christmas presents

Technically it's already 2013 and Christmas was a week ago, but it's still not too late to look back at the year 2012 that was, and see who got a nice pile of presents from Santa and who got.....something else.  Without much further ado, the Naughty and Nice List from 2012.

-- Teresa Sullivan.  Let's face it, the top story of 2012 didn't take place on the field or in any locker room.  It started with the email that showed up in your inbox if you're an alum, announcing President Sullivan's abrupt "resignation," and more or less ended a couple weeks later with her reinstatement.  In between was a raging firestorm that caught national media attention.  The grace and class displayed by the president at the time was exemplary.

-- Mike Scott.  Now plying his trade with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks, Scott did something at UVA that's been all too rare for Virginia fans: he lived up to his potential.  Actually, he rather exceeded it.  His transformation from emotional fireball and rebound specialist to a complete basketball player was a joy to watch, and when an ESPN columnist failed to include Scott in the conversation for national player of the year, UVA fans did it for him.  And they were backed up by KenPom, whose statguruizing placed Scott among the top ten players in the country.  That was the kind of notoriety that had been sorely missing from UVA hoops of late.

-- John Swofford.  Look, Swoff has his critics.  Sometimes they're right.  But I don't consider myself one of them.  If the ACC falls apart, it'll be difficult to blame the conference commissioner, who's been creative, and mostly successful thus far, in his attempts to hold the league together.  His success in attracting Notre Dame, a school that gives the ACC badly needed cachet, should not be overlooked.  And even though the Irish aren't technically a football member of the league, their five games a season against ACC teams is not really that far from a full schedule, and should give the ACC a few barganing chips at the all-important TV rights negotiating table, which is really where leagues are held together or destroyed.

-- Tony Bennett.  Let's take a second and acknowledge our basketball coach, who got the Hoos to the tournament probably ahead of schedule, despite watching attrition and injuries whittle his team down to six and a half scholarship players by season's end.  And this season he has them threatening to go back to the Dance, again despite a major obstacle in the form of the extreme youth of his charges and a nagging foot injury to the team's only scholarship senior.

-- Mike Rocco, pre-transfer.  Let's face it: having Phillip Sims transfer in was a potential boon for UVA's offense, but it was also a really awkward situation.  During the season, Rocco handled the see-sawing as well as anyone could have demanded.  Few quarterbacks in UVA's recent history have been jerked around as much as Rocco was.

-- Most of the ACC's presidents, both current and future.  Their statement of solidarity doesn't guarantee anything long-term about the stability of the ACC, but it was the most they could've done under the circumstances and much appreciated by those of us who like the ACC, dammit.

-- Helen Dragas.  Stipulated: that it's the Board of Visitors' job to hire and fire the school president, that UVA faces a number of challenges that are not exactly existential but must not be underestimated, and that I have no real idea whether or not Teresa Sullivan is the person to handle those challenges.  That said, Dragas's orchestration of Sullivan's resignation this summer, sans actual BOV vote, was far more reminiscent of a banana-republic military coup than the lofty ideals of American governance.  It angered practically everyone associated with the school and cast UVA in a poor national light.  The story, fortunately, had a happy ending, and one hopes the board is a little bit chastened, as well as smarter, for the experience.

-- Wallace Loh.  The University of Maryland president who engineered the Terps' move to the Big Ten flat-out admitted that the only knowledge he had of athletic conferences was that "there are games."  This is a man with a PhD from Michigan, faculty stints at Texas, Houston, Vanderbilt, Washington, has been a dean at Colorado and Washington and a provost at Iowa, and is now president of Maryland.  All of these are schools with big-time college football in big-time conferences.  This is a man who's spent 30 years with his head so far buried in ivory-tower academia, in ambitious pursuit of the position he now holds, and hasn't learned anything about the athletic organizations to which his school belongs except "there are games."  And this is the kind of person in charge of making decisions about college athletics.  (But who would certainly be appalled at the idea of a non-degree-holding football fan being in charge of any academic decisions at his school.)  The truth here really is that Jim Delany played Loh like a fiddle, and the ACC is worse off for it.

-- Mike Rocco, post-transfer.  The flip side of Rocco's good behavior during the season was that he let loose the frustration afterwards.  He wasn't speaking untruths, but even some truths are better left out of the public eye.

-- Foot bones.  And those slightly above the foot, as well, like in the ankle area.  Broken bones have sidelined Jontel Evans, put an early end to Assane Sene's UVA career, and canceled the season for Malcolm Brogdon as well.  These foot injuries represent one of the bigger threats to UVA's hoops season.

-- Mike London's clock management.  The failure to call timeout at the end of the VT game is a much-pilloried decision (for the wrong reasons, and the criticism is misguided in that it obscures a much more egregious error earlier in the sequence) but it really was little more than a symptom of a larger problem: London barely knows what he's doing at the end of a half.  Sometimes he is left without a timeout when he really needs one; other times he leaves them on the board.  At least Pete Gillen had a philosophy, however maddening.

