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Tears The Old Lady

TheOriginalCane said:
People forget...

There was an ELECTORAL VOTE where the Miami residents approved the use of bonds to pay for Orange Bowl renovations.

There was a CITY OF MIAMI VOTE to award the Orange Bowl renovation contract to Hammes (same company that renovated Lambeau).

There was a CORRUPT EFFORT by David Samson and the Marlins to get the city to break the deal and give the Orange Bowl site to the Marlins, which David Samson admitted and bragged about.

There was a MILLION DOLLAR settlement paid by the City of Miami to Hammes for repudiating the signed contract.



But...yeah...."blame Shalala". She had NOTHING TO DO with any of that corrupt ****, but somehow she is getting blamed for it...
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She was the PRESIDENT of the University of Miami. She was supposed to be a leader and she was supposed to further UM’s interests.

Even if everything you are saying is true, it doesn’t get her off the hook. The bottom line is that the OB was torn down during her tenure and she moved us to Dolphins stadium.

As a leader, if all this corruption was going on, she should have stood up to it on Miami’s behalf. Where was the publicity campaign exposing all of this from Donna? Where were her media interviews exposing people like Samson, furthering Miami’s interests? Where were the lawsuits?

Bottom line is that the castle crumbled under HER watch, and there is no evidence that she ever lifted a finger to stop it. You can argue that it was her incompetence as a leader, or that it simply wasn’t important to her…but either way it was her failure
 
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RightSaidFred said:
She was the PRESIDENT of the University of Miami. She was supposed to be a leader and she was supposed to further UM’s interests.

Even if everything you are saying is true, it doesn’t get her off the hook. The bottom line is that the OB was torn down during her tenure and she moved us to Dolphins stadium.

As a leader, if all this corruption was going on, she should have stood up to it on Miami’s behalf. Where was the publicity campaign exposing all of this from Donna? Where were her media interviews exposing people like Samson, furthering Miami’s interests? Where were the lawsuits?

Bottom line is that the castle crumbled under HER watch, and there is no evidence that she ever lifted a finger to stop it. You can argue that it was her incompetence as a leader, or that it simply wasn’t important to her…but either way it was her failure
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I won’t defend Shalala’s actions or inaction because I’m no insider and didn’t follow her tenure that closely. From the outside looking in, IMO, after the Phins left, the Canes were again the main tenant of the OB. The OB was owned by the city and needed basically a complete overhaul of which the city was unwilling and probably unable financially to undertake.

At the time, the university was probably unable financially to undertake such a project or even make a substantial investment in such. The only feasible option would have been to involve a private/corporate entity to undertake the renovation but with the cost of the re-no, who would have undertaken that with little opportunity for ROI. Competing against HR and the other Pro Miami pro teams would have made it extremely difficult to even break even.

My father and I had a lot of skin in the OB and it broke my heart seeing it demolished. I’m thankful he was swimming with fishes when it happened.
 
RightSaidFred said:
She was the PRESIDENT of the University of Miami. She was supposed to be a leader and she was supposed to further UM’s interests.

Even if everything you are saying is true, it doesn’t get her off the hook. The bottom line is that the OB was torn down during her tenure and she moved us to Dolphins stadium.

As a leader, if all this corruption was going on, she should have stood up to it on Miami’s behalf. Where was the publicity campaign exposing all of this from Donna? Where were her media interviews exposing people like Samson, furthering Miami’s interests? Where were the lawsuits?

Bottom line is that the castle crumbled under HER watch, and there is no evidence that she ever lifted a finger to stop it. You can argue that it was her incompetence as a leader, or that it simply wasn’t important to her…but either way it was her failure
Click to expand...


Typical nonsense from you.

So a 6-year president of a small private university is supposed to outrank and outflank and outvote the elected mayor and city commissioners? You are just being dopey and ridiculous, the City of Miami mismanaged the Orange Bowl and broke promises related to renovations FOR DECADES. Long before Shalala became president of UM.

