[d4cohn]

Maybe he'll up the financial ante to the point that he attracts a big name.

I think this will be key in this search.

[d4cohn]

Maybe he'll up the financial ante to the point that he attracts a big name.

I think this will be key in this search.

[BobK]

Hope they remember all the salary savings the past three years. 

[BobK]

Hope they remember all the salary savings the past three years. 

[oldalum]

How about Gunn ?

That was Bowlsby, December 2011.

from Palo Alto online article: "Jeremy Gunn has a proven track record of winning and developing student-athletes and programs everywhere he has coached," said Bob Bowlsby, Stanford's athletic director. "We are very excited to welcome Jeremy Gunn as our new men's soccer coach.

[oldalum]

How about Gunn ?

That was Bowlsby, December 2011.

from Palo Alto online article: "Jeremy Gunn has a proven track record of winning and developing student-athletes and programs everywhere he has coached," said Bob Bowlsby, Stanford's athletic director. "We are very excited to welcome Jeremy Gunn as our new men's soccer coach.

[winflop]

Muir has hired 7 coaches thus far.  One a failure.  Why are the others that bad? 
T&F/XC:  Grade A
Baseball:  TBD
Beach:  Grade B after one year
WVB:  Grade TBD
MBB:  Grade B afrer one year
Men's Tennis:  Grade B

So early to tell on 5, but none looked poor, fair or close to iffy

It's not just the hiring but also the firing and dealing with player-coach issues. IMnsHO he should have fired Dawkins 3 years earlier, he completely botched the Rittman situation, and he should have fired Hanson the day after the season ended.

[winflop]

Muir has hired 7 coaches thus far.  One a failure.  Why are the others that bad? 
T&F/XC:  Grade A
Baseball:  TBD
Beach:  Grade B after one year
WVB:  Grade TBD
MBB:  Grade B afrer one year
Men's Tennis:  Grade B

So early to tell on 5, but none looked poor, fair or close to iffy

It's not just the hiring but also the firing and dealing with player-coach issues. IMnsHO he should have fired Dawkins 3 years earlier, he completely botched the Rittman situation, and he should have fired Hanson the day after the season ended.

[Branner89]

Or the day after her second season (2016) ended.

[Branner89]

Or the day after her second season (2016) ended.

[BostonCard]

Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

[BostonCard]

Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

[CTcard]

Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

I believe the answer you will mostly get is "by firing him at all".

However, I would also note that Rittman is the only coach in the history of Stanford who has ever received an NCAA show-cause penalty for his/her actions at Stanford.* In my opinion, Stanford cannot continue to employ such a coach.


* I am actually not 100% sure that is a true statement, but it seems like it must be. The first ever Stanford major violations of NCAA rules were the softball coach and the Cajuste "loans", which were handled together as a single report. I don't think a coach can get a show-cause penalty for a minor infraction.

[CTcard]

Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

I believe the answer you will mostly get is "by firing him at all".

However, I would also note that Rittman is the only coach in the history of Stanford who has ever received an NCAA show-cause penalty for his/her actions at Stanford.* In my opinion, Stanford cannot continue to employ such a coach.


* I am actually not 100% sure that is a true statement, but it seems like it must be. The first ever Stanford major violations of NCAA rules were the softball coach and the Cajuste "loans", which were handled together as a single report. I don't think a coach can get a show-cause penalty for a minor infraction.

[Mick]

Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

Winflop didn't say Muir botched the Rittman firing.  He said Muir botched the "Rittman situation." 

