Samantha Huge:


“I join Rector Littel and President Rowe in our collective commitment to a path forward that leads to a restoration of trust in our leadership by our many stakeholders and a healing of the pain caused by the difficult decisions announced on Sept. 3.”

“We must achieve a shared understanding of what we mean by competitive excellence in intercollegiate athletics. We need to be open about possible disagreements ... and finish this conversation by listening to all of the voices in our community."

“I am particularly pleased to welcome Gen. Jim Golden back to W&M Athletics. General Golden’s partnership and thoughtful guidance during the development of TRIBE 2025 make him uniquely qualified to assist. I look forward to working together with General Golden in this process.”

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I'm not going to bash every little thing she says. She's trying to save her reputation and job. This 3-week ordeal certainly set her timeline off for that coveted P5 opportunity.

I guarantee she'll remain the AD. Rowe wouldn't set these pieces in place just to transition to a new Director. The real question is whether or not W&M retains the cut 7.

This whole situation sucks. It's embarrassing.

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This is what happens when you put a person in as AD who has never been an AD and combine that with a President who has never been a president. Just sayin........

Very difficult to be successful without infrastructure to support it. I want to say "Blind leading the blind", but I just don't have the heart to make that statement for my Alma Mater.

I was so excited about the 60 Minutes publicity, and now this. Hope this mess doesn't really gain National media attention.

(09-25-2020 12:36 PM)Tribal Wrote:  That's my point. Rowe allowed Huge to do her job as AD, to run the department on the level, and to take informed decisions. Rowe's mistake was signing off without going over everything. In all fairness to Rowe, she has a tremendous amount on her plate and shouldn't have to micromanage her division leadership.

(09-25-2020 01:36 PM)TribePride91 Wrote:  ...Perhaps more information will be shared to indicate that this was a quick decision. ...

So, yes, Rowe has a lot on her plate right now. Therefore, maybe she should have held up such a big announcement until she had time to review it effectively? Perhaps the moment (under cover of Covid) was not as propitious as Huge and Rowe thought?

(09-25-2020 06:38 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Samantha Huge:

“I join Rector Littel and President Rowe in our collective commitment to a path forward that leads to a restoration of trust in our leadership by our many stakeholders and a healing of the pain caused by the difficult decisions announced on Sept. 3.”

“We must achieve a shared understanding of what we mean by competitive excellence in intercollegiate athletics. We need to be open about possible disagreements ... and finish this conversation by listening to all of the voices in our community."

“I am particularly pleased to welcome Gen. Jim Golden back to W&M Athletics. General Golden’s partnership and thoughtful guidance during the development of TRIBE 2025 make him uniquely qualified to assist. I look forward to working together with General Golden in this process.”

Funny how I never even heard of Rector Littel until three weeks ago -- which is as it should be, those posts should be invisible. Now his name is all over the place, including that he is big on rowing which is named as a possible successor sport. I think this whole thing (dropping 7 sports) was engineered by Littel and Huge, with Rowe's approval (either active or bowing to Rector Littel).

Re General Golden: first off, apparently he has been retired from the military for at least as many years as it takes him to run through several jobs at W&M. So my point is: hey, guy, you are not a General anymore. Stop puffing yourself up. Secondly, if he was in on the development of TRIBE 2025, then I certainly don't trust him to be impartial. I suspect that he is fully already in the Littel/Rowe/Huge camp.

(09-25-2020 06:38 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Samantha Huge:

“We must achieve a shared understanding of what we mean by competitive excellence in intercollegiate athletics. We need to be open about possible disagreements ... and finish this conversation by listening to all of the voices in our community."

The line I bolded above really cracks me up. There will never be a shared understanding of what is meant by competitive excellence in college sports. Most W&M people, including all of the affected student-athletes of the seven dropped teams, know that excellence means 1) success in the classrooms (see the many Academic All-Americans, Rhodes Scholars, CAA Scholar Athlete of the Year awards etc etc etc), 2) success in the conference (W&M leads by a wide margin in the count of CAA championships, 3) success in the NCAA tournament for each sport (and including success on the individual level such as in track or swimming or gymnastics).

Meanwhile, to Huge, success is measured in only three sports (sports in which only one has had any success at all). It is not measured in academics and it is not measured in CAA championships (except as the vehicle to get the team to the NCAA tournament). Does Huge know that there are, what, something like 340 other Div I schools who are also trying to win (and a bunch of them cheat to do so!)? That many (certainly all of the Power 5) have many more resources? That W&M can't recruit the dumdums that other schools recruit? That W&M will almost certainly be "one-and-done" even if it makes the NCAA basketball tournament? That it takes several consecutive appearances before a team loses the "deer in the headlights" look and can actually compete, and that if the appearances are not close to each other then the effect is lost? That the same thing applies to the FCS playoffs? That you have to participate regularly and consecutively in order to build the proper winning mentality that the Marshalls, Georgia Southerns, Appy States, NDSU's, and yes, even JMU's had/have?

