Opening Metaphor

I am not a true devotee that keeps abreast of the machinations which determine how the football program, athletic department, and university at large operate. I've been content to suspend my cynicism, focus my attention on the puppets in the show, and ignore the hands that operate them. But now the show consists entirely of threadbare socks with stains for eyes and tangled marionettes swaying arhythmically to modem noise. Therefore, I'm coming around to the idea that what’s happening back stage can’t be any less interesting than what’s happening on it.

I have no inside sources. I stand outside the pay-walls. I've laid my ear to the threads, followed links and read blogs. I come away worried that the show will be harder to fix than I thought. I worry that the few individuals qualified to fix it won’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s not bringing in a head coach to fill "the best job in the country all other things being equal" that concerns me. It’s bringing in the AD that can find a way to make "all other things" be equal.

Please allay my fears by correcting and expanding upon my impression of some current issues and obstacles at hand:

(note: this is not an enticement to C&P; pay-wall content, just any ominous or joyous whispers you've overheard will suffice)

Embattled Administration

Gov. Rick "Milkman" Perry has been appointing his Republican petro-cronies to the UT Board of Regents since Hodges Mitchell was a featured back. For the most part comprised of UT alumni, there was little reason to doubt that the BOR’s interests aligned with the best interest of the University, at least until a 2011 curriculum squabble served as prelude to Perry’s run for POTUS in 2012. Not known as a patron of public education, Perry began championing a policy to democratize higher education by providing low-cost, low-standard degree programs through the state’s universities. UT president William Powers, a believer in maintaining a research-driven university, is at odds with Perry’s "diploma-mill" initiative thus creating an undercurrent of animosity with a BOR now possessed of possibly conflicted allegiances.

Powers position was further compromised by the revelation of forgivable loan programs run by university-affiliated external foundations that basically serve as opaque compensation sources for faculty members. In particular, a $500,000 forgivable loan to now deposed UT School of Law Dean Lawrence Sager ratcheted up tension between Powers and the BOR, especially with regent Wallace Hall.

A loose cannon, Wallace Hall initiated a "witch hunt" through micromanagement with the probable intent of unseating Powers. Speculation exists as to Hall's motives being driven by an educational/political agenda or general desire to address the state of the athletic department. The latter view was bolstered by the recent confirmation of a long-standing rumor that Hall "went rogue" along with former regent (and owner of now repo’d pro sports franchises) Tom Hicks and attempted to orchestrate a bloodless coup that would replace Mack Brown with Nick Saban last January. It is not inconceivable that some of Hall’s desire to remove Powers stems from his perception that the president represents an obstruction to reforming the athletic department.

Athletics are important to the image and fundraising capabilities of most universities (see ATM’s $740m windfall last year), but subjugating the best educational structure for the university to the best athletic structure for the university is a lunatic misplacement of priorities. Aside from that, the resulting conflict produces an incoherent approach to fixing the athletic department that may be resurfacing amongst the…

Rifting Big Money Donors

Gathered in a luxury suite so saturated with clown-sized cigar haze it looks like one of the smoker's terrariums at the Atlanta airport, Joe Jamail , Red McCombs and their disgruntled court gasp program defining dictates past their oxygen tubes. Once they were, and maybe once again they are, a fractious collection of deep-pocketed meddlers. Of all the good Mack Brown did for the program his greatest accomplishment might have been unifying the BMD’s in common cause. Now that the master diplomat is all but guaranteed to exit, possibly due to falling short of a stop-gap ultimatum intended to keep the Cigars unified, discord appears set to reemerge. Old conflicts of cultural identity and access vs. results are starting to rumble. More troubling than the notion of uncoordinated boosters presenting a garbled message to coaching candidates is the perception that they are the true decision makers.

Pending Litigation

Apparently Bellmont Hall has spent the last decade in a perpetual state of orgy and, like any swinger’s club, has been home to the kind of gruesome couplings that make one regret possessing an imagination. Legally speaking, the activities surpassed the kind of grab-ass displayed by our players on the field and plunged into what’s known as a "hostile work environment". Sweetened by the fat pot of honey that is America’s richest athletic department, the culture formed a stench which plaintiff’s attorneys like Gloria Allred can smell from orbit. And, just like any swinger’s club, nobody looks very good once the light is turned on.

Unfortunately, the outcome of Allred’s involvement, the rightful dismissal of Associate Athletic Director for Football Operations Cleve Bryant, fit into what appears to be a pattern of discrepancy in how Caucasian and African-American staffers were disciplined for similar offenses. The highlight comparison would be that Women’s Track Coach Bev Kearney had inappropriate relations with a student and was forced to resign 11 years later while Major Applewhite had inappropriate relations with a student and was forced to wait out a one year suspension of pay before being promoted. Not surprisingly, Kearney is filing an action against the school. There are plenty of rumored, perhaps even documented, alternative examples, but I’ll leave the salacious libel for the comments section. In the end, out of court proceedings will hopefully spare us from hearing the wretched details of staff dalliances, but given that the BOR would have to approve any substantial settlement and their relationship with the school is currently a clusterhump of another sort, you never know.

In any event, the litigation, whatever its merits, is not the concern. The problem is an organization that either never modernized, or devolved into a culture where these activities and errors in judgment could be so prevalent.

The Athletic Director

Deloss Dodds may be planning to step down effective 12-31-2013, and that may be due to him:

Being too ill to continue in such capacity

Making way for a sweeping overhaul of the department

Or,

Falling on his sword and accepting culpability for the department’s legal troubles.

It might be for all of those reasons. He may have already had his retirement party. The issue at hand is the nature of the position he is vacating. Is the Texas athletic director just a glad-handing administrator, fall guy and mouthpiece beholden to not only the President and BOR but the BMDs as well? If so, with all of those governing entities in turmoil, is it an attractive job for top candidates?

How will a successor fix a broken culture if they are mired in it from the start, tethered by innumerable tangled strings, with rot oozing down from above?