LIKE IT IS : Board should have more say on hiring an AD
Posted on Sunday, September 9, 2007
After almost eight months of waiting, some information finally leaked.
The search for a new director of athletics at the University of Arkansas could have been a CIA operation until one name leaked Thursday, then another Friday.
First it was Tulane’s Rick Dickson, but that sent the UA power player into a frenzy.
So Pittsburgh’s Jeff Long was flown in and out of town Friday on the jet that belongs to the Razorback Foundation.
It was not a secret. It was practically a parade to prove the point.
The media doesn’t reveal who does or does not get hired. No one has a right to know who is joining the state payroll until it is so deemed by Chancellor John White.
So, Long is supposed to be the leader of the short field. Apparently, his name was leaked by proper operatives.
What seems apparent is that there were more criteria for the job than having experience as an AD and coming from a BCS conference.
None of the candidates has so much as stood in the shade of the Frank Broyles family tree.
Like someone actually believes Broyles might poison the well.
That’s the same Broyles whose name adorns the athletic building and who raised the money for the outstanding facilities and made Razorbacks a household name.
Hogwash.
Broyles has never done one thing to hurt the UA. Has he become wealthy and powerful ? Yes, but never at the cost of the University of Arkansas.
Maybe he should not be part of the process of hiring his successor, but would a cup of coffee with a candidate really be that far out of line ?
Long and Dickson have more in common than not being from the Broyles tree. Both have strong connections to private schools.
And none to the Razorbacks.
Dickson hails from Tulsa, played football there and was the AD there, but who knows if he has ever been in the state ?
Or if Long’s entry and exit by jet was the first time he had seen the Boston Mountains up close and personal.
Maybe the new tradition at Arkansas is to hire folks for athletic positions who have never called the Hogs.
No offense intended to either of the men, but do they know anything about the history of the Hogs ?
Or the passion that once seized almost an entire state every Saturday in the fall ?
Those are things that guys like Scott Bull, Bill Montgomery and Chuck Dicus know personally, but if they got anything more than a courtesy interview, they are the only ones who know it.
It appears that to be a candidate for one of the most significant hires in recent history, you have to be null and void of Razorbacks red blood.
Perhaps the system is what is flawed.
As hard as it is to believe, it appears the board of trustees, a 10-person body of UA-loving folks, is not involved.
They will just be asked to sign off on a recommendation made by UA President B. Alan Sugg, White and the board of trustees’ chairman, Stanley Reed.
Shortly after Broyles announced he would retire at the end of this year, White said he would be the lone person to find the next AD.
That changed, and it stood to reason Sugg would be involved and Reed, too, but it seems that a committee of board members serving as a search committee would ensure the absolute best person would be hired regardless of his political friendships.
To be brutally honest, the person hired has interim stamped all over him if he doesn’t have the full support of the board, which the entire state is depending on to be proactive.
Sugg, White and Reed are intelligent men. Wise even.
Yet, this hire is to replace a living legend.
The man who is probably the most famous athletic director in the history of college athletics.
A man who is respected from coast to coast.
Maybe he doesn’t need to be involved in helping find his replacement, but it seems a job with shoes this big would warrant the input and help of the entire board of trustees.
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