-- Special teams.  The #1 reason why UVA did not go bowling.  And make no mistake, for all its flaws, it should have been in a bowl.  Simply beat Maryland and Wake Forest, two other non-bowl teams in the ACC, and UVA finds itself most likely in the Independence Bowl.  Not a great assignment to be sure, but better than where we found ourselves in real life.

weekend review

Sometimes it's best practice to shut up and let Homer Simpson do your talking:

There.  Glad to get that out of my system.

As might have already crossed your radar screen, our long national point-guard-less nightmare is over, put to rest when Devon Hall made his long-hoped-for commitment to Tony Bennett this weekend.  Hall reclassified to the 2013 class to make it happen, which is really a re-reclassification as 2013 was his original class after dropping back to 2014 due to his rather young age.

That clears up a whole host of problems at once.  We don't have to worry about where our next point guard is coming from, for one.  Teven Jones may or may not be pretty good, but there's still only one of him, and this puts an end to all the fretting about whether or not Malcolm Brogdon is suited for the job.  We also don't have to worry about saving a spot for Hall.  No more "can we still get Hall if we bring in Jaren Sina and what if we don't get Sina and Hall goes to Maryland anyway aaaaaaaaaaa help me baby Jesus."  Plus, with Brandan Stith announcing last month he was eliminating UVA as a destination (we wanted him to reclassify and he struggled with that decision and decided not to) there's nobody left to "save a spot" for at all.

In essence, Tony has just gone from being forced to be picky to having the luxury to be picky.  I'll have more on all this later in the week; today would've been a full-out Devon Hall profile except that the recruiting services need a little time to reclassify him in their system.  Then we'll see where he shakes out with respect to his class.  Most of them have him in the top 40 or 50 players in the 2014 class, so the answer will eventually be "high."

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-- VT defensive end Dadi Nicolas got himself suspended, the result of a felony charge for grand larceny.  What did he steal?  (Help in stealing, actually - technically he wasn't the one riding the bike away.)  A bicycle.  Let's check out some of the other crimes perpetrated by Hokies in recent(ish) times:

• Kicker Cody Journell breaks into a guy's house while the guy is in the house, and gets himself chased down the street without the weed he went there to retrieve.
• Marcus Vick throws the ultimate temper tantrum and infamously stomps on an opponent's leg.
• Jeff Allen.
• Nicolas and the bicycle theft.

This is not at all to suggest that UVA is free of legal shenanigans; nobody is.  But is it just me or, is it that when a Hokie gets in trouble, it's for being a 13-year-old?

-- Let's not be too hard on Tech, though.  Did you know that this year they had their highest finish ever in the Director's Cup?  35th, to be exact.  The Hoos were 15th, making UVA one of 14 schools never to finish outside of the top 30.  Hokie math is when you're better at three sports and your rival is better at 20 and that means you dominate.

-- Ouch.  The good news for Carolina is that they put quite a few of their pitchers in the major leagues.  The bad news is that they all suck, and the worse news is that no less an eminent publication than the Wall Street Journal took notice.  Harsh.

-- The final chapter in the President Sullivan saga closed this weekend with Helen Dragas's reappointment to the Board of Visitors.  I find myself caring much less about that than I thought I would.  We got the president back and that's really what matters; I suppose this is the governor's reward for Dragas's playing nice and voting for Sullivan's reinstatement so that it would be a unanimous vote.  It didn't escape my notice, though, that the governor also appointed Leonard Sandridge as a "senior advisor" babysitter.

-- Now that it's July, and it's the offseason, the posting schedule will lighten up a tad.  Probably will aim for four days or so a week instead of a full five or six (you probably noticed a little bit of that going on already, the difference being that I didn't do it on purpose.)  And of course there is my scheduled annual summer break which goes on in a couple weeks.  Full time posting resumes in August (or late Julyish) with the yearly opponent previews.  Your job is not done, however: vote in the Cavalier of the Year poll if (and only if) you haven't already done so.

weekend review

I said some time ago that I wouldn't bother ripping apart the new playoff ideas until they'd settled on a final one - no point in getting worked up over what were obviously leaks of less than half the info.  More economical to blow my stack over something that exists, instead of repeatedly blowing my stack over what might exist.

So they've finally decided on the format and it's so milquetoast I don't really even have a chance to blow my stack.  So I saved a lot of effort, really.  Proud of myself.  And that's saying something coming from me, Mr. GTFO-And-Off-My-Lawn, you rotten kids and your playoffs.  So we have a committee, and they'll play the semifinals at like the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl or something, and then sell the championship game to the highest bidder, and the participants will be decided by a committee just as with most other sports.  Just please say you'll play both the semis on New Year's Day or thereabouts and I'll be a little more placated.  As it is I hate playing the championship on like January 9.  Whose dumbass idea was it to play the game on a Monday?