I think Winflop would agree that since Rittman committed a documented Level II violation, the firing is perhaps the one thing Muir didn't botch.  He certainly arranged the investigation to culminate in that result, and prevented Rittman from participating in the process until the very end.  One of my favorite parts is that the law firm selected to conduct the "independent" investigation was formerly run by a Stanford board member and that firm was dependent upon Stanford for a substantial amount of its revenue.  What are the odds that the "independent investigation" would result in anything other than precisely what Stanford wanted?  Funny, employment investigations was not a specialty of that law firm, though Stanford had used law firms in the past that indeed had that specialty.  I know that a number of players who supported Rittman stated they weren't contacted by the investigating team.  And why would they?  :P 

Here's the result:

http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/...160915.pdf

Here's a pretty good description of events, reported in the Stanford Daily.  the title is "Stanford softball in shambles after infighting, controversial resignation."  Sorta screams "botched" to me, but YMMV.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/05/28/...signation/

In short, Muir didn't properly supervise an employee who was falsifying records, he then facilitated a mutiny without telling the coach and without including players who were supportive of Muir, he allowed the blame for an AD employee who was rumored to be paying inappropriate attention to an athlete (both the employee and the athlete denied this) to be attached to the softball program, and a few other goodies.  Read the article.  He then couldn't get a decent candidate to replace Rittman, leading to three morbid years of a ruined program.  Sounds botched to me.

[Mick]

Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

Winflop didn't say Muir botched the Rittman firing.  He said Muir botched the "Rittman situation." 

I think Winflop would agree that since Rittman committed a documented Level II violation, the firing is perhaps the one thing Muir didn't botch.  He certainly arranged the investigation to culminate in that result, and prevented Rittman from participating in the process until the very end.  One of my favorite parts is that the law firm selected to conduct the "independent" investigation was formerly run by a Stanford board member and that firm was dependent upon Stanford for a substantial amount of its revenue.  What are the odds that the "independent investigation" would result in anything other than precisely what Stanford wanted?  Funny, employment investigations was not a specialty of that law firm, though Stanford had used law firms in the past that indeed had that specialty.  I know that a number of players who supported Rittman stated they weren't contacted by the investigating team.  And why would they?  :P 

Here's the result:

http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/...160915.pdf

Here's a pretty good description of events, reported in the Stanford Daily.  the title is "Stanford softball in shambles after infighting, controversial resignation."  Sorta screams "botched" to me, but YMMV.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/05/28/...signation/

In short, Muir didn't properly supervise an employee who was falsifying records, he then facilitated a mutiny without telling the coach and without including players who were supportive of Muir, he allowed the blame for an AD employee who was rumored to be paying inappropriate attention to an athlete (both the employee and the athlete denied this) to be attached to the softball program, and a few other goodies.  Read the article.  He then couldn't get a decent candidate to replace Rittman, leading to three morbid years of a ruined program.  Sounds botched to me.

[BostonCard]

Thanks Mick, I appreciate the summary.  I'm a little bit unclear, though.  The way you write it, you are making it sound like the law firm somehow engineered the finding of a violation, and that a truly independent law firm might have found nothing.  But Rittman did violate NCAA rules by exceeding the NCAA hours, and, perhaps more crucially, falsified the data provided to monitor compliance.  I am not aware that those facts are in dispute.  And the NCAA produce a "show cause" clause against Rittman; these were not trivial or technical violations.  You almost make it sound like the violations are Muir's and the law firm's fault, not Rittman's.  For all the faults you may have found in the process, was the law firm's report flawed in some sense?

The other aspect of the "Muir botched the Rittman situation" through failure to supervise ignores that there was a layer of supervision between Rittman and Muir.  That's not to say that the buck doesn't stop with Muir, and whatever else happens, Muir will always be saddled with the fact that he was overseeing the athletic department when the NCAA's first major violation was brought down.  Ultimately, that's on him.  But as, I think Bobk has mentioned, much of the complaining about direct supervision should be directed at the associate AD overseeing softball.  For example,  I would think it would be the responsibility of the associate AD to monitor compliance with practice hours, to deal with complaints about the coach before they bubble up to the next level and to work with the coach to resolve issues.  Usually, if complaints are being escalated to the boss' boss, the problem has spiraled out of control and it is already too late to apply a corrective action.