So Huge will never agree with what the hundreds of athletes/coaches tell her about what success means at W&M. But she will allow for "disagreement" as she ramrods her will through the Tribe community.

NBC Sports Washington running the story that the school might be getting a title 9 lawsuit from its own athletes.

https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/nca...sCpR3KCRgQ


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(09-25-2020 12:49 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  

(09-25-2020 12:36 PM)Tribal Wrote:  

(09-25-2020 12:04 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  The implication is that Rowe assumed that Huge had done her job and was submitting a recommendation based on thorough review of all available options. From the phrasing here, it appears that was a poor assumption.

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That's my point. Rowe allowed Huge to do her job as AD, to run the department on the level, and to take informed decisions. Rowe's mistake was signing off without going over everything. In all fairness to Rowe, she has a tremendous amount on her plate and shouldn't have to micromanage her division leadership.

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I agree. I was replying to soccerguy. I'm not as good at quote replies on my phone.

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I guess I feel like Rowe should've been involved and listened to all the various options and agreed with Huge on the way forward. If Rowe did this, then she is as responsible as Huge. If Rowe didn't do this, then she probably wishes she did (and here is where I would say that as the President, with a decision of this magnitude, she should've been involved in looking at this from all angles and if Rowe chose not to be involved to that degree, it was a mistake. How big a mistake? I'm not sure. But it looks like a big one right now). If Rowe didn't do this, she is not responsible for making the decision, but she is responsible for approving the decision without the necessary due diligence.

"The buck stops here" kind of thing. I'm not advocating that Rowe be fired, but I do think she is ultimately responsible for the decision, as she is ultimately responsible for everything that happens on campus.

edit: I think we generally agree

https://twitter.com/erikkorem/status/130...86593?s=21

Interesting tweet just now from Korem ...

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(09-26-2020 09:07 AM)Naptown Tribe Wrote:  https://twitter.com/erikkorem/status/130...86593?s=21

Interesting tweet just now from Korem ...

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I think he was removed from TA staff listing a week ago.

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(09-25-2020 01:56 PM)Old tribe Wrote:  And I forgot to mention, but I'm sure W&M had an attorney review what their Title IX compliance would look like after the cuts. Or at least I hope they did.

Some other things not mentioned are the four facets involved in any lawsuit: time, trouble, cost, and bad PR. Even if W&M thinks that they have an ironclad case and would win this lawsuit, it will still make them look bad PR-wise (it already has; see the post about the TV spot). It will cost them time and trouble and, seemingly most importantly since they are so budget-conscious, money. In fact, since these sports are NOT the loss leaders in the budget, I would think that a protracted lawsuit would cost the college more than the anticipated (first year) savings from dropping the sports.

I saw a thread on the JMU site about us dropping 7 sports. One post had a link to a New York Times article, from 2006, about JMU dropping some sports. I especially liked these two quotes:

"Jeff Bourne, the athletic director, said that saving money was no factor in the decision. “These 10 sports cost us about $550,000 in a sports budget of $21 million,” Bourne said. “There’s no way we’re going to take all this heat and cause all the negative feelings for those affected athletes over $550,000.”

“Athletic departments have become a business run by accountants, not a place of opportunity run to educate students,” Chapman said.

The first quote is especially plump since W&M is taking extreme heat for supposed savings that are a very small percentage of the budget.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/sport...dison.html

Based on a thorough reading of the articles in today's Daily Press and Va Gazette, and reading between the lines of Katherine Roe's statement after yesterday's BOV meeting, Samantha is hanging on by a thread.

(09-26-2020 09:11 AM)Tribal Wrote:  

(09-26-2020 09:07 AM)Naptown Tribe Wrote:  https://twitter.com/erikkorem/status/130...86593?s=21

Interesting tweet just now from Korem ...

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I think he was removed from TA staff listing a week ago.

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He was Huge hatchet man! Running off the entire strength coaching staff w/in one year and making all of the trainers except one voluntarily resign. Had his own agenda from the beginning that never aligned with WM. Huge first hire and a poor one.

Random thought, not endorsing any side of the debate -- just objectively asking: would be be having all these conversations if W&M had cut "only" say 2-3 sports?

