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Thread: Jordan in at Milwaukee, but was the process botched?

  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Montana87 View Post
    Major boosters, and I mean MAJOR boosters told Mone from the start of his administration that Braun was a tool, in over her head, paranoid and out to sabotage the program and RJ. Numerous times they asked Mone to step in and at least question Braun's actions. Mone ignored the inquiries made by these MAJOR boosters. This is the result. How does LJ go into work now having to pass Braun in the hallway. How does Braun go to work and have the ability to look LJ in the eyes? The derailment and dumpster fire continues to grow and the only way to have this put out is the removal of Braun. Case closed.
    Did Chancellor Mone ignore the complaints of the boosters, or did he ask Braun about the complaints and decide not to remove her based on her response?

    It wasn't long after Braun started on the job that postings on the eunuch board started, claiming that she was driving away boosters and sponsors. i didn't pay much attention to those postings at the time, because they came from someone who appeared to have joined the board for the expressed purpose of criticizing Braun, and because the postings were short on facts: no specifics about the numbers of boosters or donors driven away, not even a ballpark guess on how much money was involved. There wasn't a lot of comments about the postings, save for a few veteran members who appeared to have the same unwillingness as i did to take the poster's word without any corroboration.

    Since she started as AD, Braun has made some decisions that call her ability to do her job effectively into question. People have been moved around in the department. Some people have left on their own initiative, and others have been let go or encouraged to leave and done so. There is also the debacle of the neutral site for the Horizon League basketball tournaments, and now the dumpster fire of the head coach situation for Men's basketball.

    Had i known then what i know now, i would have been more willing to take those original claims seriously. Had Braun responded publicly to the claims then in the manner she has responded to this whole dumpster fire, i definitely would have been more suspicious about any claims she would have made about all being well with Panther Athletics. But especially i find the claims of her unfitness for the job to be much more believable because they are coming from long-time members of the discussion board, people whom i have observed for a number of years and concluded that they were straight shooters, with knowledge and contacts with the program that mean they know what they are talking about.

    The whole point of having a Director running the Athletics Department is so the Chancellor doesn't have to make all the decisions about the department on top of all the other decisions involved with running a large university. Delegating authority in that manner requires that the authority be delegated to someone who is worthy of trust. By all recent accounts, Braun is not worthy of that level of authority, and quite possibly never was. How did she get hired? How did George Koonce get hired? How did Rick Costello get hired?

    i would really like to see some hard data on the athletics department: (1) How many boosters have ceased donating to the department because of Amanda Braun, from the beginning of her tenure to now? How much money had they given? Where would the department's funding be if they were still donating? (2) How many corporate sponsors have stopped supporting Panther Athletics since Braun took over, and how much money has the department lost as a result? (3) How do the losses sustained compare with the claims of increases in the number of donors and amount of money donated which Braun has made? (3) How much money was lost from declining season ticket sales? (4) How much of the decline is the result of the lack of success Braun claims was the reason for firing Coach Jeter, and how much is the result of decisions made by Braun's predecessors as Director of Athletics? (There are believable claims that most of the decrease is the result of the decision to stop playing downtown.)

    As interesting as this information would be to me, i think it would be much more useful in making the case to campus administration that they need to be as engaged with athletics as with any other aspect of university life. Engaged doesn't have to mean being completely hands-on, so long as someone trustworthy is running the department. But the kind of engagement that Nancy Zimpher had with athletics, to use Jimmy's example, clearly has benefits for the university.
    Last edited by Skrapheap; 04-13-2016 at 04:38 PM.
    A panther is like a leopard. Except it hasn't been peppered.
    Should you behold a panther crouch, prepare to say "ouch."
    Better yet, if called by a panther...don't anther (Ogden Nash "The Panther")

    Ceterum censo Amanda Braun debet esse accensa.

  2. #22
    I asked the Eunuch Board for those numbers. No reply. Just a repeat of the misleading number used in the D'Amato article. Given that 50% or more of the posters over there are actually employees of the Athletic Department, you would think those numbers would have magically popped on the board if they were so damn good. The lack of an answer is in fact an answer in this case.
    Class of 1998
    Lubar School of Business - BBA Management Information Systems
    Formerly known as Nighthawk
    The Dark Hawk arose in a time of great turmoil to fight for truth, justice and the Panther way.

  3. #23
    It's comical to think Mone would hire a competent AD after his embarrassing performance during this entire debacle. Give me a break about too much on his plate in dealing with budget cuts, etc. This isn't the AD picking a new men's swimming coach: this is the sole revenue generating sport of the entire athletic department. He damn well better be aware of what's going on. I wouldn't let this ding dong any where near the hiring of a new AD, which is why he needs to go and the new chancellor bring in his/her own person.

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by TheDarkHawkReturns View Post
    I asked the Eunuch Board for those numbers. No reply. Just a repeat of the misleading number used in the D'Amato article. Given that 50% or more of the posters over there are actually employees of the Athletic Department, you would think those numbers would have magically popped on the board if they were so damn good. The lack of an answer is in fact an answer in this case.
    For most purposes, the lack of an answer is an answer, i agree.

    But if you want to make the case to Chancellor Mone that he needs to pay more attention to athletics, particularly considering its affect on UWM's public standing, i think you need data rather than the absence of data.

    The folks on the eunuch board who are actual employees of the athletics department can't release that information on the board; since they're pretending they're not employees, releasing it would give away the game. Also, if the data is, as we suspect, evidence against Braun rather than for her, they would have even less incentive to release it.

    i think you'd have to go after that information some other fashion. i am sure it would be a lot of work, but i think the gathered data would be very useful.

    Someone would have to identify current and former donors, and if how much they've given and/or are giving isn't public information in some form, would have to ask them, along with, if they have stopped giving, why they stopped. Each individual donor could simply refuse to answer the questions, even if assured that their names would not appear publicly.

    It's possible that campus administration already has the data, but would they have had a reason to ask for it unless they already suspected that the reported data was inaccurate? Perhaps the Chancellor's intervention in the HC hiring is an indication that he doesn't trust Braun. That makes sense to me, but i have no way of knowing for certain.
    A panther is like a leopard. Except it hasn't been peppered.
    Should you behold a panther crouch, prepare to say "ouch."
    Better yet, if called by a panther...don't anther (Ogden Nash "The Panther")

    Ceterum censo Amanda Braun debet esse accensa.

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