Tequilla, a Q

Damone,

I think that Emmert has proven himself to be a disaster at the top of the NCAA - they really need to just blow it up and restart from the ground up as that org. is 100% broken.

The timing of when Emmert came on board and Turner's hiring still is off to me. Both came in at roughly June 2004. I'm not 100% convinced that Emmert was 100% involved in the Turner hiring ... lots of turnover on campus at the time.

The decision to hire Tyrone ultimately falls on Turner with an assist to Emmert. In any company, you can't hold the CEO accountable for every hire in place. What you can hold the CEO accountable for is the hires he makes for VPs, etc. The VPs (in this case Turner as the AD) are ultimately held responsible for what gets done under them - which includes their hiring record. If Turner presented an open/shut case presenting the facts as to why he believed Tyrone was the best person for the job, then generally speaking that hire will be allowed by the executive.

I understand why the decision was made to retain Tyrone after 2007 - should have been a warning sign to the NCAA when they hired Emmert that he didn't have the stones to make tough decisions. That being said, I also don't think that you could have fired Tyrone and let Turner hire the next head coach.

I tend to be more supportive of Woodward than not - we'll see how the next 5-6 weeks play out with Sarkisian and how "difficult" of a decision he has at that point. There's an opportunity cost to making the wrong decision and letting a process go a year too long - see Tyrone 2008. One thing I've learned in my career is that it's better to err on the side of changing direction one step too early than one step too late.

I do give credit to Woodward for getting the stadium completed. I don't hate the Sarkisian hire as the first task that he had to complete was getting the program back on track, back in discussions, back in recruiting, etc. Sark has done a reasonable enough job laying the foundation for the program that that part of the hire has been a general success to me. The next part of the job of competing for championships and coaching at a high level Sark is leaving serious thoughts on.

Unfortunately things don't often happen as quickly as we'd like them to. These are high profile positions and the individuals involved often don't like to be questioned as to whether they made a rash, or unjust decision. They prefer slam dunks. Not saying that that's right, but it's often reality.

If there's anything that I hope we gain from the Tyrone time period is that those wounds are fresh enough in everybody's mind that there's an opportunity to learn here. While the facts are slightly different, we're entering a period that is becoming more and more similar to 2007. Objectives haven't been met. Serious questions are on the table. The option to retain means placing very lofty goals in place that are probably difficult to impossible to reach. Those goals are more or less self-serving goals to confirm what you already know. The worst case scenario to me at this point is for UW to finish 8-4 in the regular season because if you are Scott Woodward, you really are in the middle of the decision of firing a year too early versus a year too late. 7-5 and I think the decision is actually fairly easy to make. 9-3 I think is also an easy decision because you can look at the ASU game as an aberration. But 8-4? That's why Woodward gets paid the big bucks - not an easy call. Even if you retain him at that point, I don't think you can extend him. Which makes the entire situation a real mess.

If there's confidence I have in Woodward it's that I think he's a fairly smart guy that is politically savvy enough to be able to find a way to steer people into seeing his line of thinking without necessarily getting others to realize it. If there's fear that I have it's that there are too many fucktarded idiots surrounding UW that are absolutely convinced that it takes 10 years to get results, that Sark's a good guy, yadda yadda yadda and are willing to take the easy road to mediocrity instead of fighting for greatness.

That's pretty consistent w/ how I remember Turner coming on board.

Yes, Emmert ultimately could have squashed the hire in advance.

But it's a really unlikely outcome to think that he would have done that.

What is more realistic is what happened ... Turner is brought on, asked to do his job and report up to his boss, and if the job performance isn't up to par, removed. In Turner's case, he chose to resign instead of do the job and execute at the wishes of his superior.

What do you expect Emmert to say publicly?

And even if Emmert did support Turner enthusiastically, it's not like it never happens where you hire someone that you think will work out well doesn't work out well.

And yes, Emmert was involved in the Tyrone coaching debacle. But at the end of the day, that was Turner's hire. Emmert just stamped it.

You should pay more attention to what I said about Emmert instead of trying to turn anything that I've said about Emmert into suggesting that I'm supporting him. Emmert has been a failure at the NCAA level. While the Tyrone hire was Turner's hire, it's not like Emmert just stood idly by as you mentioned. Emmert should have shit canned Turner well before he did - Turner actually helped him out by refusing to fire Tyrone and resigning. Then Emmert refused to show that he had balls and kept Tyrone on for 2008.

Basically, you can sum up everything about Emmert over the last decade and basically conclude that anything that he does that is well intentioned is offset by the fact that he lacks the balls necessary to make any tough decision.

Stamping the hire was probably not the best choice of words.

I'm well aware of all of those quotes from Emmert.

The truth is rarely as neatly packaged as the story you hear publicly.

Emmert isn't without his fair share of blame/responsibility for Tyrone. But it's not all on him either.

At this point, it really shouldn't even be an issue going forward:

Emmert isn't here. We're 5 years past Tyrone. Turner's long gone.

We've seen that Emmert's screwed the pooch at the NCAA. The years haven't been kind to him.

Going back to this discussion is really just beating a dead horse. It's diverting attention away from the decisions that need to be made today.

And there are some parallels that we can see between 2007 and 2013 ...

The question is can we learn from them?

Dr. Young hasn't given a reason to think that he's overly competent at this point

I heart Mike Damone.

Losers hire losers, winners hire winners

We have had losers at the top for a long time