Things I don't like:

-- That it looks like the Rose Bowl, which will be one of the rotating hosts, will slip further into the future and away from tradition.  This is coming from a guy who thinks that Miami and Oklahoma winning the game in successive years was an unforgivable besmirchment of the game and tradition in general, so maybe you don't care as much.

-- Not enough emphasis on conference champions.  There is a mushy requirement for the committee to give preference to conference champions, but the shitstorm that will ensue when an SEC runner up is picked over a one-loss conference champ is highly predictable, and is the likeliest route to playoff expansion.

This latter point is not because of my getoffmylawnitude - rather, it's because it doesn't do enough to drive Notre Dame into a conference.  And when I say "into a conference" I mean "into the ACC."  Notre Dame's AD Jack Swarbrick got an equal seat at the table in the discussions - 11 conference commissioners and Swarbrick.  (And do you think anyone was really listening to the WAC?)  That in itself is a legit reason to harbor a small distrust of the process, and ensured that Notre Dame will likely get to continue having its cake and eating it too.  Latest on them is that the Big 12 is actually their most likely destination, because the Big 12 will happily let them stay football-independent on the condition that they schedule a bunch of Big 12 teams each year.  If the ACC wants to lure Notre Dame they will have to emphasize the cultural fit - and worse, likely have to kowtow on the revenue-sharing issue, and create some kind of uneven distribution, which as the Big 12 proved creates its own set of problems.

So I'd have to say that the idea of Notre Dame to the ACC is more or less on life support.  The conference is not going to waver on its stand of being in for everything or nothing, and it shouldn't.  Uneven revenue sharing is dicey.  I mean, you offer it to ND as their carrot and you know Florida State is gonna want that action too.  With the uproar over FSU and Clemson basically settled down, it looks like the ACC is a 14-team conference for the near and even medium future.

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-- This weekend it broke that LB Caleb Taylor will transfer to ODU.  In case you're thinking it opens up another spot in the class of '13, it doesn't - it's just part of the attrition that's going to happen in order to free up the spots we're already filling.

-- Tomorrow appears to be D-Day as far as the Teresa Sullivan presidency is concerned.  Prediction: the BOV votes 8-7 to reinstate Sullivan, and we have to wait until Governor McDonnell makes public his decision on Helen Dragas's reappointment before we know whether Sullivan will come back.  As usual, this stuff is like the Supreme Court: anyone who claims to know anything is probably lying.

If reinstated, Sullivan will essentially be bulletproof, but I also think this incident decreases the likelihood her contract will be renewed when it's actually up, which I think is three years from now.

-- It has been a huge weekend for commitments, both to us and to other schools.  There are now 14 commitments, which means the class is close to being closed out.  On Wednesday there will be the standard update, but also an assessment of the remainder of the recruiting season.

dragas malfoy and the chamber of secrets

With apologies to J.K. Rowling.  This is what happens when massive nerdery meets righteous angar.  These are some excerpts from the story.... bet you didn't know she was really writing the story of UVA's struggles with a suddenly rogue Board of Visitors.....

...p.112 - "'I'm the new BOV rector, Casteen,' said Malfoy, smugly. 'Everyone's just been admiring the brooms the governor's bought us.'  Casteen gaped, openmouthed, at the seven superb broomsticks in front of him. 'Good, aren't they?' said Malfoy smoothly. 'But perhaps the faculty will be able to raise some gold and get new brooms too.  You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives; I expect a museum would bid for them.'  The BOV howled with laughter. 'At least no one on the faculty had to buy their way in,' said Sabato sharply.  'They got in on pure talent.'  The smug look on Malfoy's face flickered.  'No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood,' she spat."

...p.222 - "'What's up with you, Kington?' snapped Malfoy.  'Stomachache,' he grunted. 'Well, go up to the medical school and give all those Mudbloods a kick from me,' said Malfoy, snickering.  'You know, I'm surprised the Daily Progress hasn't reported all this loss of fundraising yet,' she went on thoughtfully.  "I suppose Sullivan's trying to hush it all up.  She'll be sacked if it doesn't start soon.  Father's always said old Sullivan's the worst thing that ever happened to this place.'"

...p.262 - "'Dreadful thing, Sullivan,' said Malfoy lazily, taking out a long roll of parchment, 'but the Visitors feel it's time for you to step aside.  This is an Order of Suspension - you'll find all sixteen signatures on it.  I'm afraid we feel you're rather losing your touch.  How many donors have we lost now?  Two more this afternoon, wasn't it?  At this rate, there'll be no more donors left at UVA, and we all know what an awful loss that would be to the school.'  'Oh, now, see here, Helen," said McDonnell, looking alarmed, 'Sullivan fired - no, no - last thing we want just now - ' 'The appointment - or suspension - of the president is a matter for the Visitors, McDonnell,' said Malfoy smoothly. 'And as Sullivan has failed to raise any funds - ' 'See here, Malfoy, if Sullivan can't do it,' said McDonnell, whose upper lip was sweating now, 'I mean to say, who can?'  'That remains to be seen,' said Malfoy with a nasty smile. 'But as all sixteen of us have voted - '  Hunter Smith leapt to her feet, her white hair grazing the ceiling. 'An' how many did yeh have to threaten an' blackmail before they agreed, Malfoy, eh?' she roared.'

