Sports Illust: Claeys firing leads to bigger question: Why does trouble follow Minn?

[BleedGopher]

per SI:

Why does stuff like this keep happening at Minnesota?

It’s a major-conference program, but no one mistakes it for a striving college athletic leviathan that may or may not have to grind the rulebook and ethics into a fine paste to maintain its lofty status. Minnesota athletics is realistically a mid-level business with fair-but-not-outsized expectations, and yet it all too consistently faces extraordinarily high-end humiliations.

We’re only starting the timeline in 1999, when what was then the biggest academic fraud scandal in NCAA history ripped through the school and just about tore its beloved basketball program to shreds. Particularly notable lowlights since then? An athletic director, Norwood Teague, resigned after two co-workers raised sexual harassment complaints against him, which revolved around text messages Teague said he sent while he was so drunk he couldn’t remember “half of it.” (Teague also sexually harassed a Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter who covered the team.) Last March, three men’s basketball players were suspended after sexually explicit videos were published on one of their social media accounts. And now we have a football team rallying to protest the discipline handed out to 10 peers who were allegedly involved, in varying degrees, with a sexual assault in September. The players threatened a bowl boycott, which was the product of their own ignorance and the inability of administrators to get ahead of a potential public relations tire fire, as they did not realize that lies or half-truths might incite emotional, under-informed teenagers and 20-somethings to do something very inadvisable.

Bad things happen at nearly every college. Academic missteps, inappropriate behavior thrust before anyone with an internet connection, bad administrators, mishandling extremely delicate sexual assault cases…sadly, none of this is unique to Minnesota. But all of it has happened at Minnesota, and having been there for a while, it does not seem to be the kind of place where oppressive pressure to succeed explains it all away.

http://www.si.com/college-football/2017/01/03/minnesota-football-fires-tracy-claeys

Go Gophers!!

 

[Mick Turition]

Sh*tty administration explains it though

 

[GopherBulldog]

When the problem is the administration, this is exactly what you get.

 

[metrolax]

Administration. Period.

 

[Chicago Gophers]

Why isn't Eric Kaler getting more heat from the media?

His AD at Stony Brook also was dismissed for sexual harassment and I guarantee some of it occurred while he was still there.

 

[harley_gopher]

University of Minnesota Administration is NOT supportive of a winning culture. We pretty much know that after all these years.

 

[Jack jones]

Tough three to fight---- big, big PC culture( nothing else to do during the long winter nights), over active EOAA trying to justify their existence, and a very, very weak administration who flail as the winds blow. Sad

 

[metrolax]

Tough three to fight---- big, big PC culture( nothing else to do during the long winter nights), over active EOAA trying to justify their existence, and a very, very weak administration who flail as the winds blow. Sad

very correct. Its why we can't have nice things

 

[Great Plains Gopher]

Administrators who are not sports-minded but are overly politically correct and high-minded. This goes all the way back to the snobbish attitude that apparently shunned Bud Wilkinson when Bierman was (preposterously) fired in the '50s. Also, there has been a stubborn refusal in recent years to hire an M man as AD. Plus, the politically correct/feminist culture of the state does not mix well with the occasional bad behavior of recruits from other climes and cultures. The various administrations have also made some terrible choices for head coach (Joe Salem, Jim Wacker, Tim Brewster). The fact that the only winning coaches in the 66 years since Bierman (Warmath, Mason and Claeys) have all been fired tells you something about the sports mentality at the administrative level. This latest move is probably a disaster for the football program.

 

[GG Allen]

The EOAA had nothing to do with the academic scandal or Teague and they didn't force a basketball player to upload his sextape to Twitter. This is really the first big scandal that you could claim is being driven by the EOAA.

 

[gopherdudepart2]

Why isn't Eric Kaler getting more heat from the media?

His AD at Stony Brook also was dismissed for sexual harassment and I guarantee some of it occurred while he was still there.