Lastly, on the question of the mutiny, Muir's own role has been discussed at length, but all these discussions seem to ignore Rittman's own agency here.  In the telling I see repeated here often, the mutiny happened to Rittman (and, perhaps it was all a grand plot by the Oregon coach to undermine Rittman).  But Rittman recruited all the players, if there were bad apples in the bunch, then that's on him.  Consider, for example, that much to the dismay of many people here, Shaw didn't recruit Josh Rosen despite his obvious talent, because he thought Rosen would be a good fit for the team.  Secondly, every coach has to deal with players who are unhappy about playing time or expectations or practice drills or the coach's demeanor, and parents who are unhappy that their little Jill is not the star of the team.  Although it is probably their least desirable thing to do, it is the coach's job to manage those grumblings so that they do not lead to infighting or mutiny.  The last time that I know of that players publicly mutinied on a coach and went to the then athletic director to complain, it resulted in the firing of Walt Harris.  Nobody seems to think that his firing was in any way "botched".  Of course, it helps that Harris had just come off of a 1-11 season, so even the players who may have supported him (if there were any) understood why.  Rittman, on the other hand, was very successful, which is all the more surprising.  It is much easier for a successful coach to quiet disgruntled players since proof of the coach's methods is in the record and there is a natural tendency not to want to upset the apple cart in a winning team.  The threshold for players going from unhappy at the coach to an all out mutiny is much lower in a bad team, so to me, the fact that there even was a mutiny is a bit of a red flag.  As I said, by the time the players are requesting a meeting with Muir, a lot of things had to have gone wrong at lower levels.  Disgruntlement and division can happen on any team, to any coach, but usually something is majorly wrong if the disgruntled faction arranges a meeting with the AD.

What I see as the real "botching" in the "Rittman situation" was not necessary everything that led up to his resignation, but the immediate aftermath.  Once Muir fired Rittman, he was responsible for unifying the team, and instead the firing seemed to intensify the divisions between the pro- and anti-Rittman factions.  This was a legacy left to the next coach, and although I don't see how Hansen would have been successful no matter how well she would have been set up, that many pro-Rittman players transferred and that the infighting continued points to a failure to heal the rift during the transition, and that suggests Muir could have handled it differently.

I'm only an observer here and don't have any insight beyond what has been presented publicly, and I am aware that in all these reports, the insiders providing the quotes (whether in support or in opposition to the former coach) have agendas.  Perhaps a better AD could have detected that a coach was over-practicing his players and issued corrective action so that the coach wouldn't have been forced to falsify hours to be in compliance with the NCAA.  And perhaps a better AD would have detected growing resentment of the coach and helped the coach navigate that tricky minefield to heal the divisions within the team before they resulted in a mutiny, thereby enabling us to keep our very successful softball coach and avoid NCAA sanctions.  But honestly, I think the only realistic thing the AD could have done is minimize the fallout.

[BostonCard]

Thanks Mick, I appreciate the summary.  I'm a little bit unclear, though.  The way you write it, you are making it sound like the law firm somehow engineered the finding of a violation, and that a truly independent law firm might have found nothing.  But Rittman did violate NCAA rules by exceeding the NCAA hours, and, perhaps more crucially, falsified the data provided to monitor compliance.  I am not aware that those facts are in dispute.  And the NCAA produce a "show cause" clause against Rittman; these were not trivial or technical violations.  You almost make it sound like the violations are Muir's and the law firm's fault, not Rittman's.  For all the faults you may have found in the process, was the law firm's report flawed in some sense?

The other aspect of the "Muir botched the Rittman situation" through failure to supervise ignores that there was a layer of supervision between Rittman and Muir.  That's not to say that the buck doesn't stop with Muir, and whatever else happens, Muir will always be saddled with the fact that he was overseeing the athletic department when the NCAA's first major violation was brought down.  Ultimately, that's on him.  But as, I think Bobk has mentioned, much of the complaining about direct supervision should be directed at the associate AD overseeing softball.  For example,  I would think it would be the responsibility of the associate AD to monitor compliance with practice hours, to deal with complaints about the coach before they bubble up to the next level and to work with the coach to resolve issues.  Usually, if complaints are being escalated to the boss' boss, the problem has spiraled out of control and it is already too late to apply a corrective action.