...p.334 - "'So!' she said. 'You've come back.  The Visitors fired you, but you still saw fit to return to UVA.'  'Well, you see, Helen,' said Sullivan, smiling serenely, 'the other fifteen Visitors contacted me today. It was something like being caught in a hailstorm of owls, to tell the truth.  They'd heard that John Simon threatened to quit and wanted me back here at once.  They seemed to think I was the best woman for the job after all.  Very strange tales they told me, too.....Several of them seemed to think that you had threatened to curse their families if they didn't agree to fire me in the first place.'  Malfoy went even paler than usual, but her eyes were still slits of fury.  'So - have you started fundraising yet?'  'We have,' said Sullivan with a smile."

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I slay me.  Meanwhile, we're right here in worse-before-it-gets-better mode.  (Although, bad developments can look like pretty good ones when you're in the mood for some rabble-rousing.)  2,000 people showed up to protest outside the Rotunda where the BOV met today - and to welcome President Sullivan as she arrived to give her statement.  (I'd link that, but it's a paywall message board so it wouldn't be much use.)  Reportedly, Helen Dragas's handpicked interim successor has refused to take the job.  Smart guy.  Provost John Simon is threatening to resign, and some of UVA's biggest donors are suddenly closing their pocketbooks.  Other pledges have been rescinded.  The faculty is in open rebellion, declaring a total lack of confidence in the BOV and threatening to ignore any replacement.  Some have up and quit.  (Can't blame 'em.  I'd have a hard time working for someone dumb enough to work for this BOV.)

If Helen Dragas wanted to address an "existential crisis" - her words - at the University, part of which involved faculty retention, I can't think of a dumber thing to do than piss off 100% of the professors and administration, remove (directly or indirectly) the entire leadership foundation, alienate the school's largest donors, and totally undermine all confidence in the people charged with the school's stewardship.  What a shitshow.

I highly recommend you read President Sullivan's statement.  It's rather lengthy.  But she did an excellent job of taking the high road and at the same time addressing the issues that led to her firing.  Where Helen Dragas insisted on secrecy and opacity in the name of "confidentiality," Sullivan laid out the issues and clearly stated her side.

You can also read Dragas Malfoy's, which by my count is at least the third she's issued since last Sunday.  She certainly knows how to flower up a paragraph with empty words.  "As Visitors, we have the very highest aspirations for the University of Virginia: for it to reach its fullest potential as a 21st century Academical Village, always rooted firmly in our enduring values of honor, integrity and trust."  "We seek to elevate access, affordability, quality and diversity for every student and each patient."  Did you fire a president or write a new mission statement??  There's at least one outright lie in there - see if you can spot it; it ironically contains the word "truth" - but the most interesting thing is how she keeps repeating the word "heard."  She acknowledged having "heard" the faculty's "concerns" in her statement to them last week, and she once again "heard" them today.  Twice again, actually.  Once in having "heard" our "demands for a fuller explanation" - and then not giving one.  And therein lies Dragas Malfoy's problem: there's so often a tremendous gap between hearing.... and listening.

an open letter to helen dragas, rector of the board of visitors of the university of virginia

Dear Rector,

Congratulations.

Your weeks - perhaps months - of hard work have paid off.  You have succeeded in removing President Teresa Sullivan from office, and soon the search will begin for a new president, one that matches your "bold and visionary" outlook for our esteemed University.  It may or may not have occurred to you that the faculty and students at the core of the University's mission - that of educating young minds - might resist this change; nevertheless, your "bold and visionary" actions have borne fruit.  Like a general in the army of a banana republic, you gathered your cohorts and lackeys, corralled as much support as you could through whatever means necessary, and swiftly commenced your coup d'etat.

In doing so, you, from your unelected position, have succeeded in placing yourself above the faculty, students, and administration of the University that you are charged with governing.  The congratulations that I offer, therefore, should ring cold and hollow, if you have the sensitivity to criticism that you claim.

It seems, however, that you do not.  You "hear," but do not listen.  Though the faculty has called for transparency in this matter - a reasonable request considering the momentousness of the decision - you have deliberately turned a deaf ear, hiding behind reasons of decorum and "sound employment practices" - your words.  As if it were sound employment practice to suddenly and shockingly demand a popular and effective president step down without offering a reason for your behavior.

As if it were also sound employment practice not to fully vet a candidate before hiring her.  For, whatever our opinions of Teresa Sullivan, it appears that, less than two years after taking the position, she did not meet your standards.  Why, then, was she hired in the first place?  And why should we, as you've asked, wait to judge this decision until a new hire is found, when by your own standards your hiring practices are suspect?  We, the alums, do not think you bungled that hire, but apparently, you do; why, then, should we believe you'll do better this time around?

