Great post, Toledo. I'm also confused/perplexed/befuddled by some of the responses.
1. Pat, I would say, is a pretty good friend of mine. I've spent hundreds of hours socializing with Pat over the years. I have a really high opinion of him, as a person and as a professional. So I'm really shocked and disappointed that he's no longer active in administration, if that's actually the case. 2. Just a couple weeks ago, administration was painted as incompetent for not having a deal done with a huge raise for Porter Moser within 10 days of the end of the season. 3. In my opinion, the administration deserves a lot of credit for the run the team went on this year. Before the season began, they decided to put the students front and center in seating, and made huge strides in getting students out to the games in 2017-18. I think that made a huge difference. The greater connection with the student seemed to spark and inspire the players, and vice versa. They did everything right in terms of promotion and support during the season and the NCAA run, in my opinion. It was a huge, huge win for the athletic department. Remember, they're dealing with a bare bones staff, yet they handled the ticketing, hoopla, media crush, Sister Jean, crazy new apparel/souvenir demand, and everything else with nearly flawless aplomb-- even while they had women's basketball, men's volleyball, track & field, and softball going on at the same time. I saw no signs of major cracks or big gaps in their work, in fact, just the opposite-- the whole staff was incredibly impressive. Think about the staff that Michigan, Villanova, and Kansas had to bring to the Final Four. I'd say our staff did just as well-- if not better-- than all of them, and we haven't even been there since 1985. 4. We can't run the athletic department like a mom and pop operation. We need to be professional about it. There SHOULD BE some big money going into athletics in the near future-- we need to immediately have a men's basketball budget up in the mid to high 3-million range. A lot of that money needs to go into growing the season ticket/donor base, getting huge corporate sponsorships, and finding game-day sponsorship/promotion money. I've worked in an educational environment with an organizational structure that was not scalable, and because nothing changed or we worked around huge procedural millstones, it caused a downward spiral. Pat Schultz has many established relationships with the core fan base, invaluable institutional knowledge, flexibility, and competence in many areas. It's hard to see how there couldn't be a place for him in a more robust athletic department structure. Or maybe his connections and experience were seen as a threat by somebody. It seems wrong that a guy who did whatever was asked, had passion and creativity, and helped the department get to a rare pinnacle, had to immediately be jettisoned.
I guess in short I'm saying that the current administration should be held in a better light in terms of competency. They're not John Planek or Chuck Schwarz, who made a lot of moves on who they liked personally, including keeping on people who weren't getting it done. Could they have possibly gone too far in the other direction? Yes, I think. And if you're looking to build an elite program with a long-term fan base and high fan loyalty/dedication, being jerks to people who did great things for you during very hard times is not a good start.
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