Lastly, on the question of the mutiny, Muir's own role has been discussed at length, but all these discussions seem to ignore Rittman's own agency here.  In the telling I see repeated here often, the mutiny happened to Rittman (and, perhaps it was all a grand plot by the Oregon coach to undermine Rittman).  But Rittman recruited all the players, if there were bad apples in the bunch, then that's on him.  Consider, for example, that much to the dismay of many people here, Shaw didn't recruit Josh Rosen despite his obvious talent, because he thought Rosen would be a good fit for the team.  Secondly, every coach has to deal with players who are unhappy about playing time or expectations or practice drills or the coach's demeanor, and parents who are unhappy that their little Jill is not the star of the team.  Although it is probably their least desirable thing to do, it is the coach's job to manage those grumblings so that they do not lead to infighting or mutiny.  The last time that I know of that players publicly mutinied on a coach and went to the then athletic director to complain, it resulted in the firing of Walt Harris.  Nobody seems to think that his firing was in any way "botched".  Of course, it helps that Harris had just come off of a 1-11 season, so even the players who may have supported him (if there were any) understood why.  Rittman, on the other hand, was very successful, which is all the more surprising.  It is much easier for a successful coach to quiet disgruntled players since proof of the coach's methods is in the record and there is a natural tendency not to want to upset the apple cart in a winning team.  The threshold for players going from unhappy at the coach to an all out mutiny is much lower in a bad team, so to me, the fact that there even was a mutiny is a bit of a red flag.  As I said, by the time the players are requesting a meeting with Muir, a lot of things had to have gone wrong at lower levels.  Disgruntlement and division can happen on any team, to any coach, but usually something is majorly wrong if the disgruntled faction arranges a meeting with the AD.

What I see as the real "botching" in the "Rittman situation" was not necessary everything that led up to his resignation, but the immediate aftermath.  Once Muir fired Rittman, he was responsible for unifying the team, and instead the firing seemed to intensify the divisions between the pro- and anti-Rittman factions.  This was a legacy left to the next coach, and although I don't see how Hansen would have been successful no matter how well she would have been set up, that many pro-Rittman players transferred and that the infighting continued points to a failure to heal the rift during the transition, and that suggests Muir could have handled it differently.

I'm only an observer here and don't have any insight beyond what has been presented publicly, and I am aware that in all these reports, the insiders providing the quotes (whether in support or in opposition to the former coach) have agendas.  Perhaps a better AD could have detected that a coach was over-practicing his players and issued corrective action so that the coach wouldn't have been forced to falsify hours to be in compliance with the NCAA.  And perhaps a better AD would have detected growing resentment of the coach and helped the coach navigate that tricky minefield to heal the divisions within the team before they resulted in a mutiny, thereby enabling us to keep our very successful softball coach and avoid NCAA sanctions.  But honestly, I think the only realistic thing the AD could have done is minimize the fallout.

[BobK]

Great post Boston Card.   
Rittman resigned.  Yes under pressure yes resign or be fired but he Resigned.

Yes botched as the three parents I knew at the time said their daughters were unaware of the meeting until after it happened. 

Yes the AAD should Have been aware of the going on. 

Rittman's supporters were many in the team say half and many many former players. 

Two transferred one immediately one after a year. 

Stanford had a very major violation just before I was born.    I will say no more other than a great reporter broke the story 😎  Publically

The head of the strength and conditioning department was fired and Turley promoted.  That person did not work for Rittman but was the teams S&C coach

In any case all this has become political and really time to move on.  We all hope for a great staff to come in a coach to a Rittman level.  But at 20 hours per week 😀

Great to see John coaching for the National team a week
Ago.  He is a wonderful person a great coach

[BobK]

Great post Boston Card.   
Rittman resigned.  Yes under pressure yes resign or be fired but he Resigned.

Yes botched as the three parents I knew at the time said their daughters were unaware of the meeting until after it happened. 

Yes the AAD should Have been aware of the going on. 

Rittman's supporters were many in the team say half and many many former players. 

Two transferred one immediately one after a year. 