In short, your conduct and the conduct of the BOV has been disgraceful.  You have been asked for clarity by the people you serve: the faculty, the students, the alumni, and you have rejected all.  You have placed your politics and yourself above those you serve.  It is my understanding that your term ends on July 1 and it is my fervent hope that your appointment will not be renewed.  In fact I expect that it will not, as the governor cannot possibly be so politically blind as to endorse such a politically poisonous action as you have taken.  Nevertheless, your resignation would be greatly appreciated.  The BOV will meet on Monday, June 18, at 3:00 to discuss candidates for an interim president; the purpose of this letter is to request your resignation as rector and your appointment to the board before that time.  You owe it to the next president, for there will be a natural distrust of any hire you make; they will of course be seen by some as the product of a tainted process at best, and at worst, the puppet of a board that could not tolerate backbone from those it hires.  I admit that it is a short-notice request, but you must also admit that it is more time than you gave President Sullivan.

Regards,

Brendan

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Commence commentary.  Obviously, Helen Dragas is unfit to lead or even participate in the search for a new president; even if she had good reasons, like catching Teresa Sullivan streaking the Lawn yelling "fuck this place" in a bath-salt-addled zombie binge, she has mishandled the process from Day 1.  The people who actually constitute the university deserve better than what she has offered.  It has already rolled one head; the head of the Darden School Board of Trustees, Peter Kiernan, resigned his position over his role in the firing, which largely involved gathering support towards the coup d'etat and keeping it all a secret.  Like the old joke about a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea, it's a good start.

It shouldn't stop there.  Dragas and her assistant rector, Mark Kington, should be next to go.  Neither should be involved in any way in naming the next school president.  If their actions thus far haven't been bad enough, the mere fact that they badly underestimated the reaction should be enough to prove how out of tune they are with their constituency.  (Perhaps "subjects" would be a better term, as none of us ever elected them.)  We can't throw the whole BOV overboard, of course, but the removal of the generals should send enough of a message to the rest of the board as to the acceptability of their actions.

This theory about the ouster suggests that it boiled down to Sullivan's resistance to allowing Goldman Sachs to offer online education programs through the University.  This was also alluded to by the Hook in a brilliantly titled article named Cabal Hall.  I have no idea if this is true; I have no idea if even Goldman Sachs has anything to do with anything.  If there is any truth to it, it'd be eerily reminiscent of Pixar's film Ratatouille, in which the nasty bad-guy chef wanted to use the name of the elite Parisian restaurant to serve TV dinners.

I might finally add that the following sentences are as disgraceful as anything:

Mr. Caputo will be participating from 340 Lake Avenue, Greenwich, CT 06830. Mr. Fralin will be participating from 2917 Penn Forest Boulevard, Roanoke, VA 24018. Mr. Kirk will be participating from Third Security LLC, 735 Market Street – 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103.

That's the list of members of the BOV that will participate in the Monday meeting via teleconference.  I fervently hope none of these three were among those who joined Helen Dragas in her coup.  To fire our president and then not even be bothered to be there in person to name a replacement would be absolutely appalling.  Especially if you only have to drive in from Roanoke.

weekend review

File another one in the we-can't-have-nice-things-around-here department: on Sunday, the UVA Board of Visitors announced it had fired our very popular and very new school president.**  Teresa Sullivan will be president only just long enough to wrap things up and hand off to an interim president, and will be gone before the students get back to school.

The BOV's email to alums shed as much light on the decision as a broken flashlight, which was disappointment piled on top of disappointment because when you're going to fire a highly popular school president, "philosophical differences" just don't cut it.  Naturally the BOV is in a tough place there because it's bad form to air the dirty laundry, but claiming a need for "bold and visionary" leadership is the academic equivalent of "giving 110% percent."  At least when a coach is fired, you know bloody well why and don't need to be told.  A slightly stronger explanation would've been appreciated here, and the impromptu press conference as posted on YouTube is so useless in that department that I'm not even going to bother linking; it would imply that watching it would not be a waste of 3:47, and that would be false.

Fortunately, the UVA staff was treated to that slightly stronger explanation, and that too was posted online.  Cutting through the bullshit essentially reveals the BOV thought Sullivan wasn't a strong enough fundraiser.  A fair enough reason, I suppose, to make a change in leadership, but it speaks to a giant failure in leadership (and not in the president's chair) when you hire a president while the economy is gasping for breath, and you can't look two years into the future and see the need for fundraising.  Perhaps they were spoiled by John Casteen, who could've tossed two quarters at a homeless guy and extracted a donation pledge of five dollars in the process.

What the BOV is basically saying here, then, is that the president is not an academician, but a money factory.  There's hardly any need to hire a PhD for the position if you can't appreciate Sullivan's efforts in that regard; she even taught a class herself, and her husband is a law professor who was added to the faculty.  As a leader, you couldn't have asked for better.  Sullivan didn't see herself as a resident of the ivory tower.  Anecdote: when I learned she was hired at UVA, being that she came from Michigan I posted a question on the U-M boards to see if there'd be anyone who knew anything about her.  As it turned out I accidentally broke the news to her staff, a member of whom had nothing but glowing words about the kind of boss she was.  By all reports she was no less a boss - and accessible president to boot - at UVA.  These qualities, apparently, do not go appreciated.  Or they do as long as they're accompanied by the ability to gladhand your way to El Dorado.

