, made the academics of the athletic programs stronger, etc.), they probably prefer the proverbial devil they know as opposed to the devil they don't know. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I suppose I don't have all the information either. Well said, DTP. Much of what you stated became evident since within the first few years of Jeter's head coaching tenure. I would add that the selection process for hiring each athletic director was flawed as well. The bureaucratic committee approach to selection led to too many self-serving interests that resulted in hiring decisions for the wrong reasons. I also believe Amanda Braun gets too much credit from some for the move back to the Arena and the "fight" to keep it. The university naming rights was at an institutional level and the return was a natural fit for all parties. The Arena still exists today solely because of decisions by non-university parties about the eventual location of what is now Fiserv Forum. Finally, conspiracy theorists give way too much credit to the administration for being so smart to try and pull that off. What has transpired is merely from incompetence and apathy on a number of levels, nothing more or less.
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Post by skrapheap on Mar 2, 2020 11:11:17 GMT -6
Don't look now but Braun won an "executive of the year award" from the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Apparently alienating big-money donors and tanking attendance are laudable achievements.
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Post by ghostofdylan on Mar 2, 2020 11:25:29 GMT -6
Don't look now but Braun won an "executive of the year award" from the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Apparently alienating big-money donors and tanking attendance are laudable achievements. Total farce. Hell, one glance at our Senior Night "crowd" will tell you that we're going down like the Titanic!!!
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Post by ghostofdylan on Mar 2, 2020 11:44:46 GMT -6
As of March 2016 it was immediately obvious to many of us (in fact, to thousands of us, as the attendance collapse conclusively demonstrates) that the last thing that our current athletic administration wanted was for our men’s basketball program to be successful. It has been powerfully effective since then in achieving what it wanted instead. A friend posed this challenge recently: name ONE thing that is better about the program today than in February of 2016. Can’t do it. The few hundred people who actually still care about or pay attention to this program have been reduced to hoping against hope that some time in the next couple seasons, in a drastically worse conference, the team will just achieve a winning record. Something it did every year but two between 2009 and 2016 playing in a much better league. We have already lost THREE FULL YEARS. How much evidence does anyone need that without a change at the top, this program is going nowhere? If you still want to attend the games and support the team that way, nobody is stopping you. But blaming fans who have chosen otherwise because they have recognized the obvious about what the University actually thinks about the program is ridiculous. Bump. FOUR FULL YEARS!!!!
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Post by BBFran on Mar 2, 2020 12:04:38 GMT -6
Don't look now but Braun won an "executive of the year award" from the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Apparently alienating big-money donors and tanking attendance are laudable achievements. Fantastic! Maybe she can package this with her “Woman of Influence” award on her resume and find another job. ANY other job, please!
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Post by steveisback on Mar 2, 2020 12:28:50 GMT -6
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Post by Pantherholic on Mar 2, 2020 12:35:48 GMT -6
Don't look now but Braun won an "executive of the year award" from the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Apparently alienating big-money donors and tanking attendance are laudable achievements. Where did you hear/see this? I’m looking at the NACDA’s site and that’s not an award listed nor is her winning anything acknowledged.
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Post by skrapheap on Mar 2, 2020 12:44:33 GMT -6
Don't look now but Braun won an "executive of the year award" from the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Apparently alienating big-money donors and tanking attendance are laudable achievements. Where did you hear/see this? I’m looking at the NACDA’s site and that’s not an award listed nor is her winning anything acknowledged. The Provost (Johannes Britz) sends out an informational email to employees every Monday. The email includes accolades employees have received, and Braun was mentioned in this morning's email.
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