Love Butch, but no way he survives Shalala. If Shalala wasn't here, Shapiro never happens. Shalala destroyed this program and w Butch's personality, I believe he would've been gone regardless.
This is the most insanely idiotic thing I've ever read on this website. and that's saying a lot.
Why exactly is that? Any one who truly follows the program knows when butch was here he already had issues with a far more sports friendly administration. So why is it so hard to understand that shalala who didn't focus on our athletics at all (actually saw it as secondary) would've been he'll on butch. She immediately pushed her agenda from the second she got here.
Good lord, you can't be this stupid. Tad Foote couldn't stand the program, but he had outstanding ADs who managed the department well. That doesn't mean he supported the department, he just happened to serve as President during the run. This "Shalala hated athletics" nonsense isn't based in reality, or history. Look at Wisconsin athletics, Barry Alvarez and Pat Richter swear by her. Shalala may have neglected the athletic department(Most competent university president aren't prioritizing the athletic department), but he wasn't actively trying to sink it.
Actually I know I didn't say anything about her hating the program. I said she saw it as secondary which is certainly the case. She completely allowed the program to be neglected & hired incompetent at best staffers. Your petty insults be damned. I watched it with my own eyes on a daily during that time frame. By the way tad Foote didn't hate the program at all either. He hated the way we behaved & the image we portrayed to the university which he saw as harmful towards the vision he marketed. Very different from shalala. Her she just flat out saw athletics as simply part of a students education & thus it didn't deserve any special treatment out of fund raiser dollars or mainting a competent staff & facilities. Furthermore this whole Richter & Alvarez swear by her is completely irrelevant towards the discussion here. They were her hires & matched her image. They were quiet & conservative. They also come from a school with a passionate fanbase that will demand certain compromise. That being stated Wisconsin will still never be known as a school that's all about its athletics
NO WELL MANAGED SCHOOL IS ALL ABOUT ATHLETICS. Miami is becoming a top tier school, and it has to be managed as such. Top tier schools appreciate and support their athletic programs, but it isn't the end all be all. You know the kind of schools that are "All In" in regards to athletics? Marginal ones who are doing their regular students a disservice by ignoring their needs in favor of the student-athletes. If you want to be mad about the rot that was the last decade, look at the Board of Trustees and the Golden Canes. They were the ones with the real power to create change, and they didn't step up and do it. Remember, Dr. Shalala wasn't a dictator, she served at the pleasure of the Board of Trustees and the donors. The athletically inclined people on the board and the major boosters sat by and didn't hold certain people accountable. That's on them, they didn't put Dee out to pasture sooner, and they didn't take note of the arms race in college sports. They just sat by and reasoned that if it worked 30 years ago, it should work now. That isn't the case.
There's a power dynamic that a lot of people ignore because it's easy to point to the one person they recognize, instead of the thirty they don't. We see this in politics, it's a lot easier to point to Barack Obama or Dubya as the cause of your problems, than the 500+ people in Congress. The only thing she should be held to the fire about is the Randy Shannon hire. She stood on the table for that guy, when it should have been obvious that Miami needed an established guy after Coker ran the program into the ground. She, along with Paul Dee should have stood up to the "We need a Miami guy" crowd. That was something that I was highly disappointed with.
While Shapiro was a crappy person, there's plenty of Golden Canes that are unlikable, who occasionally break rules. The difference with Shapiro was that he was a con artist, doing something the FBI and SEC couldn't figure out. How do you expect Dr. Shalala to know something that those organizations didn't? He was given the all-clear by compliance, his money checked out, and that was that. If Miami only took donations from likable people, the donor pool would be cut significantly. That wasn't a Shalala problem, that was a "It's a lot easier to buy your way into the inner circle at Miami due to the small size of the donor pool" problem. He couldn't pull that crap at Alabama, it takes decades of large gifts to get into the inner circle. He would have been exposed way before he got there.
Shalala didn't fundraise for the athletic department, because that isn't her job. Her job is to stimulate fundraising for the academic departments, they need the additional muscle, athletics doesn't. That's on the AD, that's on the people in the department. They did a poor job of leveraging Miami's success in the early 2000s. When Dr. Shalala was asked by the AD, she did what was asked. When you go back and look at the last decade, Miami failed to attract elite leadership at the AD position, and that's where a lot of the blame should be laid. Hocutt and Eichorst were average at best, and Blake James is a work in progress. Compare that to Sam Jankovich, who was a big time AD, who seemed to have connections everywhere.
