If we make a move at AD… Brian White at FAU is phenomenal. Yes, I know this would be my second plug for the White family.
Auburn does it differently. Or at least, they did when Bobby Lowder was running the football program and paying the players. He was pushed out around 2010 after his bank failed (it was the biggest bank failure in the 2008-2009 economic collapse). https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/sports/ncaafootball/09boosters.html Bobby Lowder, the man behind Colonial Bank's failure - Oct. 12, 2009
Bama loses Saban and within a few days they have a top notch replacement. Our AD is looking in ziprecruiter to find a coach. After a few weeks, he will get first one to respond. Interview questions from SS. 1) have you ever coached football before? 2) do you think you can recruit in the south? 3) Would you take a little less salary than market if we give you a nice fat massive buyout (in case it doesn't work out)? Answer all 3 as yes and you got the job!!
Most of the posters on this board have no clue how things work. For whatever reason, they cannot grasp the difference between the UAA and the University. Worse, they think the AD picks whatever coach he wants. The AD won't do shit without the big money boosters' approval. Period. In 1989 our AD was Bill Arnsbarger of Miami Dolphins fame. When Galen was fired, Arnsbarger wanted to hire Mike Archer from LSU. A certain booster with the last name Griffin put the kabosh on that, and along came Spurrier.
We could try another ‘firescotstricknine.com’ website but I don’t know if anybody would be able to connect with it
Foley and Stricklin both suck for Football. spurrier was not hired by foley. Foley hand picked Stricklin to run things how foley wants them done. Foley only got Urban because of luck and the president at the time and we were lucky the hottest commodity at the time was at Utah (non p5 at that time). I call it the curse of Billy Donovan. Ever since foley hit lightning in a bottle on that he felt he could always replicate that and forces Stricklin to do same. Before Donovan we hired coaches from power 5. Sloan from nc state Pell from Clemson Spurrier from duke Kruger from k state everything changed once we had success from Donovan. Now Foley was awesome for non revenue sports for sure. Maybe the best. As for football and basketball future success I say kick Foley and Stricklin out of their offices. We need to hire like Alabama hires. Just my opinion.
Don’t forget the talk about decreasing our home field advantage, by lowering overall capacity at the swamp.
I've always thought that paying money to Foley to be "AD Emeritus" (WTH??) was a straight-up grift, with the added downside that he would have input into hiring coaches for the major sports. Beyond stupid, IMHO.
Stricklin has to go. If he is indeed the "CEO", his choice to run the football program has been a disaster. The contract he allowed this incompetent and his agent to negotiate borders on criminal. Enough.
To be fair, they make it pretty complicated to figure it out. The UAA is a not for profit with its own board and funding, but it still operates under the university umbrella with the AD reporting directly to the UF president. Both the AD and athletic coaches are employees of both entities. The AD is ultimately responsible for hiring the head football coach. Yes, it's another complicated situation where, like any non profit with large donors, you have to thread the needle between leadership responsibility and donor satisfaction. Donors give and want to ensure those donations are used rightly and effectively, while they also want a competent AD in charge they can trust to make prudent, professional decisions without being micromanaged. In nearly every case I'm sure there's some kind of back and forth with prominent donors but with the choice of the AD being generally respected as his job to do. Certainly the Spurrier case was a noteworthy and positive exception here of direct involvement by a booster. And I would assume a lot of more involvement by big money donors this time after the fourth failed head coach in a row and an AD likely on the way out.
We are adrift with no captain it would appear. The donors need their talking head to stand in front and mediate. We have a crisis.
Nothing is hard to understand if you take a step back and look. It’s usually never what you’re told and if you simply follow the money it becomes clear. No diferent than politics.
Even if your follow the money theory is correct, I'd be surprised if you could take enough steps back to actually see the clarity in who is giving what and saying what and demanding what through what system. It's already a fairly complicated formal structure without including the opaque and informal. Do you have a donor list? I couldn't even Google a list of who is currently on the UAA board, let alone donor names and dollar amounts.