Eric Kaler has a pattern of poor judgement and has hired two athletic directors dismissed for Sexual harassment. Where are the investigations of his leadership, and the pattern of abuse his hiring decisions of athletic directors has lead to. The board of Regents at Minnesota, should be taking a long look at his leadership pattern, and interviewing victims of leaders he put in place that caused abuse and scandal. I tell you Kaler is a ratt, and fox in the hen house, but that doesn't seem to be getting through to the media.

 

[Twinsfan007]

Sorry but the biggest academic scandal is the one that is still going on at UNC. That is by far bigger than the one and the U in the late 90's.

 

[GopherVictory]

Sorry but the biggest academic scandal is the one that is still going on at UNC. That is by far bigger than the one and the U in the late 90's.

I was thinking the same thing but then I re-read that line

We’re only starting the timeline in 1999, when what was then the biggest academic fraud scandal in NCAA history ripped

They wrote the line to acknowledge bigger scandals have come along since '99.

 

[A_Slab_of_Bacon]

I'll be the guy who says I don't think we've had a super high amount of issues. Just some hit the press more than others.

 

[50PoundHead]

Administrators who are not sports-minded but are overly politically correct and high-minded. This goes all the way back to the snobbish attitude that apparently shunned Bud Wilkinson when Bierman was (preposterously) fired in the '50s. Also, there has been a stubborn refusal in recent years to hire an M man as AD. Plus, the politically correct/feminist culture of the state does not mix well with the occasional bad behavior of recruits from other climes and cultures. The various administrations have also made some terrible choices for head coach (Joe Salem, Jim Wacker, Tim Brewster). The fact that the only winning coaches in the 66 years since Bierman (Warmath, Mason and Claeys) have all been fired tells you something about the sports mentality at the administrative level. This latest move is probably a disaster for the football program.

The M men were almost solely responsible for the firing of Stoll (an M man) and the hiring of Salem (an M man).

This wholesale laying of blame on the administration is pretty ridiculous. If anything, I believe it's our Minnesota tradition of having too many cooks spoiling the soup is what constantly does us in. Our various iterations of the Board of Regents have consistently stuck their collective noses in places where it would be best left out, which I believe has made it difficult to attract and maintain high quality in the administration. Our democratic (with a small "d") tradition in this state hasn't served the University that well.

As for the SI article, it doesn't go back far enough. The whole Musselman saga, the forfeiture of a couple of seasons of basketball at different junctures, the Madison shenanigans by the basketball team, Luther Darville during the Holtz years, the fiasco that put the Gopher football team in the Metrodome (thanks Mike Lynn, Harvey Mackay and the Minneapolis Downtown Council).

 

[Hazmatt]

You forgot about the sensationalized budget missteps of Richard Pitino on his travel budget. The riot in 2002 after a hockey championship and in 2014 after a loss. The drug ring in the wrestling program. Poor hire after poor hire and then terminations immediately after a contract extension. But wait there's more. What about the issues in the school of medicine research program which has had recurring ethical issues back to the early 90's. Heads should roll. And they should start with Kahler and work down. Granted many of these things have been outside his watch, but he hasn't fixed the issues, and if anything things seem to be getting worse. Time for a new administration.

 

[xyz1]

A minor aspect of this: any alleged wrongdoing is far likelier to be investigated and reported on by the media in this area than in some smaller, college-only towns. The famous example is the Channel 5 expose on the shocking news that Gopher hockey players were drinking while underage.

Please note that I am not saying this should not be done, or that the media (or anyone else) should look the other way when wrongdoing occurs. But I don't think it's even arguable that reporters are a lot likelier to go digging if they hear something in Minnesota than at a place like, say, Oklahoma or Alabama. If George Dohrmann wasn't so persistent would the Jan Ganglehoff stuff have ever seen the light of day?

