[quote="Beast of the East" post=343927][quote="Monte" post=343521][quote="JohnnyFan" post=343519][quote="Beast of the East" post=343482][quote="MCNPA" post=343475][quote="Beast of the East" post=343471][quote="P Simmons" post=343457][quote="Monte" post=343453][quote="mkras99" post=343440]Downside - what coach in their right mind will want to join this shitshow now?[/quote]
Exactly the kind of coach we need here. Someone who sees the potential to make us great again(MSJUGA!) and has balls and the work ethic to get the job done. Not for the faint of heart.[/quote]
The problem is, you've got the school's largest donor stating publicly that the school's president and right hand man don't support the basketball program the way they should, will not let the school's athletic director do his job properly, and are generally creating a toxic environment for all.
Unless I'm desperate for a new coaching gig, I'm staying far away from that scene.[/quote]
He's not even close to being the school's top donor. Not to belittle even a $25 donor, but it's not repole.[/quote]
Pretty sure we saw some of the reasons why. Repole has the money do be so for sure.[/quote]
Not to throw water on this, but I'd gotten inferences that Repole really doesn't know how to buy influence at a University. YOu don't make a million dollar donation and say if I give you this, will you let my kid in. You make your donations, and then when it comes time, you get preferential treatment that can get a kid who might get passed over in.
It's the same with influence. You make your big donations, and then you get put on committees, boards of lesser note, and then moved up to Board of Governors, and then Board of Trustees. You don't make a donation with the stipulation that you want to direct an activity, like who they choose as coach. A few years ago a staffer inferred that Repole never made a big donation to the school, because he put strings on his donation, and that's just not the way it works.
So now by this interview, while he may know stuff about what's going on, it's clear he is a disgruntled outsider that likely for now at least burned a bridge ever to be one of those people that influence decisions at SJU.
Clearly if Repole was on the inside of this s- show, he would be influence and not sharing his frustration on talk radio. He can't just say even privately, I'll give you $5 million if you hire so and so. Even then the stakes have changed. $5 million would even come close to the $20-30 million it would cost on a 6 year guaranteed to secure a top name coach.
I identify with his frustration and like many of you, am happy he said it, but I don't think this helped him one bit to influence the decision on the next coach.[/quote]
Sorry, Beast. When you have a billionaire donor with high interest in one of your programs, you find a way to cultivate a relationship and make it work. That's how the game is played. I am sure all the power programs have big time donors with even bigger egos. You make it work and use the $upport to grow your program.
That's the deal and if Joe and Bobby don't like it, they need to get out of the way.[/quote]
Clearly then all the other big donors just willingly and blindly hand their hard earned money over to the incompetent decision makers, and sit back and watch the mismanagement of their contributions. Repole sounds smarter than all of them for wanting to be involved in how his money is utilized.[/quote]
The biggest donors nearly all get a seat at the table, if you know what I mean. They all have had tremendous career success in their own field of expertise - many in finance, banking, real estate, on wall street, entrepreneurial stuff. All universities operate this way - make a huge donation, you get some influence if you want.
The problem at St. John's is infrastructure. As the Vincentians diminished in size, Harrington turned more to his secular board of trustees for direction. They made him feel like he was one of them. They told him he was more of a CEO than a priest. He believed it. Of course, all the improprieties followed - taking cash payments from Cecilia Chang and lavish gifts too, soliciting "loans" from wealthy board members for a for profit construction venture, and on and on. Along the way the secular board grew in power and authority.
The board was handed the plum responsibility of finding a successor to Jarvis. I won't repeat the story but it blew up when Harrington overrode that decision to pick Roberts on his own. Again, no strong AD, a bad decision, and the decline continued.
Thini about the state of the part of the org chart in terms of athletic leadership: We have a university president, who had never done this job before being hired here, with a person who has amassed and been bestowed an incredible amount of power as general counsel (a job in itself), chief administrative officer (a job in itself), who somehow still had time to appoint himself interim athletic director. They hired an AD from Duke who has never done this before, and to boot apparently haven't given him authority to run the process without the intrusion, oversight, and direct participation of the board of trustees. A crazy shit show.
Even with all these hands in the pie, and high level ultra successful board members participating, no one thought that unless you went in to blow Hurley away in terms of dollars, he wasn't likely to come here. Instead they made an offer that ASU all too easily could match and exceed and give Hurley pause for thought. Repole was right and wrong - he was clearly thinking off the top of his head when he said they should have offered $3 million, then adjusted it to 3.5 then 4 million. What he DIDN'T say was that he offered to fund it - not even close to that - so all the rumors about him stepping up to hire the coach are totally false.
In process he found a willing host to let him vent - Francessa, who has done almost zip for the university, and as JSJ has pointed out many times, reneged on his promise to fund a scholarship in his late mother's name. HE offered it publicly at the President's dinner to get applause, but didn't follow up and ignored requests to discuss it.
Apparently he is right about one thing for certain - that this decision should be led by Cragg. Cragg should have a budget for the hire, and be able to go about it with a committee of his choosing. Not Bobby G., Not Joe Oliva, not the board of trustees. None of them are qualified to make a decision like this. One of them, though an attorney isn't even qualified to negotiate a contract, if history is any indicator.
Bobby G. is basically hired by the BOT. As such as a weak CEO, he is at their service. So the things they want a voice in, he doesn't contain them - like hiring a coach. They should be advisory, at the discretion of the President. Instead it appears to be the opposite.
It's absurd that Joe Oliva has been given so much authority.
It's absurd the board even be involved in this or other athletic department tasks.
It's absurd that Bobby G. micromanages basketball because he "likes" basketball. LEt him stick to reffing CYO games.
Everyone wants to be a GM and above all things at SJU, be part of running and building a great basketball team. Francessa looked like a fool for calling Cragg a "nice kid" when Cragg is 55 or so. Repole referred to Xavier University, mispronouncing it as "EXavier" not as "Zavier".
You guys think its amazingly good that he blew the whistle and blew this up. Perhaps the first direct result is Cluess withdrawing his name. It can't possibly help them find a competent big name coach to come here - even a sullied Rick Pitino would want no part of this very likely. Repole will never again gain access to be part of decisions, which had he played his cards right was well within his grasp. All he had to do basically was tell the school he's all in for Hurley at $15 or $20 million of his own money, and Hurley could have been secured.
I don;t give him credit for maligning the process and the school in the worst possible way. The fallout won't be to improve this process, but to make it much much harder to get a competent guy installed as coach. I'm not shooting the messenger. Some of you are clapping like seals because Repole exposed what has been intimated during this process - that something is seriously wrong. But he used a forum that is damaging to the school and process even as bad as it has been. Maybe things have to get worse before they get better. But you can't clear house with all the guilty parties, because then no one will be left standing.
This flat out sucks.[/quote]
Beast, we have hit rock bottom. It was absolutely time to completely blow it up. You seem to have a little more patience than the rest of us. I respect that, but you're in the minority. This fan base can take no more. We are not concerned about the fall out from yesterday's interview. The house cannot be fixed, it's a knock down and rebuild.
