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To understand the last 24 hours, you need to read our Thursday morning notes, then our initial afternoon update and then my behind the scenes explanation of how we got here.
All caught up? Good. That's what has happened. Now let's start assigning some blame. Because there is more than enough to go around. We're just gonna start listing people that share in this and why they do.
I got a text last night from a guy I've known for a while that works in college athletics: "In the words of the immortal Gary Pinkel, it would appear Missouri is beating Missouri."
Indeed. Couldn't have said it better. On to the list of shame:
Barry Odom: First of all, his team kept tripping over itself and losing games and put his job in jeopardy when it really should never have been in jeopardy this season. At the beginning of the year, I said the only way he was not returning for 2020 was if the wheels came off. Well, they did.
Second, Odom just always paid too much attention to the noise. He knew too much about what people wrote and what people said and he cared about it too much. In my opinion, Odom got as far as he did in his life and his profession because he motivated himself by convincing himself that nobody believed in him and nobody thought he was good enough. And that's perfectly fine as a motivational tactic. But when you become an SEC head coach, you ARE good enough. And what I say or what you guys say or really what anybody says doesn't matter. You coach your team and you tune out the bullshit. Too often, Barry didn't do that. That includes the strained relationships with Jim Sterk. There's absolutely some truth to Odom's belief that he never had the full support of his boss and his department. But there's also some truth that he exaggerated it in his own mind. If he would have just won more games, the rest wouldn't have mattered. They wouldn't have fired him if he was 10-3 last year like he should have been or 8-4/9-3 this year like he should have been.
And when that all boiled over and reached a point of irreconcilable differences in the last two weeks, it was Odom that paid. This can't have been a surprise. When the boss battles the employee, the boss usually wins--especially when the employee has lost all of his leverage with a five-game losing streak in which his team looks like it forgot how to walk and chew gum at the same time, much less play competent football.
So, yeah, Odom gets some blame here.
Jim Sterk: There's a pattern here. Sterk's relationship with Odom wasn't great. Sterk's relationship with Jimmy Sexton is bad. He was part of a lawsuit with his women's basketball coach at San Diego State which the school settled for $4 million. He was sued by Dawn Staley for making defamatory comments on a Columbia radio station and that one was settled too. When you find yourself in a fight one day, maybe you're not at fault. When you find yourself in fights over and over, it's kind of impossible to believe it's just always the other guy's (or girl's) fault. At some point, Sterk needed to find a way to better get along with people. That includes Barry Odom, but it isn't limited to him.
In addition, as I've said, it appears that Sterk fired Odom without a good plan. Or, at the least, he fired Odom without a plan that he knew was going to be okay with the people it needed to be okay with. Every single person that has written about the firing has said two things:
1) It wasn't unfair. Odom's performance this year wasn't good enough.
2) It would be justified as long as you replaced Odom with someone that was an upgrade.
I will fully admit that the second one is subjective. I fully believe that Sterk thought Blake Anderson, Skip Holtz and Jeff Monken were upgrades to Odom. Some people agree with him. The problem is, the other people with input in this decision didn't agree with him. He had to know that. Maybe if it was a possibility that the higher ups were going to shoot down the hire, one of them (Mun Choi, Alexander Cartwright, Jon Sundvold, whoever) should have been in on the process and the interviews. They weren't. Hell, I don't know why you wouldn't include Howard Richards in the process. I promise he knows more about what's going to make a good football coach at this level than anyone who actually was part of the selection process.
But that's not how Sterk works. If you know anybody that has worked in the building the last three years, you'll hear the same thing when you ask about Sterk: "I don't really know him." That's fine. Some rule from afar. Some believe it better to stay separate from the rank and file. There's a certain amount of sense in having people that work for you having a healthy fear or unknown about the boss. But when it comes to making major decisions like this, you can't be out here doing it completely on your own, especially when some of those who are going to have to give approval have doubts about the department and the initial decision to begin with.
Bottom line, I'm not going to blame Sterk because of the list of coaches he came back with. I'm going to blame him because of the process and the environment that led him apparently not to understand that that list wasn't going to be greeted with pleasure.
Parker Executive Search: The search firm works for the school. The school paid it $50,000. You would think it was communicated to them what kind of candidate Missouri was looking for. All that and the most qualified guy you might have talked to was Jim McElwain? That can't happen. Again, this isn't a shot at the coaches that were brought back in terms of their ability or qualification. But it obviously wasn't the candidate pool Missouri was looking for. It's like starting out on a search for a chef that makes really good Asian food and coming back with a chef that specializes in Indian food. His food might be damn good. But it's not what I wanted. The search firm failed Missouri.