Stanford had a very major violation just before I was born.    I will say no more other than a great reporter broke the story 😎  Publically

The head of the strength and conditioning department was fired and Turley promoted.  That person did not work for Rittman but was the teams S&C coach

In any case all this has become political and really time to move on.  We all hope for a great staff to come in a coach to a Rittman level.  But at 20 hours per week 😀

Great to see John coaching for the National team a week
Ago.  He is a wonderful person a great coach

[2006alum]

Well said, Boston Card. It seems like some responsibility falls on everyone here, not just Muir. I suppose the main problem for Muir is that he's the one who's still around, and because any discontent with any sport ultimately filters up to him, every flawed aspect of coaching searches/supervision/firing will, over time, accumulate in his record of achievements and demerits. Yes, the buck stops with him, but he would never had had to get involved if A) Rittman didn't violate NCAA rules and conspire to cover those violations up; and B) the AAD adequately supervised him and prevented the mutiny from bubbling up to such a high level. Muir is not faultless, but I don't think he deserves more than 1/3 of the blame for anything prior to Hansen's hiring.

[2006alum]

Well said, Boston Card. It seems like some responsibility falls on everyone here, not just Muir. I suppose the main problem for Muir is that he's the one who's still around, and because any discontent with any sport ultimately filters up to him, every flawed aspect of coaching searches/supervision/firing will, over time, accumulate in his record of achievements and demerits. Yes, the buck stops with him, but he would never had had to get involved if A) Rittman didn't violate NCAA rules and conspire to cover those violations up; and B) the AAD adequately supervised him and prevented the mutiny from bubbling up to such a high level. Muir is not faultless, but I don't think he deserves more than 1/3 of the blame for anything prior to Hansen's hiring.

[fullmetal]

Muir hired Derek Byrnes as the women's lightweight crew head coach.  When Yaz Farooq left for UW, Byrnes moved to become the women's (openweight) crew head coach.  Muir hired Olympian Kate Bertko as the women's lightweight crew head coach last summer to replace Byrnes.  Thus far these moves have seemed quite solid, as Bertko's crew won all three lightweight women's rowing events at the IRA national championship and Byrnes's crew finished a respectable sixth at the NCAA championships.

Both Byrnes and Bertko won/have won the lightweight women's rowing national championships while they were coaching the lightweight women.

Rittman did himself in when he began falsifying paperwork, end of story :(  Regrettable given his track record.

[fullmetal]

Muir hired Derek Byrnes as the women's lightweight crew head coach.  When Yaz Farooq left for UW, Byrnes moved to become the women's (openweight) crew head coach.  Muir hired Olympian Kate Bertko as the women's lightweight crew head coach last summer to replace Byrnes.  Thus far these moves have seemed quite solid, as Bertko's crew won all three lightweight women's rowing events at the IRA national championship and Byrnes's crew finished a respectable sixth at the NCAA championships.

Both Byrnes and Bertko won/have won the lightweight women's rowing national championships while they were coaching the lightweight women.

Rittman did himself in when he began falsifying paperwork, end of story :(  Regrettable given his track record.

[BostonCard]

Great post Boston Card.   
Rittman resigned.  Yes under pressure yes resign or be fired but he Resigned.

I used "fired" and "resigned" interchangeably.  I don't think Rittman had much of a choice, nor should he have.

I forgot about the allegations against the S&C coach.

BC

[BostonCard]

Great post Boston Card.   
Rittman resigned.  Yes under pressure yes resign or be fired but he Resigned.

I used "fired" and "resigned" interchangeably.  I don't think Rittman had much of a choice, nor should he have.

I forgot about the allegations against the S&C coach.

BC

[winflop]

[quote author=Boston Card link=topic=16598.msg195570#msg195570 date=1500329662]
Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

Winflop didn't say Muir botched the Rittman firing.  He said Muir botched the "Rittman situation." 
[/quote]

The Rittman "situation" includes his gross mishandling of the player revolt/meltdown and their helicopter parents, the investigation into Rittman's NCAA violations and the situation involving the S&C coach.

