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Sleeping with the Enemy (Shalala)

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JBCanes-NC said:
He sent me a free box (it didn’t work) and told me he also sent me a nice surprise that I will like. When I opened the envelope containing the picture, I threw up all over the place. @Dr.L.ThugU still doesn’t understand why I didn’t love the nasty *** picture.
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Yet he loves trans “women” so his taste is questionable at best.
 
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Ecush said:
That explains how he was able to get the nudes he was selling back in the canesport days. Buy an Amazon fire stick get a Donna pic. Vomit.
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JBCanes-NC said:
I didn’t want to tell that part. It’s disgusting.
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JBCanes-NC said:
He sent me a free box (it didn’t work) and told me he also sent me a nice surprise that I will like. When I opened the envelope containing the picture, I threw up all over the place. @Dr.L.ThugU still doesn’t understand why I didn’t love the nasty *** picture.
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Ecush said:
Yet he loves trans “women” so his taste is questionable at best.
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Non heteros ^^^^^
 
GojiraCane said:
Pros on Shalala:
- Refused calls to cancel the 2006 season or kick players off the team after the FIU brawl; she would have been lauded nationally for having done so
- Refused calls to cancel the 2011 season; she would have been lauded nationally for having done so.
- Leveraged political connections (likely) to ultimately crush the NCAA investigation. They were likely gunning for a death penalty and/or a four year television and bowl ban, plus a ten scholarship reduction per year

Cons on Shalala:
- Refused to escalate spending when the SEC and Clemson were ramping up.
- Refused to budget the funds necessary to bring in more experienced assistant coaches
- Refused to hire a dedicated nutritionist when other schools like Alabama were bringing them aboard. Absent that personnel, Miami players under Shannon were eating one meal a day in some cases (and that meal was McDonalds). We had to wait until years into the Golden regime to get one
- Refused to upgrade facilities at a time when other schools were doing so. She waited too long.

Basically, at a macro level she saved the program when it would have been politically expedient to kill it. But at the same time she was not content (or was unable) to increase spending on staff and furnishments that would allow Miami to remain an upper tier program. That is probably the most fair assessment of her tenure, IMO.
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Look, I blame the Board for the years of ineptitude more than any other group. That being said, there was no way the ACC would allow Miami to unilaterally just CANCEL the seasons in 2006, 2011, nor let the NCAA issue a death penalty or tv ban. There are too many games and televised events that would hurt not just Miami, but the ACC as a whole. The NCAA could make it where Miami's team would basically be an intramural team, but they'd still make sure Miami would have enough bodies to field a team 12 times a year. lol

All your cons on Shalala relate to funding of the program. To me, the Athletic Director's job is to monitor the athletic department and determining what needs to be done to keep it up to date. Paul Dee should have been fundraising and making those requests of the Board (and may have for all we know). Was Paul Dee on the "back nine" of life and not performing his due diligence to keep the program up to date? Quite possibly. Should Shalala have stepped in earlier than 2010 when the program had been on decline for over 4 years? Absolutely. However, at the end of the day, the Board has final say.
 
g8rh8rMD said:
I would add to the pros column her role in building the UHealth system, which is now hugely important to the University as a whole. I would also add to the cons column the clear fact that she established a standard that the athletic department as a whole and football in particular be deemphasized in prominence and stature. My opinion is that this was potentially in part well-intentioned to try and "heal" the national reputation of the university, thinking that nobody hates a loser. It was ill-founded and doomed to fail. There is also no doubt that she spent little time or energy getting to know the program and it's history and what made it special, including the Orange Bowl. Another addition to the cons column would be her role in seeing the OB demolished so unceremoniously. Those who claim she had nothing to do with the demolishing of the OB, but also want to give her credit for using her political will and capital to save the program during the NCAA investigation are being extremely intellectually dishonest.

EDIT: meant to add that your take was in general very fair and reasonable. Solid post. I also think that, if she had cared about the actual success of football and not just it's continued existence, she could have been more involved and more forceful years earlier in pushing back against the NCAA's nonsense. In hindsight, it's easy to forget just how bad that was and how long it went on. When she finally stepped in was only at the point that even ESPN and other outsiders were actually starting to say, "this is ridiculous, what is going on here?"
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Eh, in my opinion, the taming of the football program began after Erickson left. It had gotten so rogue and out of control with hidden drug tests and behavior issues that it was one of Butch's aims when he took over the program to bring it back into more control. It took Butch awhile, but he did it. More importantly, they could be more "mainstream" if you will, but still win. The problem came in hiring the players' choice in Larry Coker instead of a more qualified and respected replacement for Butch. Since then, it's just been a comedy of errors that hopefully is being changed now.

As far as the OB goes, I just don't see how the school had much leverage without putting up some money which it appears they did not have.
 
Here is the reality. Shalala loved football and athletics. She was misguided in thinking that Miami would always win solely because of our name and where we were located. She did not understand how the internet was changing the game, and her failure to invest in Athletics hurt all sports, but football in the biggest way. Her handling of the Orange Bowl showed a lack of skill. What she did do was invest in Uhealth against a lot of pushback and criticism, and that strategy and investment has proved to be very smart. IMO, she gets a B- overall because of Uhealth and being a great fundraiser.
 
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CaneinBroward said:
Eh, in my opinion, the taming of the football program began after Erickson left. It had gotten so rogue and out of control with hidden drug tests and behavior issues that it was one of Butch's aims when he took over the program to bring it back into more control. It took Butch awhile, but he did it. More importantly, they could be more "mainstream" if you will, but still win. The problem came in hiring the players' choice in Larry Coker instead of a more qualified and respected replacement for Butch. Since then, it's just been a comedy of errors that hopefully is being changed now.