 

[Ski U Mah Gopher]

A minor aspect of this: any alleged wrongdoing is far likelier to be investigated and reported on by the media in this area than in some smaller, college-only towns. The famous example is the Channel 5 expose on the shocking news that Gopher hockey players were drinking while underage.

Please note that I am not saying this should not be done, or that the media (or anyone else) should look the other way when wrongdoing occurs. But I don't think it's even arguable that reporters are a lot likelier to go digging if they hear something in Minnesota than at a place like, say, Oklahoma or Alabama. If George Dohrmann wasn't so persistent would the Jan Ganglehoff stuff have ever seen the light of day?

It was Channel 9, not 5.

 

[Gofer]

It was Channel 9, not 5.

Channel 5 digs in the garbage cans of Vikings players.

 

[xyz1]

You're right - my bad. I never actually saw the reports and was going on my no-longer trustworthy memory.

 

[gregbrady]

You forgot about the sensationalized budget missteps of Richard Pitino on his travel budget. The riot in 2002 after a hockey championship and in 2014 after a loss. The drug ring in the wrestling program. Poor hire after poor hire and then terminations immediately after a contract extension. But wait there's more. What about the issues in the school of medicine research program which has had recurring ethical issues back to the early 90's. Heads should roll. And they should start with Kahler and work down. Granted many of these things have been outside his watch, but he hasn't fixed the issues, and if anything things seem to be getting worse. Time for a new administration.

And don't forget the wrongful termination of an assistant golf coach who happened to be gay. GOLF of all things, how can you screw that up!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[BleedGopher]

per Rand Ball:

Hamilton goes through a significant list of examples from the past two decades, starting with the academic fraud scandal in the Gophers men’s basketball program that broke in 1999, shortly before he moved here to cover the Gophers.

Writes Hamilton:Bad things happen at nearly every college. Academic missteps, inappropriate behavior thrust before anyone with an internet connection, bad administrators, mishandling extremely delicate sexual assault cases … sadly, none of this is unique to Minnesota. Butallof it has happened at Minnesota, and having been there for a while, it does not seem to be the kind of place where oppressive pressure to succeed explains it all away.

He describes Gophers athletics as “realistically a mid-level business with fair-but-not-outsized expectations, and yet it all too consistently faces extraordinarily high-end humiliations.”

It’s hard to argue with that. In the big-money sports of football and men’s basketball, being better than the majority of teams — not necessarily elite — is the marker of success in most people’s eyes.

What’s interesting, though, is Hamilton’s diagnosis of why these things seem to keep happening here. Basically, it’s the opposite of what I’ve been thinking about.

Writes Hamilton: “No one there is cynical enough. Or at least no one in charge seems to be cynical enough.” His point is that he doesn’t think Minnesotans (or at least U of M administrators) are good at diagnosing potential problems before they happen because they place too much faith in others to do the right thing.

While there might be an element of truth to that, I’ll take the contrarian point of view. (And it should be noted: Hamilton is a New Jersey native and I’m a Midwest native. It’s hard to say whether an outside or inside perspective is better here, but it’s good to mention the difference).

My contention is that things keep happening (or at least seem to keep happening) with more frequency at Minnesota than other schools because Minnesotans are very cynical — and likely to expose bad behavior (even passive-aggressively) when it is discovered.

http://www.startribune.com/outside-...o-these-things-keep-happening-here/409694145/

Go Gophers!!

 

[BarnBoy]

I guess I'm not following all the "it's the administration" thinking.

The examples given: Cheating scandal, creepy AD, sex tape by b-ball team, orgy by football players.

What's the natural progression here? If we had a less PC and more "winning minded" administration, all of those things get handled behind closed doors? Or swept away?

I can get behind a "administration that doesn't want to win" theory, but I think that manifests more with paying coaches less, supporting academics over athletics, diluting the revenue sports' power, etc.

But help me connect the dots between the aforementioned behavior issues and it being the administrations fault. Honestly curious.