Notes, Quotes and Slants
-----
Pirate
Notebook No. 172
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
By Denny O'Brien
Staff Writer and Columnist |
 |
C-USA, ECU adrift in stormy
seas
CyberEast of New Bern
"Service While You
Watch"
Need a quick
repair on your computer?
How about a
bigger hard drive or a DVD/RW-CD/RW?
Could a new
SoundBlaster™ Audigy card and speaker system
improve your experience listening to
Bonesville.net's Windows Media features?
Call CyberEast
of New Bern for an in-store appointment to get
your computer geared up to meet your needs while
you watch.
|
417-C Broad St., New
Bern, NC |
252-637-4443 |
cybereast.com |
|
|
©2004 Bonesville.net
Game. Set. Match.
In the NCAA Division I arms race between leagues, Conference
USA commissioner Britton Banowsky finished a distant last. While other
league CEOs are heading to market with record harvests, the C-USA boss is
left behind in a dusty drought.
Not only did Banowsky lose all but one of his flagship hoops
programs,
but also the gridiron school — Texas
Christian — that attracted the brightest spotlight since the league formed
in 1996.
Conference realignment has now replaced that shine with dark
clouds and a not-so-promising forecast: A new position in the pecking order
alongside the MAC and WAC.
As recently as this past season, the thinking was much
different. Though still unwelcome at the BCS banquet, C-USA at least was
threatening to crash the party.
Now in the sport with the greatest dollar value, only the
Big East suffered a bigger financial blow.
The difference is, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese had
a legitimate fallback to help cushion the fall. Banowsky didn't.
Though Tranghese had no chance of adequately replenishing
his football cupboard, he took the most equitable alternate route:
Basketball.
C-USA's new claim to fame? Baseball.
Nothing against our national pastime, but you have to hope
Banowsky wasn't pinning his league's financial future on cowhide and
aluminum. While C-USA may have jumped to the top of the baseball heap, that
is no consolation for the footing it lost in revenue sports.
Across the board, this is a classic case of too little, too
late. Instead of making a serious attempt to keep his league in tact,
Banowsky sat back and targeted mid-major schools within hollering distance
of his Dallas home.
"To a certain extent, we've got to understand how the Big
East is going to go forward for us to be in a position to react," Banowsky
said back in July. "I don't think we can be in a position to pre-empt
anything relative to the Big East, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate,
anyway, given where our members are.
"We'll just have to wait and see," he noted at the time. "I
think we're prepared to do what we need to do to make the league stronger
and that would include adding teams to the conference."
Obviously not prepared well enough.
Any way Banowsky rationalizes it, this is an upheaval from
which it will be difficult to recover. Gone are four NCAA tournament
regulars, not to mention the football reverberations that are certain to
result from TCU's curious abandonment of the soon-to-be Texas-centric
league.
Of the remaining football schools, only East Carolina,
Marshall, and Southern Miss have a history of sustained success.
On a more positive note, the new BCS agreement almost
certainly will grant C-USA better access to a slice of the big money pie.
The challenge will be for the conference champion to somehow qualify against
a conference slate that is sure to drag its strength of schedule down like
an anchor.
In other words, impressive non-conference résumés could be
the key to landing an invitation to a blockbuster bowl.
That goes without mentioning the
uncertain relationship C-USA has with its current
bowl agreements. The Liberty Bowl already has hinted that it
will look elsewhere when the current contract is up, and it shouldn't come
as a shock if other postseason games follow suit.
At this rate, C-USA could sink before its new members hop
aboard.
Word of advice to C-USA's remaining flagship programs:
Abandon ship, or at least look high and low for alternatives, as soon as you
can.
Priority check for trustees
Quick question for the board of trustees. Why the big rush
to hire a new AD?
Now that most of the conference dominoes already have
fallen, the urgency of hiring a permanent athletics director has decreased
significantly. With East Carolina's position on the national landscape
unlikely to change in the near future, there no longer is a need to expedite
the process.
Perhaps that would have been more appropriate last March
when former Chancellor Bill Muse put then-AD Mike Hamrick on a not-so-fast
track out of his corner office. Had Muse taken a more aggressive approach
with his lame duck deputy, East Carolina may have avoided the current
holding pattern in which it is seemingly stuck.
Given the steady stream of turmoil the Pirates ship has
encountered over the past year, it would make the most sense to first focus
on the top.
By and large, business executives are most comfortable
and feel more accountable when they have input into hiring their direct
subordinates. That generally means a shorter leash for employees they
didn't select.
Just ask former Pirates football coach Steve Logan,
who can attest to the reality of that axiom
first hand.
The last thing East Carolina needs now is an encore of what
has transpired over the past several years. At the very least, ECU's
trustees must make a concerted effort to prevent a similar dynamic from
occurring.
That means the new chancellor must have input into the AD
hire.
Send an e-mail message to Denny O'Brien.
Click here to dig into Denny O'Brien's Bonesville
archives.
02/23/2007 01:56:06 AM |