Look, it's nothing personal, but **** you and your "supposed to be a leader" and "supposed to further UM's interests" bullcrap. WE WERE A TENANT. And not even a favored tenant at any time. That wasn't Shalala's fault. We could blame Tad Foote, who didn't pursue a Tropical Park option in the 1980s. We could blame every UM president before Tad Foote for not building an on-campus stadium, particularly because George Merrick INTENDED for the University of Miami to have an on-campus football stadium when he set aside the land for UM. Lake Osceola WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FOOTBALL STADIUM (there was NO LAKE originally, it was only a canal), but UM dug out the dirt and sold it for the Rickenbacker Causeway in order to fund the completion of the Merrick Building on campus.

But, yeah, "further UM's interests". What in the holy **** are YOUR productive suggestions? Should Shalala have organized an "out-bribe David Samson" effort? Give it a rest already, Samson and the Marlins had already bought off everyone in Miami. And most people did not know about, or have evidence of, that bribery for years, when Samson finally decided to "be honest" and both admit to and brag about all of his prior corruption when he "linked up" with Billy Corben to try to fight the Mas brothers and their soccer stadium project. You naively act like some herculean Shalala effort of "talking" and "negotiating" would have resulted in a different outcome. Or that she could mount a "PR campaign" with absolutely no hard evidence (I'm suuuuuure there would have been no libel/slander lawsuits filed by Samson and the Marlins). Are you serious?

As for the "she moved us to Dolphins Stadium" nonsense, allow me to quote the great Delta Tau Chi brother Dwayne "Stork" Storkman...

1674363379458.jpeg
 
423Hurricane said:
I won’t defend Shalala’s actions or inaction because I’m no insider and didn’t follow her tenure that closely. From the outside looking in, IMO, after the Phins left, the Canes were again the main tenant of the OB. The OB was owned by the city and needed basically a complete overhaul of which the city was unwilling and probably unable financially to undertake.

At the time, the university was probably unable financially to undertake such a project or even make a substantial investment in such. The only feasible option would have been to involve a private/corporate entity to undertake the renovation but with the cost of the re-no, who would have undertaken that with little opportunity for ROI. Competing against HR and the other Pro Miami pro teams would have made it extremely difficult to even break even.

My father and I had a lot of skin in the OB and it broke my heart seeing it demolished. I’m thankful he was swimming with fishes when it happened.
Click to expand...


As to paragraph one, the funding of the Orange Bowl renovation had already been approved by Dade County voters, and the City of Miami had already approved and signed a contract with Hammes for the renovation. So the "unwilling/unable to financially undertake" angle is not supported by historical facts.

As to paragraph two, it makes no difference whether the university had the financial wherewithal, it simply wasn't our land and it wasn't our building to renovate. This would be the functional equivalent of UCF trying to talk the City of Orlando into allowing it to renovate the Citrus Bowl. For whatever stubborn reasons, the politicians would never consider or allow that option, so UCF built an on-campus stadium.

We will continue to have brain-dead and/or politically-motivated morons come to this board to tell us how "Shalala is to blame", merely because the first few years of her tenure coincided with a highly corrupt time period in City of Miami politics. I don't agree with everything Shalala did, but there was nothing she could have done to stop David Samson and the Marlins from stealing the Orange Bowl site. They paid off every politician in town for that deal.
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Typical nonsense from you.

So a 6-year president of a small private university is supposed to outrank and outflank and outvote the elected mayor and city commissioners? You are just being dopey and ridiculous, the City of Miami mismanaged the Orange Bowl and broke promises related to renovations FOR DECADES. Long before Shalala became president of UM.

