SoCal_Pony wrote:Yep, I get that.
My bigger concern for SMU however is not academics, not athletics. His criticisms of RGT and our BOT is valid IMO.
Also our 0-55-1 record vs Big12 South is not on Tom Rossely, Mike Cavan, PB, tiki or chad, all of whom served under RGT. It's on President Turner.
"The Buck Stops Here" - President Harry S Truman
And that's why it's so irritating for me, personally. He likes to start by drawing your attention to a very broad, general, vague truth. In this case, that our leadership has been around for a long, long time, it has grown stale, it's overly-concentrated in one person, our board is too large and too deferential, and generally they're incapable of maximizing potential in a number of areas. From that general truth, he likes to proceed into a number of wildly off base, inaccurate, intentionally misleading, bizarre borderline conspiracy theory ideas that he simply preaches as gospel, as if it's written down in a text book.
Turner can be old news, stale, have too much power, and need to be replaced because as a matter of general principle, because having the same guy lead any entity for more than two decades is a bad idea. He can also just be not that great at either 1.) spearheading athletic success himself or 2.) hiring the right people to do so. It's not exactly breaking news that a lot of people just aren't that great at certain things.
Here's what else is true: he's not some secret anti-athletics guy, he's attended every frickin basketball game in twenty years; June was fired because he was criminally negligent at 70% of his job; Chad left because he's a grifter and got a 3.5M offer from the SEC; Larry left because he, quite literally, has done that at every.single.job.he.has.ever.had.ever; Turner didn't turn in Tubbs, although that itself was a criminally negligent hire; Turner was going to approve the stupid IPF on the Mrs. Baird's site years ago until June bitched about crossing Mockingbird; Turner gave Orsini the authority to build the Circle of Champions even if he thought he'd fail; Turner fired Orsini when he was running his mouth and simultaneously running the most hysterically awful hoops coaching search in the history of ever; he allowed the Moody renovation, Crum was built, he frickin signed off on Larry Brown and Larry hired Snacks and Maligi and was jet-setting around the entire country flaunting our stuff to the NCAA and asking to get nailed; we turned ourselves in to the NCAA because we have the most sordid history with the NCAA in all of athletics, Larry has a sordid history with the NCAA, the NCAA had just implemented a new penalty policy, and without the benefit of hindsight its entirely reasonable to make a judgment call as to getting off light by working with the NCAA instead of digging your heels in and getting sledgehammered down the line; it's absolute crap to suggest Turner pushed getting Tulane into the AAC over the objections of a dozen other schools.
That's one enormous run on sentence. Basically, his bizarre theories about intentionally trying to destroy everything is absolute crap. Hoops has had every frickin' tool necessary to succeed for the last six years, and this bizarre rant about the mountains some of our people behind the scenes move to make it successful is unhinged from reality.
And moving on to his favorite whipping boy Rick Hart- the guy might not be great at cocktail parties, but he hired Chad Morris with zero leaks. He then, when Chad was trying to bail to Baylor, had wrapped up an EXTREMELY impressive hire without any leaks (Join 24/7 and you'll know exactly who SMU had set to replace Morris). He then went out and hired Dykes--in a buyers market with no clear-cut hot-stuff assistants--while Cal is paying 70% of his salary, and who turned around and put together top to bottom the best staff SMU has had in football in 30 years. And he got the stupid practice facility built despite the fact that a bunch of money promising to be there when he hired Chad didn't come through. And he even adjusted the specs for the IPC simply because Sonny asked him to make a couple changes for the benefit of the program.
None of that is to be cranky towards you. Turner has been here way too long, and needs to go do something else with his time. But the idea that there is this vast conspiracy theory operating at every level to somehow keep SMU from achieving its potential is just wrong. We made bad hires, didn't pay them enough, and didn't quickly enough remove all the damage Pye did. You don't need a tin foil hat to see that.