Dick Baddour Must Go
If Matt Doherty was really such a jerk, he didn't become one overnight. The guy was only on the job for three years. Shouldn't the person who hired him bear some responsibility for picking the wrong coach? That person is UNC athletic director Dick Baddour, who now needs to be shown the door as well.
Doh's hiring was the resolution of a mess that Baddour let happen, a mess from which Baddour extricated himself by annointing Doherty despite his very limited experience as a head coach and the lukewarm-at-best support of Dean Smith. So if Doh was such a disaster--not in terms of wins and losses, but in terms of who he is and how he acts--then it says a lot about the personnel decisions being made in Chapel Hill.
Thad Williamson takes a thoughtful look at Doherty's ouster, discussing how Doh irked the insiders and big-money boys: "(T)he general impression that was left from the first year or two of the Doherty era was that of a CEO undertaking a nominally friendly but substantively hostile takeover." Much worse, he created "a lack of a respectful environment within the program."
I'll go along with Thad that if Doherty was a Bobby Knight in the making, then, "The university has made the right decision for the future of the program and for the well-being of Carolina's basketball players. In the process, the university has asserted its core ethical values and re-affirmed its expectations as to what the character of UNC's athletic programs will be."
But I think Thad has drunk the Kool-Aid when he writes off Baddour's role with a quick "to err is human."
If this really was about more than a bunch of pissed-off rich guys and spoiled players--and I think it is--then it involves a huge misjudgement by an AD who has been involved in more than his share of messy personnel issues. Baddour must go.
11:47:45 AM 
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