More USF Drama

SF Weekly published quite the article regading the mess in the USF Athletic Dept.

This article is more of the same, but has MUCH more detail, and some VERY unsettling quotes from donors and folks close to USF.

Wow.

SF Weekly Article

I read it ... I still don't get it.

It kills me that the Pilots end up being wins 799 and 801 for Sutton. Without us he'd be stuck at 799 forever. What a mess down there.

Oh my gosh... wow. That was quite the investigative bit of work there. Very well done by the writer.

The sad thing, though, is that it really didn't need to come to that. They aired A LOT of dirty laundry there, and no article would have ever been written if the firing of Evans would have been handled more appropriately. This whole thing is a cautionary tale... I'm not taking sides on Gore-Mann, but clearly she has ticked off enough boosters to cause them to make a ton of inside information available to the media. Definitely makes me thankful for the Athletics administration we have.

But playing the what if game for a minute... what if we would have fired Holton midway through the year in 2005-06 (Pooh's senior year) when we were predicited to do so well and fell on our face to begin the season and hired a guy like Eddie Sutton, who was clearly coming in just to hit a milestone and then leave town and was clearly done for some free publicity? Would that have ticked enough people off to make them start talking to the Willamette Week about all kinds of stuff? Would that have let out dirty laundry about what happened with Marcus Lewis and Dreshawn Vance and all of that? It's a hard question... and one I'm so thankful we don't have to answer.

But it does make me feel sorry for the Average Joe USF fans that have been caught up in this mixer. Now the whole Bay Area has a negative opinion about USF and its basketball program. It's going to take a lot to get people looking at it in a positive light. Just sad all around.

Well, I guess you can't admit you're looking for a new coach until you fire the old coach--which you have apparently already done, but strangely you haven't told him nor anyone else. Which makes one wonder why you would place Evans on a leave of absence in the first place, particularly because it just seems so utterly silly and maybe even cruel to keep him hanging in the background, without finality.

Meanwhile the alumni, always hopeful of a good outcome, are wondering just what in the world has befallen their basketball coach and, more importantly, their alma mater. The press endlessly implies a lack of judgment by the young woman running the program, though the university insists that she has their full confidence and trust.

Fact or fiction? What, pray tell, is the moral of the story? Who, in the end, will be vindicated? Will USF's brave young athletic director prove to have acted with good judgment, keeping secrets only to protect the innocent? Is it possible that the clear words which form the athletic director's name will prove only a coincidence, rather than a message from a higher power that the basketball coach ought to watch his ps and qs? Will Coach Evans turn out to be the true villain, or will he simply be a pawn in a larger power struggle between athletics and money? Will the police investigate? Will legislation be passed? Where is the NCAA in all this? What about Coach Sutton who gracefully swooped in to help the program in its hour of need--will he prove a hero or only an insensitive, but ambitious opportunist? Is there any romance involved? Who gets to sell the script?

Geez, I don't get it either, but it is kind of funny in a weird way . . .

Stay tuned Dons fans, the next chapter is coming to a newspaper near you.

The article is a good summary of all that's gone on so far. I didn't even know about the ticket scalping. My favorite paragraph was the one about how Gore-Mann hired Sutton because the Pump brothers recommended him. The writer then talked about how that was hardly a ringing endorsement...

I hope the AD really did have cause to terminate the Evans like she said she did; however, if there was improper conduct by the coach I would have thought we would have heard some allegations by now. I will definitely be following this story.

Wow is right. What a soap opera. Very interesting and well written article.

My take is that whether DGM had cause to fire Evans or not, she handled the whole thing poorlyand is horiible manager and leader. I have serious doubts about her integrity and honesty, not just in her handling of this whole affair at USF, but the bookkeeper's allegations at Stanford sound pretty legit to me. What would be a person in that position's motivation be to take on the assistant AD unless it was about refusing to do something unethical by covering it up? It just sounds like DGM needs to go, and USF needs to start all over, from the top down.