As far as the OB goes, I just don't see how the school had much leverage without putting up some money which it appears they did not have.
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The school had the money, they just allocated it elsewhere. All of this is generally fair and well reasoned.
 
3FW said:
Here is the reality. Shalala loved football and athletics. She was misguided in thinking that Miami would always win solely because of our name and where we were located. She did not understand how the internet was changing the game, and her failure to invest in Athletics hurt all sports, but football in the biggest way. Her handling of the Orange Bowl showed a lack of skill. What she did do was invest in Uhealth against a lot of pushback and criticism, and that strategy and investment has proved to be very smart. IMO, she gets a B- overall because of Uhealth and being a great fundraiser.
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Well said and rational. One could argue lack of skill versus lack of awareness and caring for the historical significance, but nothing in here that a reasonable person could strongly dispute. At the end of the day, her bet on UHealth paid off big, while in other areas her leadership proved a complete failure. B- is probably fair overall, but I'd certainly put a lower grade on her tenure given that the football program and athletics are the areas I care about most, and the fact that the decline of the Athletic Department has had a negative and lagging effect on the school's academic standing.

The only thing that's truly irreparable is the loss of such an historic landmark and important rally point for the community in the OB. To be sure, there were many forces at play, but if UM had wanted to and fought to save it, they could have, but chose not to.
 
g8rh8rMD said:
Well said and rational. One could argue lack of skill versus lack of awareness and caring for the historical significance, but nothing in here that a reasonable person could strongly dispute. At the end of the day, her bet on UHealth paid off big, while in other areas her leadership proved a complete failure. B- is probably fair overall, but I'd certainly put a lower grade on her tenure given that the football program and athletics are the areas I care about most, and the fact that the decline of the Athletic Department has had a negative and lagging effect on the school's academic standing.

The only thing that's truly irreparable is the loss of such an historic landmark and important rally point for the community in the OB. To be sure, there were many forces at play, but if UM had wanted to and fought to save it, they could have, but chose not to.
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Her bet on UMhealth didn’t pay off. New management has to come in and clean up her mess based on what people in the know have told me.
 
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We the Boss said:
Her bet on UMhealth didn’t pay off. New management has to come in and clean up her mess based on what people in the know have told me.
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This is somewhat fair. Typical business trajectory, the founder and head strategist could not execute operationally and a new team was brought in that did. I am not sure if she was entirely self aware, but she did decide to leave at an opportune time. Granted she was taking heat for her investment in Uhealth. Frenk thought big and brought in the outsider who drove the business to profitability. For those that did not know, the ship was righted prior to Covid.
 
We the Boss said:
Her bet on UMhealth didn’t pay off. New management has to come in and clean up her mess based on what people in the know have told me.
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Interesting. Doesn't surprise me. I'm just going off what I've read about it being extremely profitable the last few years. Of course, I've also heard that health care is extremely capital intensive and that basically all the profits have to go right back into the system in the way of building upgrades, construction, and equipment - just to keep up with the industry.
 
We the Boss said:
The thought of sleeping with that Danny devito stunt double made me physically ill.
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She was also Warwick Davis's stunt double in Willow.

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We the Boss said:
Her bet on UMhealth didn’t pay off. New management has to come in and clean up her mess based on what people in the know have told me.
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She is a polarizing figure given her political affiliations, and she made some big miscalculations when it comes to football specifically, so around here it's amplified even more. She did not pick all the right people for UHealth, but she did push forward with the project over a whole host of objecting parties, and she sold it to the deep pockets which raised the money. We are reaping these benefits today, across the university, including football. As a whole, she gets a lot of credit for its success. Big picture, you really have to look hard within UHealth to find specific instances to use against her, and then blow them way out of proportion relative to what the U accomplished -- buying and funding the system. IMO.
 
Shalala is responsible for the orange bowl getting torn down, which can never be forgiven

She inherited a national championship team with Butch Davis, and it collapsed into irrelevance under her watch

The Nevin Shapiro stuff happened under her watch

Etc etc.

Shalala was objectively trash
 
Not many posts in this thread are consistent with reality. Half of the negative posters expressed that they're thankful shes gone from the university, which is a bit bizarre given that she has been back full time for nearly a year. I am not here to say that she was a great leader for the football team and I do not know what amount of the decline she is responsible for, but it is utterly preposterous to claim that she was bad for the university or that she wanted to destroy football or any of those things. 1) She loves football , as president prioritized building her schedule around being able to attend most away games and regularly still attends games to this day. 2) Some have pointed out the important role that her moves in health care are playing in today's financial strength, but another wrinkle to underscore the foresight of it is that the moves towards investing in health care came hand in hand with shifting the university's endowment out of being heavily leveraged in south florida real estate, which she felt was risky and generated no cash flow. I believe the endowment was something around 95% invested in south florida real estate and that of course would have been a university wide crisis had it been the case still when south florida real estate market became ground zero for the housing crash a couple years later. 3) No mention or understanding of the existential threat to private universities that was caused by the financial collapse and ensuing recession. Banks hit the brakes on lending activity and people's access to credit evaporated in mass quantity, which is an extinction event level threat to universities that build budgets with a significant portion of revenue coming from students who need some amount of loans to attend. To put in perspective, the tuition revenue at the U for any normal single year is about five times more money than Alabama's annual football budget. Some schools sucked up the hit of sudden unplanned loss of significant revenue most just threw their brand and ranking down the toilet by dropping their SAT/GPA standards and taking in a lower tier of applicants who could afford to pay without credit markets. Shalala went to China and stabilized tuition revenue with students who didn't harm the ranking/brand. We would not have mario cristobal or dan r or any of these exciting changes right now if the university had not navigated those two crises well.
 
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