Friday, February 24, 2006

SMU looks internally in AD job search

Today's DMN has a blurb on the AD search:

Senior associate athletic directors Carlton Cooper and Scott Secules were asked by school officials to apply for the pending athletic director job vacancy. Jim Copeland, who currently holds the position, will retire May 31.

Tom Barry, the chairman of the search committee, said potential candidates must send their information to the Plano-based search firm of Eastman and Beaudine.


I am sorry, but I just have no interest in existing AD staff getting this job. I have only met these guys in passing and they would not know me from Adam. I don't pretend to judge what kind of people they are or their qualifications. But an existing SMU employee will be a tough sell with me and with most SMU alumnae.

Take Secules for example: as far as I can tell, outside of being an NFL quarterback, he has had one job and that was working at SMU. Is that really what we are looking for? A guy that that has no experience in administering collegiate athletics outside of working directly for Jim Copeland. I don't think so. You can't convince me this is the right thing to do.

Seriously, if you look at my list of possible replacements, anybody working in the SMU athletic department is at the bottom of the list, right next to Knicks GM Isiah Thomas.

Maybe this is to be polite, but it makes me mad. I could go on and on about this, but why bother? I don't have any say over this decision. I will say this. I think Dave Maggard, the Houston AD, is a nut. Maggard talks about Houston's goal is win and ultimately to get into a BCS conference. I think he is crazy to think that will ever happen at Houston. But I think Maggard believes it. And I think Maggard is working his ass off to achieve it. And I swear to God that SMU better hire a guy just like him if they want to make me happy. On day 1, the new AD better come in with publicly stated goals, publicly stated timeframes within which those goals will be accomplished, publicly stated plans on how to achieve them.

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