Towson University, in suburban Baltimore, has eliminated its baseball and soccer programs. The University President - Maravene Loeschke, who returned to Towson as president not so long ago amidst universal acclimation, made a decision that surprisingly smacked of ineptitude, stupidity and rank incompetence. It was also an unethical decision, arrived at in true Star Chamber fashion, and delivered to those most damaged in a way that would make a fascist proud.
This is how the decision was announced: Loeschke ordered players and coaches from the two affected teams to come to a meeting on campus at 10 am. The players were told about the 10 am meeting at 9:15 am the very same day. Many were in class. When Loeschke showed up she was surrounded by campus police, even though the meeting was, in fact, on campus and not at the county lock-up up on the hill. Another detachment of armed police waited outside surrounding Loeschke's car. Really, they surrounded her car like somebody was going to do something to it. I would like to hear her explain that. Why would that be necessary? Who paid for this over-saturation of campus police? Are so many campus police usually on duty on a Friday morning? I bet the lads on the two teams were glad to know that they were worthy of such high esteem. Will Ms Loeschke have police around her all the time now? I bet the folk paying the tuitions for the baseball and soccer team student\athletes - most weren't on full scholarships - were glad to know that the person getting their money held their sons in such high regard. Then, Loeschke spoke to the players for three entire minutes. She took no questions. She left.
When I first heard about this, I was flabbergasted and incensed. I was thinking she should resign. This is not the way things are done. First, you do not cut a successful, well-run, well-thought-of university program just so some other, probably less-well-run (can you say Pat Kennedy (former basketball coach?)) program can get the dollars. And when responsible folk step up to the plate and promise to assist in the effort to fund the well-run teams you are thinking of eliminating, you don't smack them down like this. Would allowing those dedicated souls who promised to help on such short notice, a few months to organize their efforts be against anyone's interest? Down the road at College Park, the University of Maryland announced two years ago that it was cutting eight sports. But none were of the prestige of soccer or baseball, and in each instance the University President and Athletic Director provided time for the backers of each sport to find alternate funding sources. In other words, the people who cared most about the sport were given time and resources to save the sport at the University. The University even assigned athletic department personnel to assist in the effort to save each sport. Now, nobody wants to have their sport placed in such a precarious place, but it was about ten million times better - and more responsible - than the "behind the iron curtain" hatchet job pulled off by Loeschke and Waddell.
Somebody is not playing straight at Towson. Even a moron understands that cutting two prestigious team sports at a school supposedly trying to increase the profile of its athletic program is not a good idea. And yet the school did so in the worst way imaginable. When responsible and well-intentioned souls stepped up to the plate to try to save the teams, they were told - by not being involved by the university - to bug off. The way the whole thing was handled makes it clear that the decision was made a long time ago and Loeschke and her functionary, Waddell, only wanted to paint some consternation on the outside so it seemed, well, not so sleezy. But that good old back door sleaziness bubbled right through the shallow intentions of the two administrators.
The courageous and correct thing for Ms Loeschke to do - as if she really needed some blogger to tell her - was to tell Waddell where to get off. There are many who wonder l if it was, in fact, his decision. But I don't get that from the way it was done. To be candid. I wonder if Loeschke didn't tell him to pick programs to cut if he wanted more money for football and basketball.
This is a terrible decision made in a disgraceful way. This is the first public decision that Loeschke has made and it is an embarrassment. Mike Waddell proves himself a flunky for the President and a flunky for money only. He wanted the budgets of the two well-run teams (the baseball team just took a weekend series from Duke and whacked Delaware yesterday) for his football and basketball teams. There are other ways - correct and ethical ways - of getting those funds. Just because the folk down in the nation's capital can be a national disgrace in the way they handle pubic money doesn't mean that copying those tactics is okay. Do the right thing and say that these two programs are model programs, run responsibly by two veteran, competent and qualified coaches. They kept within budgets and kept within NCAA guidelines. Mike Gottlieb and Frank Olszewski are to be emulated, not fired. Olszewski has been head coach since 1982 and has over 200 wins. It is disgraceful to treat these men like this. It was done disgracefully. We are told Towson sports is on the rise. If the 'rise" is fueled by such bad and unethical decisions, it will be no rise at all. Will five more football wins come at the expense of eliminating good programs run by good people? Instead, lets cut the salaries of two overpaid administrators. Quickly! Real Division I athletic programs do not cut the world's biggest sport or the national sport. Whoever thought that was a good idea is not competent.
Both Loeschke and Waddell should speak publicly about why the Towson community should not expect future decisions to be handled so ineptly and so embarrassingly. The decisions need to be reversed. The people involved need to apologize to everybody, especially the players, who were treated like criminals likely to attack the university president if she said something they didn't like. Does Towson assign police to professors when they tell a student that he or she is getting a D or F?
Bad decision, reached with profound incompetence. Pathetically announced. We need to be told that the two involved - Loeschke and Waddell - won't make this kind of mistake again. We need to know that they understand how ineptly and unethically they have acted. If they cannot bring themselves to do the right thing, the university police might have to be called again, this time to escort both of them down to Preston Street to file for unemployment.
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