[winflop]

[quote author=Boston Card link=topic=16598.msg195570#msg195570 date=1500329662]
Can someone explain how Muir "botched" the Rittman firing?

Winflop didn't say Muir botched the Rittman firing.  He said Muir botched the "Rittman situation." 
[/quote]

The Rittman "situation" includes his gross mishandling of the player revolt/meltdown and their helicopter parents, the investigation into Rittman's NCAA violations and the situation involving the S&C coach.

[CTcard]

Stanford had a very major violation just before I was born.    I will say no more other than a great reporter broke the story 😎  Publically

C'mon Bob.

I am sure some folks here know what you are talking about (and the joke implied by the emoticon), but I don't.

I would think that with the story having been made public (some time ago), and presumably most of the principals no longer employed at Stanford, that it would be safe to tell us.

[CTcard]

Stanford had a very major violation just before I was born.    I will say no more other than a great reporter broke the story 😎  Publically

C'mon Bob.

I am sure some folks here know what you are talking about (and the joke implied by the emoticon), but I don't.

I would think that with the story having been made public (some time ago), and presumably most of the principals no longer employed at Stanford, that it would be safe to tell us.

[BobK]

My mother 1940. 

But we have a new softball tread as the wait is over

Enough with negative thoughts.  Join us on the welcome home Jessica tread 

[BobK]

My mother 1940. 

But we have a new softball tread as the wait is over

Enough with negative thoughts.  Join us on the welcome home Jessica tread 

[Mick]

Thanks Mick, I appreciate the summary.  I'm a little bit unclear, though.  The way you write it, you are making it sound like the law firm somehow engineered the finding of a violation, and that a truly independent law firm might have found nothing.  But Rittman did violate NCAA rules by exceeding the NCAA hours, and, perhaps more crucially, falsified the data provided to monitor compliance.  I am not aware that those facts are in dispute.  And the NCAA produce a "show cause" clause against Rittman; these were not trivial or technical violations.  You almost make it sound like the violations are Muir's and the law firm's fault, not Rittman's.  For all the faults you may have found in the process, was the law firm's report flawed in some sense?

I'll try to be a little more clear.

I don't believe I implied that the law firm was engineering the finding of a violation.  I don't think a truly independent law firm would have found nothing.  I think Rittman would probably have ended up with a "show cause" finding and a Level II violation.  But the purpose of an investigation is holistic.  In this case, my sense is that it was treated with a single target (Rittman) and limited scope (how bad was Rittman?), rather than a process-based investigation; e.g., what rules and oversight were either not in place or not followed?  And perhaps the investigation included that part.

I spent 19 years at Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers.  In the accounting profession, if your client owes you a great deal of money, you can't issue an audit opinion, because you're not truly independent.  And in a situation in which a law firm is not truly independent of a client vis-à-vis an internal investigation -- which is my take on (a) a law firm that had a Stanford board member and (b) a law firm that is one of the two largest law firms as measured by fees paid by Stanford and © Stanford uses other law firms in very small ways for employment purposes and (d) there are at least a dozen firms based in California with exceptional internal investigations practices, well...it is not a good look.

So let's say we put all that aside.  Rittman's guilty, he falsified records to make 21 hours look like 20.  Still...player supporters of Rittman stated that they were not contacted by investigators.  Huh?  Does that sound like a complete investigation to you?  Or does it sounds like one that is incomplete?

We have a minor, but important disagreement here.  For small violations, the middle layer of management should have picked it up, and it would have flown beneath Muir's radar.  However, this is no small violation.  For anything that leads to a Level II violation, senior management had better be on top of it.  I've been a CXO or equivalent  for twenty years, and based on internal evaluations from both the lawyers and accountants I've worked for, a big part of that responsibility has been ensuring that there were no brewing catastrophes based on structural rules.  And at every staff meeting, I ask about adherence to rules.  You have to be able to sniff out BS, it's part of your job, particularly if brand strength is mission-critical, as it is at Stanford.  And this entire debacle ruined a portion of Stanford's brand to the point that they couldn't attract a great coach.

