Sunday, March 26, 2006

What a bunch of morons...

So, the Board of Curators calls an emergency meeting at 12:30, just 1.5 hours before Mizzou is supposed to announce its new basketball coach. Media outlets all over the state report that the Curators are meeting to decide Mike Alden's future. This leads to mixed emotions for me: On one hand, I'd love to finally see Alden get canned. On the other hand, this day should be about Mike Anderson. I think Anderson will be a good coach, but the administration needs to get behind him.

2:00 comes and goes... nothing happens. Shortly before 3:00, mutigers.com puts up a link that will allow you to watch the press conference about Anderson's hiring live. It looks like this whole thing might finally be over. But 3:00 comes and goes... and nothing happens. We then learn that the press conference has been postponed indefinitely until the Board of Curators finishes their meeting. Around 3:30-3:45, the meeting ends. What was the final result of this "emergency" meeting? Nothing! On the way out of the meeting, Deaton mutters to the press that Alden is still the athletic director. The PR folks later tell the media that no vote was taken about Alden's future.

Shortly after 4:00, the press conference finally gets underway and MU announces the shocking news (given that we've all known this for 24 hours) that Mike Anderson has been hired as the head coach. Nothing is said about Alden. Basically, they delayed the press conference two hours and dragged our school's name through the mud again... with nothing to show for it.

Can't these people do anything right? We already know they can't fire people the right way. Now it appears that they also don't know how to hire people. I'm glad we've got Anderson, but if I were him, I'd be running for the hills right now. I would say that the administration has lost control, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they never had it!

The only possible justification I can come up with in all this is that the Curators gave Alden an ultimatum and he will resign sometime soon. Otherwise, I will have to assume that they take some sort of sick, twisted pride in making themselves -- and the university -- look completely stupid.

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