To understand the last 24 hours, you need to read our Thursday morning notes, then our initial afternoon update and then my behind the scenes explanation of how we got here.
All caught up? Good. That's what has happened. Now let's start assigning some blame. Because there is more than enough to go around. We're just gonna start listing people that share in this and why they do.
I got a text last night from a guy I've known for a while that works in college athletics: "In the words of the immortal Gary Pinkel, it would appear Missouri is beating Missouri."
Indeed. Couldn't have said it better. On to the list of shame:
Barry Odom: First of all, his team kept tripping over itself and losing games and put his job in jeopardy when it really should never have been in jeopardy this season. At the beginning of the year, I said the only way he was not returning for 2020 was if the wheels came off. Well, they did.
Second, Odom just always paid too much attention to the noise. He knew too much about what people wrote and what people said and he cared about it too much. In my opinion, Odom got as far as he did in his life and his profession because he motivated himself by convincing himself that nobody believed in him and nobody thought he was good enough. And that's perfectly fine as a motivational tactic. But when you become an SEC head coach, you ARE good enough. And what I say or what you guys say or really what anybody says doesn't matter. You coach your team and you tune out the bullshit. Too often, Barry didn't do that. That includes the strained relationships with Jim Sterk. There's absolutely some truth to Odom's belief that he never had the full support of his boss and his department. But there's also some truth that he exaggerated it in his own mind. If he would have just won more games, the rest wouldn't have mattered. They wouldn't have fired him if he was 10-3 last year like he should have been or 8-4/9-3 this year like he should have been.
And when that all boiled over and reached a point of irreconcilable differences in the last two weeks, it was Odom that paid. This can't have been a surprise. When the boss battles the employee, the boss usually wins--especially when the employee has lost all of his leverage with a five-game losing streak in which his team looks like it forgot how to walk and chew gum at the same time, much less play competent football.
So, yeah, Odom gets some blame here.
Jim Sterk: There's a pattern here. Sterk's relationship with Odom wasn't great. Sterk's relationship with Jimmy Sexton is bad. He was part of a lawsuit with his women's basketball coach at San Diego State which the school settled for $4 million. He was sued by Dawn Staley for making defamatory comments on a Columbia radio station and that one was settled too. When you find yourself in a fight one day, maybe you're not at fault. When you find yourself in fights over and over, it's kind of impossible to believe it's just always the other guy's (or girl's) fault. At some point, Sterk needed to find a way to better get along with people. That includes Barry Odom, but it isn't limited to him.
In addition, as I've said, it appears that Sterk fired Odom without a good plan. Or, at the least, he fired Odom without a plan that he knew was going to be okay with the people it needed to be okay with. Every single person that has written about the firing has said two things:
1) It wasn't unfair. Odom's performance this year wasn't good enough.
2) It would be justified as long as you replaced Odom with someone that was an upgrade.
I will fully admit that the second one is subjective. I fully believe that Sterk thought Blake Anderson, Skip Holtz and Jeff Monken were upgrades to Odom. Some people agree with him. The problem is, the other people with input in this decision didn't agree with him. He had to know that. Maybe if it was a possibility that the higher ups were going to shoot down the hire, one of them (Mun Choi, Alexander Cartwright, Jon Sundvold, whoever) should have been in on the process and the interviews. They weren't. Hell, I don't know why you wouldn't include Howard Richards in the process. I promise he knows more about what's going to make a good football coach at this level than anyone who actually was part of the selection process.
But that's not how Sterk works. If you know anybody that has worked in the building the last three years, you'll hear the same thing when you ask about Sterk: "I don't really know him." That's fine. Some rule from afar. Some believe it better to stay separate from the rank and file. There's a certain amount of sense in having people that work for you having a healthy fear or unknown about the boss. But when it comes to making major decisions like this, you can't be out here doing it completely on your own, especially when some of those who are going to have to give approval have doubts about the department and the initial decision to begin with.
Bottom line, I'm not going to blame Sterk because of the list of coaches he came back with. I'm going to blame him because of the process and the environment that led him apparently not to understand that that list wasn't going to be greeted with pleasure.
Parker Executive Search: The search firm works for the school. The school paid it $50,000. You would think it was communicated to them what kind of candidate Missouri was looking for. All that and the most qualified guy you might have talked to was Jim McElwain? That can't happen. Again, this isn't a shot at the coaches that were brought back in terms of their ability or qualification. But it obviously wasn't the candidate pool Missouri was looking for. It's like starting out on a search for a chef that makes really good Asian food and coming back with a chef that specializes in Indian food. His food might be damn good. But it's not what I wanted. The search firm failed Missouri.
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