Maybe Jimmy could weigh in on the issue. When he had his journalistic aspirations during part of the Jeter era or at least posed as an insider on this message board, it seemed to me and some others I talked to that he shied away from negative comments to maintain access to one or more information sources connected with the program.
If I were the Journal Sentinel beat writer covering the program, I'd be trying to convince my editor to get the section's top columnist to write that piece in mid-February. Beat writers have to be able to maintain some level of access to the program, and it's difficult to do that if your employer is publishing hit pieces under your byline.
I'd also wait until mid-February because the readership doesn't pay attention to college basketball until then, so even if I were willing to put my byline over a column calling for the coach to be fired or slamming the coach for his abilities I wouldn't have to deal with an inability to do my job because of friction with the most important source. If Todd were to do that right now, it would make his job impossible because Baldwin wouldn't talk to him at all.
My time running PantherU was different than being a beat writer. I was doing a lot of that job, sure, but I clearly had a personal stake in the program that was the reason for the whole existence of my website. Bloggers like me are far closer to the Scott Warras/SID side than the objective journalist side. I pursued stories as I could, but I would say I was closer to a real journalist when I would cover the Horizon League's moves as a conference because I had no issues with criticizing LeCrone and the conference.
I had access with more than the men's basketball program, I spoke regularly with athletic directors and associate/assistant AD's. With Amanda it was more in my capacity as a fan alone, because in my experience AD's are a lot more guarded with their opinions on things, especially when they're talking to someone who has the ears of a wide audience like I did.
That said, I wasn't always in agreement with Jeter and his staff. We had disagreements. But with the role I played, I would always give them an opportunity to try and convince me that I was wrong or provide me with a different perspective that wouldn't necessarily change my mind, but would change how I would form my argument when I wrote things to be published.
That's something that I almost always would afford to the people in athletics who wanted to change regimes. Jeter and his staff were just far better at selling their arguments, which shouldn't be a surprise since it was their job to sell teenagers on moving to a frigid city for their college years. They were pretty f***ing good at it, and most administrators have been sh*t at making arguments.
I'm trying to think of a direct example, but I'll just come up with a generic one that played out many times over the years:
Panthers lose a game I feel they should have won, it's happened more than the fans (including myself) are comfortable with. Think losing 4 out of 5 HL games in January or something. I talk with an associate AD in the program who is somewhat guarded but says something to the tune of 'we should move on to a new coach in the offseason.' I would take the things I learned and talk to either Jeter or one of the assistants (95% of the time it was an assistant) and they'd explain what's been going on the last few games.
Sometimes they agreed with how they should have won 4 of 5 instead of 1 of 5 but they expect the team is only in a rut. Sometimes they bring up that X starter who missed two games with an injury a month ago is actually still dealing with the injury and while we need them on the court it might be doing more harm than good, but it's worth it because sitting out won't make their injury heal faster and they need to stay up to speed. If it's something like that, I'll go to the player themselves and have an unrelated conversation then casually ask how their recovery went for the injury. Sometimes a player would act like everything was good because they didn't want it to get out, but 9 times out of 10 they'd volunteer information on their own that the injury is still bothering them and they'll say more or less the same thing the coach did. The coach will usually bring up a Y variable that I didn't know about.
Then I'll swing by the athletic department or chat with the administrator and mention that I found out about Y variable, then ask them if their opinion is different because of it. Sometimes they'd say their answer would change, a lot of times it would be like "yeah but" and then they'd bring up something else I may or may not have heard of. At this point, if they're still arguing for a change, usually the administrator is grasping at straws and you realize they just don't like Rob or they're convinced if we hire a new hoops coach everything will be sunshine and roses.
Sometimes the Y variable is something small like a nagging injury - Akeem Springs with his messed up wrist, Ricky Franklin's hand for example - sometimes it's more serious like the university did nothing to appeal the APR ban even though they had ample opportunity to put together a winnable case.
These were easy ways for me to find out who was full of sh*t or not. When I would come back to the administrator with information, I'd learn if they were reasonable or not pretty quickly. I found out that since Costello, the coaching staff had been forbidden from having any kind of oversight over the academics of the players on the team (that wasn't brought up to me by the coaches but by a different administrator). I brought that back to one administrator who said they knew about that and it's true, but Jeter should still be fired because he recruited players who weren't able to succeed academically with the tutoring the department provided. That person basically said 'Jeter recruited dumb players and he deserves to be fired' while admitting that the coaching staff was indeed unable to help the players get adequate support because of a bullsh*t rule Costello came up with that was maintained by Geiger and Braun.
Before Costello banned them from oversight of the players academics, they'd be able to follow the progress of their players and get them help if their grades were slipping in a class. After that, they were forbidden from it until after the APR ban was final. Then they went back and got guys who hadn't graduated and got them to re-enroll in school, then got them the help to graduate because even though guys far back weren't counting AGAINST the APR score, if they graduated they could count positively FOR the score. If I remember correctly there was even a guy who played for Antrim who ended up graduating in the middle of the decade. Some were Pearl players, a few were Jeter players.
Again, I wouldn't have known about this if I didn't ask. I was furious with Jeter and his staff about the APR ban and then I learned that their bosses literally forbade them from helping the situation. It was f***ed up but that added perspective changed how I talked about it on PantherU (and caused me to lose a lot of respect for the administrator who didn't give a f*** and just wanted change).
Most of what I was writing on PantherU was opinion at that point. I might still be doing it if Patreon had been a popular thing back then, but it's just not worth my time anymore. You guys don't need to be entertained by my bullsh*t, I'm happy to be just another fan now.