This is an athletic blog, so here's the athletic viewpoint: UVA just fired its own biggest fan.  Sullivan was spotted in Baltimore when the lacrosse team was winning a national title, and in Omaha when the diamond nine were in the College World Series.  She was there to congratulate the rowing team on its national titles, and she was there to congratulate the club polo team on theirs.  The club polo team.  She said at her introductory press conference that a school president ought to know the difference between a 4-3 and a 3-4 defense, and she frequented the JPJA on winter nights.  Maybe she should've spent all that time fundraising instead.  Worse yet: in the sports world we're at a time when UVA's sports teams need a strong voice helping to keep the ACC together and position the school for the best should the worst happen.  And right as the ACC is having an identity crisis, we have no advocate anymore.  Let's hope the summer passes uneventfully.

**They used the same wording that the school did in announcing the departure of Dave Leitao: "mutual agreement" to step down etc. etc.  Gee, how lucky we are at UVA that the people we no longer want to employ just up and fire themselves.

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-- Sean Doolittle, who was for UVA baseball fans what we thought was the pinnacle of moundsman prowess until Danny Hultzen came along, made his MLB debut for the Oakland A's this past week.  I wouldn't consider the news that notable - over the next few years we should have a decent showing of MLB debuts, almost all of them with Seattle - but the way he's announced his presence is something else.  On Tuesday he struck out the first three hitters he faced.  On Friday he faced four batters and let two of them score; on Sunday, he faced six and struck out five.  Nine Ks in four innings; if Nolan Ryan had kept up that pace he'd've recorded over 12,000 of them.

Chances are that when the AL gets its book on Doc, he'll come back down to earth.  For now, though, it's the kind of debut any pitcher would love.

-- Another decent, down-to-earth read on the FSU/Big 12 situation.  You'll notice a lot of that furor has died down, and thank heaven for that.  Andy Haggard, the blabbermouth chairman of the FSU board of trustees, is now the former chairman, and the new chairman is being a lot more prudent in his words.  The Big 12 meetings came and went last week and expansion was not on the menu.  It would seem, if previous guesses were accurate, that Texas got its way yet again.  Surprise.

This week and next, more BCS meetings are being held, and it won't be long before some substantive announcements appear instead of the half-assed leaks designed to gin up public support and leverage for one side or another in whatever debate they're having.  Expect the announcement to set off at least another round of speculation, but keep your eye on how Notre Dame is treated in the deal.

-- You can tell this is a blog about the University of Virginia because I just used six paragraphs on the change of occupancy at Carr's Hill.  How many SEC fans know who their school's president is, and of that number, what percentage cares?

weekend review

The end of the football season means the end of this post as a regular thing, but it'll still go up every now and again when needed. To do things differently just for the sake of it, we'll start with the recruits and their playoff exploits:

Hermitage 17, L.C. Bird 14: Anthony Harris got Bird in front, 14-10, with a touchdown run, but Curtis Grant recovered a fumble in the end zone for Hermitage to advance them past Bird and give them the Central Region championship.

Phoebus 12, Hampton 7: Daquan Romero starred in Phoebus's region-clinching win over David Watford and Hampton. Romero, playing TE, caught Phoebus's only touchdown, and sacked Watford to set up a safety for Phoebus on the next play.

H.D. Woodson 44, Dunbar 12: Darius Redman caught a late touchdown to help Woodson to the DCIAA Turkey Bowl title.

Stone Bridge 35, Hayfield 7 (Rob Burns)
Wilde Lake 21, Damascus 14 (Brandon Phelps)

Phelps's season ends just shy of the state finals. Three teams of interest remain: Stone Bridge plays Osbourn next week, Phoebus plays Dinwiddie, and the winners of those two games will meet at Scott Stadium for the Division 5 title. Hermitage goes against Bayside (where hopefully-future Hoo Demetrious Nicholson plays) in the Division 6 semis; the final is also in Charlottesville.

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News you can't really use, but you can still read and maybe even enjoy it:

- David Watford hopes to enroll in the spring. The 25-yearly scholarship limit is almost as big a concern as the 85-total limit at this point. In fact, we're already to the point where every new commit means another attrite from the current team, so the 25 limit might even be a bigger concern. If Admissions lets Watford in for the spring semester, one extra player can be squeezed into the class. Not to mention the extra practice time would be a huge help blah blah blah. This is where the influence of new president Teresa Sullivan could be a big help, no?

- Speaking of Sullivan, the latest UVA alumni magazine has a nice profile spread on her, with this relevant quote:

Sullivan is a strong supporter of collegiate athletics and is an avid football fan, telling one alumni gathering that she hopes the University will one day host ESPN College Gameday.

