To me it is fairly simple.
A lot of us don't particularly trust Joel Maturi. His past performance shows he is often susceptible to media pressure. And he has a history of dithering.
An example, if you feel you need one, from the semi-distant past and early in his tenure, is the year before Glen Mason was fired, when the team went into the Music City Bowl not knowing if Maso or if any of the coaches would be back (that was the game against Virginia). There are quite a few other examples I think. How much of the "dithering" issue is his fault vs. the leaks in his office/staff is of course open to question, but Joel really does not come across as decisive. And he has quite a few problems within his staff, which seemed to necessitate the extreme secrecy in the latest football coach hiring process. Even that (imho quite well done) came across as indecisive and dithering (the plane trip to San Diego.....)
So our expectations of him are colored. In many ways, the tenure of an athletic director in these last two decades is somewhat short because they have so much to deal with, burn so many bridges, and develop so many enemies over the course of time. You don't get a lot of credit when your university's teams are winning, but you sure get blamed when the teams do badly or the players screw up. In the days I grew up (the '60's) it seemed you had longer-tenured and more powerful ahtletic directors. Think Paul Giel. These days they are much more like athletic program and budgetary managers.
That being said, Joel often comes across as his own worst enemy. Agonizing over decisions is all very well. In private. But he is a walking public relations nightmare when he goes through his Hamlet scenarios. And the act has had several years now to wear very very thin. Both with the Twin Cities media and especially with us as the Gopher fan base. All in all imho he has done okay, on balance, especially given the missions Bruininks gave him to accomplish (i'm thinking budgetary here). But I very very much wish to see him go into retirement....
Obviously,a s stated on this Board quite eloquently, the best thing to have done in Trevor's case would have been a short, terse statement that the -U- was loooking into the player's situation and would have a statement later, perhaps in a day or so, once investigation was completed....
Instead we had the usual media circus, mistrust, and fodder for all the drama kings and queens......
Meh