Look, it's nothing personal, but **** you and your "supposed to be a leader" and "supposed to further UM's interests" bullcrap. WE WERE A TENANT. And not even a favored tenant at any time. That wasn't Shalala's fault. We could blame Tad Foote, who didn't pursue a Tropical Park option in the 1980s. We could blame every UM president before Tad Foote for not building an on-campus stadium, particularly because George Merrick INTENDED for the University of Miami to have an on-campus football stadium when he set aside the land for UM. Lake Osceola WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FOOTBALL STADIUM (there was NO LAKE originally, it was only a canal), but UM dug out the dirt and sold it for the Rickenbacker Causeway in order to fund the completion of the Merrick Building on campus.

But, yeah, "further UM's interests". What in the holy **** are YOUR productive suggestions? Should Shalala have organized an "out-bribe David Samson" effort? Give it a rest already, Samson and the Marlins had already bought off everyone in Miami. And most people did not know about, or have evidence of, that bribery for years, when Samson finally decided to "be honest" and both admit to and brag about all of his prior corruption when he "linked up" with Billy Corben to try to fight the Mas brothers and their soccer stadium project. You naively act like some herculean Shalala effort of "talking" and "negotiating" would have resulted in a different outcome. Or that she could mount a "PR campaign" with absolutely no hard evidence (I'm suuuuuure there would have been no libel/slander lawsuits filed by Samson and the Marlins). Are you serious?

As for the "she moved us to Dolphins Stadium" nonsense, allow me to quote the great Delta Tau Chi brother Dwayne "Stork" Storkman...

View attachment 226034
Click to expand...

That’s a lot of words just to say she was powerless to stop the Orange Bowl from being torn down. Let’s just assume you’re right. That just paints her as an inept and weak leader who therefore had no business being in charge of this U.

The fact, impossible to ignore or spin, was that Donna Shalala was in charge when the Orange Bowl was ripped down to the studs. Not Tad Foote, not any of her predecessors. Donna Shalala. And there was zero leadership from her to try to stop it.

To say that Donna did anything but harm UM football is ignorant of the plain evidence. She inherited a national champion with Butch Davis as coach. Under her tenure, we hired Larry Coker, Randy Shannon, and Al Golden. Under her tenure, we were convicted of Loss of Institutional Control (and who is ultimately responsible for “institutional control” if not the executive) by the NCAA, and she even allowed a ridiculous and infamous photo of herself with Nevin Shapiro to be taken at some scrubby bowling alley while cheesily accepting a check.

The facts - not opinions- are that Donna Shalala inherited a national power football program who played in a storied stadium it had to itself, and under her inept leadership the program became less than mediocre, joined a middling league, made terrible hires at AD and coaches, lost its stadium, and will be lucky if it can ever dig itself out of the deep hole her bumbling leadership placed us in. That was Donna’s legacy.

So yes, Donna Shalala will be remembered for tearing down the OB. It happened under her watch. Anything else is just spin on your part
 
RightSaidFred said:
That’s a lot of words just to say she was powerless to stop the Orange Bowl from being torn down. Let’s just assume you’re right. That just paints her as an inept and weak leader who therefore had no business being in charge of this U.

The fact, impossible to ignore or spin, was that Donna Shalala was in charge when the Orange Bowl was ripped down to the studs. Not Tad Foote, not any of her predecessors. Donna Shalala. And there was zero leadership from her to try to stop it.

To say that Donna did anything but harm UM football is ignorant of the plain evidence. She inherited a national champion with Butch Davis as coach. Under her tenure, we hired Larry Coker, Randy Shannon, and Al Golden. Under her tenure, we were convicted of Loss of Institutional Control (and who is ultimately responsible for “institutional control” if not the executive) by the NCAA, and she even allowed a ridiculous and infamous photo of herself with Nevin Shapiro to be taken at some scrubby bowling alley while cheesily accepting a check.

The facts - not opinions- are that Donna Shalala inherited a national power football program who played in a storied stadium it had to itself, and under her inept leadership the program became less than mediocre, joined a middling league, made terrible hires at AD and coaches, lost its stadium, and will be lucky if it can ever dig itself out of the deep hole her bumbling leadership placed us in. That was Donna’s legacy.

