I'm not an older, penny pinching fan and I think JP is awful. While I'm not a season ticket holder, I still donate to the university every year so I feel like I can put in my two cents on JP. He's a cheap egomaniac that doesn't have the balls to fire a coach because he's good buddies with him. He screwed up royally on Rhoads and gave him that stupid extension. Had Rhoads never pulled off that one big win over Okie State, Pollard would've been fired by now. Now that it's obvious we can't even compete in the conference against anyone outside of Kansas, lots of fans, including myself, are losing hope and getting angry.
Fair enough.
He turned down Hoiberg for McDoormat
Which 99% of the basketball world would've done at the time. Many liked the McDermott hire and he was successful at UNI.
then when McDoormat drove basketball into the ground, he thought "why not? Expectations are low, I can get him cheap." In other words, he got extremely lucky that McDoormat failed miserably so that he could underpay Hoiberg at the time.
Wow, complete nonsense. Getting lucky McDermott failed? I'm sure JP would've been thrilled if McDermott turned it around and didn't have the constant exodus of players and won games.
As for hiring Hoiberg due to being cheap? That's quite an accusation. Do you have a link for that? He hired Hoiberg due to being in contact with him over the years, Hoiberg stating what he'd do to turn around ISU bball and expressing he wanted the job, and to bring ISU's golden boy back home to a frustrated and disinterested fanbase.
Then add in the reports of JP treating Fred and the basketball team like garbage and you've got an AD that bothers a lot of people.
Then add in the reports where Fred refuted everything and anyone who actually looked into the accusations about the ballroom incident and staff family travel and Hines giving Pollard one day to refute an already-written article should be more intelligent to not fall for tabloid journalism.
I don't give him credit for Prohm because Leath got involved in the search. It's pretty clear that even our university president doesn't have a lot of confidence in JP when he has to help with the coaching search.
At my company, candidates are usually selected by the hiring manager, then interviewed with them, potential peers, and possibly the department manager. In sports, the GM may select the interviewees, however still need to run them by the owner for interview/approval.
So, I hope Leath is involved with all major hires at ISU. I agree it was good that Leath was involved. However do you have a source/link for stating Leath did the searching as well? I believe the Leath involvement was more similar to what I wrote in my preceding paragraph--Leath wanted due diligence on the candidate selections and be a part of the interviewing process. I hope all ISU presidents have that level of involvement with all ADs for major hires.
While I appreciate the tremendous things he has done with facilities and donations, he's starting to lose the hope of this fanbase. He's lucky that we have such a great fanbase that's willing to dish out donations over the idea that there's a little bit of hope in this program. Now that we can't produce a winning product on the football field, he can't do the simple job of firing a coach with one of the lowest winning percentages in ISU history, all with the best facilities and highest budget this school has ever had. I consider him extremely lucky and he takes all the credit for this luck even though he deserves none. Had he been at just about any other P5 school, the university president would have forced him to fire Rhoads by now.
At least you started and ended your post well--too bad the middle was garbage.
jimlad
