Like many of you, I watched the stream on InsideFortSmith.Com Friday night of interim Athletic Director Julie Cromer Peoples explaining the firing of Bret Bielema, and outlining what a coaching search would look like from her perspective.
Like many of you, I laughed when she said that she was going to conduct this coaching search with no help. She might throw it to a few advisors, but she was going to lean on her network of people to find our new coach.
Before the feminists in the group start calling the National Organization for Women, it has nothing to do with her gender. I think that she is a very capable administrator, and can likely handle the day-to-day duties that come along with running an athletic department just fine.
I just think that she is seriously disconnected from reality.
When she was asked about Bret Bielema’s buyout, she deflected the question to the Razorback Foundation. A group funded by a number of highly successful titans of business, many of whom have the egos that come with that success. There are a number of them that write checks in a year that are larger than what most Arkansans will earn in a lifetime. There are also members of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees who make it their business to have a hand in such high profile hirings, firings, and decisions that reflect badly on them when things go south.
Are you telling me that the people who are actually power brokers in our state are actually going to hand the process over to this mid-level administrator, who most of us hadn’t even heard of before Jeff Long was fired?
That is about as likely as the credibility of people on social media who insist their cousin’s brother-in-law has high level “sources”, who know who that next coach is going to be, but can’t tell you because they have been sworn to secrecy.
That, however, is another column in itself.
In a Facebook poll we conducted Friday night, 70% of those who voted said they didn’t have the confidence in her to make the decision.
My guess is that even a larger percentage agree with me that it is very likely she isn’t really in charge.
We will see.