So yes, Donna Shalala will be remembered for tearing down the OB. It happened under her watch. Anything else is just spin on your part
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Do you have any self-awareness? Do you realize why your porsts are so horrible and factually incorrect?

I'll give you a hint.

It's sentences like these:

"She inherited a national champion with Butch Davis as coach."

"Under her tenure, we hired Larry Coker"

You probably can't even figure out why these sentences are factually incorrect.

You are a joke.
 
TheOriginalCane said:
As to paragraph one, the funding of the Orange Bowl renovation had already been approved by Dade County voters, and the City of Miami had already approved and signed a contract with Hammes for the renovation. So the "unwilling/unable to financially undertake" angle is not supported by historical facts.

As to paragraph two, it makes no difference whether the university had the financial wherewithal, it simply wasn't our land and it wasn't our building to renovate. This would be the functional equivalent of UCF trying to talk the City of Orlando into allowing it to renovate the Citrus Bowl. For whatever stubborn reasons, the politicians would never consider or allow that option, so UCF built an on-campus stadium.

We will continue to have brain-dead and/or politically-motivated morons come to this board to tell us how "Shalala is to blame", merely because the first few years of her tenure coincided with a highly corrupt time period in City of Miami politics. I don't agree with everything Shalala did, but there was nothing she could have done to stop David Samson and the Marlins from stealing the Orange Bowl site. They paid off every politician in town for that deal.
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As I mentioned, I wasn’t privy to a lot of the details during that time and was basing my opinion on observations from my fathers tenure as the Stadium Manager. Thanks for clearing that up and I always appreciate your knowledge about situations like these.
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Do you have any self-awareness? Do you realize why your porsts are so horrible and factually incorrect?

I'll give you a hint.

It's sentences like these:

"She inherited a national champion with Butch Davis as coach."

"Under her tenure, we hired Larry Coker"

You probably can't even figure out why these sentences are factually incorrect.

You are a joke.
Click to expand...
I realize Butch was responsible for a NC....But didn't realize he Won one....MFer.....let me call him with a belated Congratulations...
 
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SWFLHurricane said:
I realize Butch was responsible for a NC....But didn't realize he Won one....MFer.....let me call him with a belated Congratulations...
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🤣

Also, I didn't realize that Butch waited to take the Browns job unitil June 1, 2001, when Donna Shalala became UM president. I always thought that Butch left while Foote was still president and that Foote was responsible for naming Coker as his replacement...but I guess I learn something new every day...

🤣
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Do you have any self-awareness? Do you realize why your porsts are so horrible and factually incorrect?

I'll give you a hint.

It's sentences like these:

"She inherited a national champion with Butch Davis as coach."

"Under her tenure, we hired Larry Coker"

You probably can't even figure out why these sentences are factually incorrect.

You are a joke.
Click to expand...

Oh you’re absolutely right (sarcasm)…Shalala was hired in June 2001 so she clearly gets all of the credit for the 2001 team. So does Larry Coker. Butch Davis and the previous admin get none of the credit, since that team was built in a month.

For that reason alone, she gets none of the blame for the other terrible AD hires, the slide into mediocrity, the loss of institutional control under the nevin scandal, the picture of her in the bowling alley, the fact that the OB was ripped down during her administration, and she gets none of the blame for Al Golden, Larry Coker, or Randy Shannon.

SARCASM obviously. Please cut the ****, man. She was a good president in certain respects like U Health and getting the academic rankings up…but she was a disaster for athletics. I haven’t even mentioned baseball yet.
 
Listen, we all love the OB, my Senior Walk was the last game in the OB(I still have my chair and a piece of the endzone bush in my office). That said, the writing was on the wall. Either it needed to be heavily renovated, or torn down. The City made it clear they were crooked as **** and wasn't going to use the bond funds approved by voters in 2004 to renovate, and the University wasn't stupid enough to put hundreds of millions of dollars into a facility they didn't own, nor control the revenue streams.
 