When Sullivan was hired I theorized that her experience at Texas and Michigan could only be beneficial to the athletic department. Sullivan has spent the last two decades plus at two of the best schools in the country at using athletics - football especially - to maximize and enhance the school's overall brand. Football is one of the best ways of doing this: when you think University of Miami, do you think of their highly underestimated academics, or do you think of swagger and Da U? (Yeah, I know: major sampling bias here.) Sullivan, I think, understands this as well as any college president can. There's good reason to believe she'll be a stronger supporter of football and athletics than Casteen was. Casteen was a good president, but I think he saw athletics as something that schools don't get a lot of return on investment from. I think Sullivan, unlike Casteen, sees the important distinction between compromising for athletics and sacrificing for athletics.

- The all-ACC teams are out, and Chase Minnifield made 1st team and Keith Payne made 2nd. This is entirely fair. It's good especially to see Payne get recognition for the bounceback year.

- Bill Lazor back to the NFL? Lazor says no, the rumortubes say yes. The rumors are that Lazor is looking for a job in the NFL (and will try and get one when the NFL season ends) and Lazor's refutation says (in essence) that he hasn't been contacted for one. Unfortunately a coach's word in the media must always be parsed for loopholes, and it's not hard to find them here. But Lazor is awfully stringent in his denial. Despite what I've read, I don't think there's any concrete reason to believe Lazor won't be back next year. Yet. I do know what the offense looked like last year and what it looked like this year and who's largely to thank for it, and it's gonna be awfully hard to get this rebuilding project off the ground without some continuity at a critical position. That's why London asked for a two-year commitment from his staff. You can never keep a successful coordinator around forever (the Riker-esque refusal to seek a head job of his own on Bud Foster's part notwithstanding) so three, four years down the line, yeah, I think we'd need to look for another OC. But by then there'd be something to build on. There isn't yet.

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Part of the reason this post comes a little late is because of basketball awesomeness, but partly it's because I was waiting for good news on the recruiting front. People keep hinting at it. Crossing my fingers for Jay Whitmire myself, the way the hints have been going, although nobody's mentioned any names. Alas, we'll have to wait. Not many changes to the recruiting board then:

- Removed WR Daniel Adams from green (New Mexico commit.)

- Removed QB Lafonte Thourogood from red (VT commit.) Almost a fait accompli after we picked up Watford.

- Moved CB Jeremiah Hendy from yellow to red, since Maryland's been winning and we haven't.

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Much more extensive hoopstravaganza tomorrow, but ESPN's always good for some amusement and this seems like an appropriate finish:

Speaking of Virginia, just how bad are the Cavaliers in Tony Bennett's second year? The Cavaliers already have three losses .... Virginia hasn't looked competitive any time it's faced a major-conference team not named Oklahoma. (The Sooners don't count. That might be the worst BCS conference team in the country.) Now UVA travels to the barn to face a quality Minnesota team. In the words of Scooby Doo: Ruh roh.

UVA 87, Minny 79, as Craig Littlepage spends the rest of the evening amusing himself by digging up old message board threads and, uh, blog posts expressing our fondest hopes of hiring Tubby Smith. I mean, I thought we'd lose to Minnesota too, but I don't get a paycheck to say that.

Oh....for those hoping to see the weekly AP poll study results, I crave your indulgence. The work was a casualty of the holiday weekend. Publishing will be tomorrow.

musings

Just bullets today, and some linkage:

- As soon as we ever figure out who the offensive coordinator is going to be, I want to try and do up a little something something for him and DC Jim Reid, but man is this OC hire taking forever. Doug Doughty tosses out two names: Craig Johnson and Kevin Rogers, quarterback coaches for the Titans and Vikings, respectively. I don't know who this is going to end up being, but I think I know who I'd rather it not be: the already-on-staff Mike Faragalli. Nothing against Faragalli specifically, it's just that if Mike London is willing to drag this OC search on forever and ever with Faragalli waiting in the wings as backup, Faragalli must not be that attractive an option.

- You might have noticed yesterday that the new university president has been identified as one Dr. Teresa Sullivan, currently the provost at Michigan. If you're like me, you never heard of her til yesterday. So I asked for a little input from those who might know better. It's just message board chatter, so take it for what it's worth to you, but it is at least a step in the right direction.

Me, I ask only a few things of our school president. One is to uphold the principles of student self-governance. I can only hope Sullivan can match Casteen here - this was one of Casteen's strongest points. Another would be to understand that a world-class university needs to be world-class in everything it does - and that includes athletics. Pointy-headed academicians - the type that will scream at you if you park at 4:58 in a parking lot that's reserved until 5:00 - do not get this. Sullivan spent decades at the University of Texas and several years at the University of Michigan, and has this to say about athletics:

Her long-held belief that athletics are an important component of university life should do the same, she said, with the athletic community, as well as with students, faculty and alumni. "There are great advantages to having athletics on college campuses," she said. "Games are a wonderful opportunity to bring the community together and to connect in special ways, particularly with alumni, parents and friends of the University."