Obviously, the subsequent reaction would probably depend on which sports were cut, and what reason(s) the school used to cut them.

Would the school have been able to use the financial argument if it had "only" cut 2-3 sports...instead of the 7? Perhaps grouping the 7 provided admin the financial argument to "cover" the cuts.

Kind of a loaded question, but interesting to think about the different scenarios that could have played out.

(09-25-2020 08:20 PM)Zorch Wrote:  

(09-25-2020 06:38 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Samantha Huge:

“We must achieve a shared understanding of what we mean by competitive excellence in intercollegiate athletics. We need to be open about possible disagreements ... and finish this conversation by listening to all of the voices in our community."

The line I bolded above really cracks me up. There will never be a shared understanding of what is meant by competitive excellence in college sports. Most W&M people, including all of the affected student-athletes of the seven dropped teams, know that excellence means 1) success in the classrooms (see the many Academic All-Americans, Rhodes Scholars, CAA Scholar Athlete of the Year awards etc etc etc), 2) success in the conference (W&M leads by a wide margin in the count of CAA championships, 3) success in the NCAA tournament for each sport (and including success on the individual level such as in track or swimming or gymnastics).

Meanwhile, to Huge, success is measured in only three sports (sports in which only one has had any success at all). It is not measured in academics and it is not measured in CAA championships (except as the vehicle to get the team to the NCAA tournament). Does Huge know that there are, what, something like 340 other Div I schools who are also trying to win (and a bunch of them cheat to do so!)? That many (certainly all of the Power 5) have many more resources? That W&M can't recruit the dumdums that other schools recruit? That W&M will almost certainly be "one-and-done" even if it makes the NCAA basketball tournament? That it takes several consecutive appearances before a team loses the "deer in the headlights" look and can actually compete, and that if the appearances are not close to each other then the effect is lost? That the same thing applies to the FCS playoffs? That you have to participate regularly and consecutively in order to build the proper winning mentality that the Marshalls, Georgia Southerns, Appy States, NDSU's, and yes, even JMU's had/have?

So Huge will never agree with what the hundreds of athletes/coaches tell her about what success means at W&M. But she will allow for "disagreement" as she ramrods her will through the Tribe community.

This is, in my opinion, the attitude that has held W&M athletics back for far too long. It's an acceptance of mediocrity because it's seen as being too hard to compete and because W&M is "special." I always point to Harvard when W&M people bring out these talking points. I am very good friends with people who played at basketball at Harvard, with those people graduating in years that span from the mid 90's to the mid 2010's. Harvard had the exact same attitude that Zorch is expressing for a very long time. Luckily for them, they decided to make a shift and put resources into their basketball program, refuse to accept that higher admission standards are an impossible hurdle to overcome, and to not feel bad about trying to win. Lo and behold, they've had a lot of success. They made 4 NCAA tournaments in a row, won games in 2 of those years, and have won the IVY league regular season title 6 out of the past 8 years. They also consistently are in on top 100 recruits and have landed a number of them. All this after having never won more than 19 games in its history until 2010 and not having made the NCAA tournament since 1946.

I get real tired of people claiming W&M can't compete in sports like basketball because we can't recruit "dum dums." Every school, including W&M, makes admissions exceptions for athletes. It's not a good excuse.

It's a fact that success in basketball and football are more valuable to a school than success in other sports. That's what's driving the shift in athletics priorities.

I agree.

We should be like Harvard.

They sponsor 40 sports.

They’re not cutting sports.

https://gocrimson.com/

Now, if we could just join the Ivy League, and move the school to Boston ...

Old tribe Wrote:  It's a fact that success in basketball and football are more valuable to a school than success in other sports. That's what's driving the shift in athletics priorities.

No doubt that’s the thinking that’s driving the bus. Yet an awful lot of effort (and lost trust) is being expended pretending that’s not the case.

Why not just be honest and say, “Hey swimmers and gymnasts and you other minor sports - you’re just not important to us. Buzz off.”

It’s clearly what’s meant - why beat around the bush?

Whao wha what !!!!!

@TribeAthletics @williamandmary @savetribetrack @TomTheThrower - interesting WM Athletics is trying to tamp down “rumors” spending $142k on Brian Curtis / Paradigm Four Crisis Mgmt. PR and NOW spending $32k on “executive coach for Samantha Huge” since July. @skh21 @jlittel01 https://t.co/MZQiIPam2t

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Time to move along and admit that we have a real problem with the AD

(09-26-2020 07:27 PM)Tribe32 Wrote:  Time to move along and admit that we have a real problem with the AD

A good friend wisely stated, "We don't have a funding problem, we have a spending problem."

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