RightSaidFred said:
Oh you’re absolutely right (sarcasm)…Shalala was hired in June 2001 so she clearly gets all of the credit for the 2001 team. So does Larry Coker. Butch Davis and the previous admin get none of the credit, since that team was built in a month.

For that reason alone, she gets none of the blame for the other terrible AD hires, the slide into mediocrity, the loss of institutional control under the nevin scandal, the picture of her in the bowling alley, the fact that the OB was ripped down during her administration, and she gets none of the blame for Al Golden, Larry Coker, or Randy Shannon.

SARCASM obviously. Please cut the ****, man. She was a good president in certain respects like U Health and getting the academic rankings up…but she was a disaster for athletics. I haven’t even mentioned baseball yet.
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Let me see if I understand.

You post blatant, obvious factual misrepresentations.

You then come back, not to take responsbility or admit your stupidity, but to bloviate a bunch of words trying to obscure your lack of knowledge.

Don't be mad at me that you are clueless and wrong. And don't try to change the subject of THE ORANGE BOWL to some completely different conversation about various other things that Shalala did or didn't do. No matter how you try to deny it, the only thing Shalala "inherited" was Tad Foote's AD, Paul Dee.

Shalala is not the reason the Orange Bowl is gone. That's a fact, no matter how much you try to deny it with false statements about Butch winning a national championship.
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Let me see if I understand.

You post blatant, obvious factual misrepresentations.

You then come back, not to take responsbility or admit your stupidity, but to bloviate a bunch of words trying to obscure your lack of knowledge.

Don't be mad at me that you are clueless and wrong. And don't try to change the subject of THE ORANGE BOWL to some completely different conversation about various other things that Shalala did or didn't do. No matter how you try to deny it, the only thing Shalala "inherited" was Tad Foote's AD, Paul Dee.

Shalala is not the reason the Orange Bowl is gone. That's a fact, no matter how much you try to deny it with false statements about Butch winning a national championship.
Click to expand...

Bro relax. Have you seen me attack you personally even one time? I haven’t and I don’t want or need to. Yet you’ve insulted me multiple times despite me not reciprocating. Aren’t you a lawyer or something? If you do this for a living, you then should be able to have a debate like an adult and not stoop to this.

The OB was torn down under her watch and she didn’t lift a finger. That’s the bottom line, and anyone can verify that simple fact for themselves.
 
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RightSaidFred said:
She was the PRESIDENT of the University of Miami. She was supposed to be a leader and she was supposed to further UM’s interests.

Even if everything you are saying is true, it doesn’t get her off the hook. The bottom line is that the OB was torn down during her tenure and she moved us to Dolphins stadium.

As a leader, if all this corruption was going on, she should have stood up to it on Miami’s behalf. Where was the publicity campaign exposing all of this from Donna? Where were her media interviews exposing people like Samson, furthering Miami’s interests? Where were the lawsuits?

Bottom line is that the castle crumbled under HER watch, and there is no evidence that she ever lifted a finger to stop it. You can argue that it was her incompetence as a leader, or that it simply wasn’t important to her…but either way it was her failure
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it's a little bit like blaming Noah for the rain.

She and the Board had the plan to help the swill that we call Miami politicians support the ongoing maintenance. The deal was torpedoed by Samson, Manny Diaz Sr. (who got a nice check to "facilitate), and a couple of others. When COM breached the deal with Hammes, the allegations in the complaint showed (by COM's own admission) that the university was not a party in interest and had no authority to cause the city to do anything. UM was a tenant of real property, whose leasehold interest did not give them any equitable or legal rights in the fee simple interest.

NOTHING that UM could have done without the City's consent (which was not, and never going to be forthcoming), was going to save the Orange Bowl.
 
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