I believe that the Soffer family has interest with UM based on their past donations (14M to the IPF). Nothing that has ever been done at UM has the feel of the Dubai World folks though. When they invest, they aren't passive. They take a significant amount of control, change organizational structure, and manage their entities. That the Soffer family has a relationship to Dubai World doesn't really mean much either, nor is it particularly surprising given their shared interest in urban development. So they were in town and spent time in Soffer suite. As sports fans, I'd expect that. It's nice but who cares?
Anyhow, if DW was going to back structural change at UM, they would at least offer organizational support and expertise in a collaborative manner with UM, in areas where UM athletics have been sorely lacking for 2 decades despite the support of the Soffer family and others. This isn't Dubai World's game. It's too small for them and uninteresting.
People like the Soffers are incredibly successful. That they allowed this situation to fester all year while being on the BoT is shocking. At the very least, as one of few athletic program supporters on the BoT, they should have been able to see that change was imminent, that Blake James needed to be fired earlier in the year in order to allow for a better search without the pressure of time, in order to allow a new AD to come in and thoroughly investigate the issues UM has had for 20 years, and to allow the new AD to better eval Manny. They wouldn't be in this same predicament now had they behaved appropriately.
People want to blame Manny. He's hardly to blame. He's fulfilling his contractual obligation and is trying to be the best Manny he can be. He's just not good enough, nor was he ever good enough. This was a failure of our AD, our school President, and our BoT, including members of the Soffer family who allowed this catastrophe to happen.