I don't have the slightest clue about how respected she is in her chosen field of sociology, nor how good a job she's done as an administrative underling, though I expect the answer is "very" if she's been selected as the president of a university such as ours. I have to say I'm at least mildly encouraged here at the beginning, though. She is talking the talk, at least.

- Aaron Corp is going to Richmond, which is just great because now we get to play against him right off the bat. But speaking of next year's opponents....

- .....is the house coming down at USC or what? The timeline here looks very roughly and not to scale like this:

1. Basketball coach resigns because hammer is coming, claims it has nothing to do with said hammer.
2. School self-hammers basketball program. Hard.
3. NCAA rejects self-hammer, says "we'll take care of this thank you very much." Self-hammer apparently not hammery enough.
4. Football coach resigns because hammer is coming, claims it has nothing to do with said hammer.
5. Investigation wraps up.
6. ????

The death penalty would be very surprising here. Anything short of that would not. Pete Carroll claims he had "given up" on a return to the pros and the Seattle job just opened up like the Red Sea. Horseshit: Carroll is a national championship coach. How many NFL jobs have opened up since then? One phone call would have gotten him an interview with any of them. Carroll saw the writing on the wall at USC and decided to leave that stuff to some other poor schnook.

The question is this: Will the coming sanctions be heavy enough that the NCAA opens up the transfer door and allows players to leave without sitting out a year, as they did at Alabama earlier this decade? I think there's a strong possibility of that, and in that case it'll be interesting to see who jumps ship. It could be a very, very different Coliseum that our own team walks into in September. Will Mike London have us in the right shape to take advantage of a USC team that might be in a state of terrible disarray? It'll be interesting to find out.

- And speaking of disarray, did this offseason turn into an earthquake in the coaching circles or what? It sure looked like a quiet one back in November: UVA, Louisville, maybe Colorado (didn't happen.) Yawn. Sure, Al Groh looked like a goner after the first week of November, but who could have predicted back then that Notre Dame, Florida, USC, Cincinnati, Texas Tech, Kansas, and South Florida would all coached by someone different in 2010? That's half a ton of coaches at two of those schools alone, and if Maryland had any money in their athletic budget, it'd have been the trifecta of fired fattys. Three coaches dismissed for being dicks to their players, even with the exact magnitude of said dickery in question. One resignation because of an impending NCAA doomhammer and another that may or may not be a resignation or a sabbatical or even an extended weekend for all we know. That's a long list of schools in need of a coach, and rather surprisingly, only one of those fired their coach for losing football games.

- Seriously, there is a lot of VT love going on among the pundits. Kirk Herbstreit had them in his early top five for 2010. Rivals has them 11th (not totally out of whack) and the early favorite for the division title next year (also not totally out of whack) but also has this to say: "The presence of RBs Ryan Williams and Darren Evans and QB Tyrod Taylor in the backfield should give the Hokies one of the nation's most fearsome rushing attacks." Rivals' Steve Megargee notes: "Virginia Tech returns most of its skill-position players on offense and should boast the nation's best running-back tandem next season in Ryan Williams and Darren Evans."

Fortunately for delicious irony, that last phrase is right next to a large, full-color picture of C.J. Spiller. I'm reminded strongly of 2008, when Clemson was anointed The Team To Beat on account of their deadly running tandem of Spiller and James Davis as well as their array of skill players. This is something the media loves to do, because it's easy and requires only a quick look at a stat sheet and a roster: whichever team has the best returning skill players is the team to beat.

The media, of course, glossed over the fact that Clemson had a young and terrible offensive line and not a whole lot going on for them on defense. A 12-7 loss to Wake Forest later, Clemson had a new coach to go along with the rest of that inexperience. I'm obviously not going to suggest that Frank Beamer will follow Tommy Bowden into forced retirement, but, consider their defense. By my count, eight regular or semi-regular starters on Poly's defense will have to be replaced: Jason Worilds, Nekos Brown, Kam Chancellor, Cordarrow Thompson, Cody Grimm, Dorian Porch, Stephan Virgil, and Demetrius Taylor all graduate, or in the case of Worilds, leave early for the NFL. And don't forget three of their best blockers: Greg Boone, Ed Wang, and Sergio Render.

That is a lot of defensive talent that has to be replaced somehow. You can't just gloss that over. You especially can't claim Georgia Tech is out of the running just for losing two top juniors and gloss over the seven regular starters Poly is losing, as Megargee did. If you're despairing because we're in a rebuilding year in 2010 and everyone thinks VT is going to roll the conference, don't. I'll tell you right now, Poly will fall short of these expectations.

- Tomorrow is the GT game, and the game preview will, at least in part, take the form of a Q&A session with esteemed GT blog From The Rumble Seat. These are always a lot of fun to do and FTRS knows their GT stuff, so there's much to look forward to.