As for the second level of management, how does the AAD assigned to oversee the program still have a job?  My assumption is that the independent investigation found the AAD essentially blameless.  How can that possibly be?

Early on, I addressed this specific situation.  I don't think it was surprising at all.  Rittman was, in all likelihood, an ego-fueled successful coach who stretched boundaries when and where he could, and he likely shut off incoming opinions.  Unlike many of the successful coaches, he had the daughters of two men who were very prominent in the high-amateur softball community.  White's daughter retired for medical reasons, but did not get to retain her scholarship.  The other had very little playing time.  Do I think Rittman got arrogant and careless?  You bet.  I think he also got unapproachable as well. Having had two sons in D1 Sears Cup sports, I've seen the phenomenon.  One of my son's teammates was the son of a very highly placed USA Volleyball official.  You think his coach didn't realize that and pay way more attention both to the parent and the player?  Of course he did.  And that coach encouraged all of us to call him at any time.  We had his office and mobile phones.  Did he make mistakes?  Absolutely.  Did any of us ever once call the AD?  Ah, no.

Rittman thought his record made him bulletproof.  I imagine some of the players tried to talk to him about it.  I'm sure Rittman didn't listen.  But part of your job as AD and AAD is to get your coach to recognize problem scenarios when they develop.

The immediate aftermath was 100% predictable.  It happened because Muir and the AAD botched both management of their employee, communications with players and parents, communications with the coach when the xst hit the fan, the clear preference to deliver a lopsided result in favor of one faction, and the complete lack of respect of the faction that supported Rittman, said faction of which were the best players on the team.  And yes, Muir left Hanson an undoable task -- because he botched the prelims, not the aftermath.  The aftermath was predictable because he botched the early part.

I love that line, BTW "Once Muir fired Rittman, he was responsible for unifying the team, and instead the firing seemed to intensify the divisions between the pro- and anti-Rittman factions."  How, BC?  How was he going to unify the team when he would only listen to one part of it and specifically catered to the demands of that part?  "Seemed to intensify the divisions between..."  Ya think?  What other outcome could there possibly have been?  It was simple to project a horrible three years based on a weak incoming coach because of Muir's very public shortcomings surrounding the mutiny.  That is why players transferred, why players quit early and why prospects decommitted and went elsewhere.

I'm only an observer here and don't have any insight beyond what has been presented publicly, and I am aware that in all these reports, the insiders providing the quotes (whether in support or in opposition to the former coach) have agendas.  Perhaps a better AD could have detected that a coach was over-practicing his players and issued corrective action so that the coach wouldn't have been forced to falsify hours to be in compliance with the NCAA.  And perhaps a better AD would have detected growing resentment of the coach and helped the coach navigate that tricky minefield to heal the divisions within the team before they resulted in a mutiny, thereby enabling us to keep our very successful softball coach and avoid NCAA sanctions.  But honestly, I think the only realistic thing the AD could have done is minimize the fallout.

I agree with you, with respect to average ADs with limited resources.  But this is Stanford, and Stanford has immense resources, and wins the Director/Sears Cup every year.  Stanford has resources substantially beyond those  of other schools, and as I noted before, it is very easy to attract top athletes to Stanford.

Shouldn't our AD and AADs be at least above average?

[Mick]

Thanks Mick, I appreciate the summary.  I'm a little bit unclear, though.  The way you write it, you are making it sound like the law firm somehow engineered the finding of a violation, and that a truly independent law firm might have found nothing.  But Rittman did violate NCAA rules by exceeding the NCAA hours, and, perhaps more crucially, falsified the data provided to monitor compliance.  I am not aware that those facts are in dispute.  And the NCAA produce a "show cause" clause against Rittman; these were not trivial or technical violations.  You almost make it sound like the violations are Muir's and the law firm's fault, not Rittman's.  For all the faults you may have found in the process, was the law firm's report flawed in some sense?

I'll try to be a little more clear.

I don't believe I implied that the law firm was engineering the finding of a violation.  I don't think a truly independent law firm would have found nothing.  I think Rittman would probably have ended up with a "show cause" finding and a Level II violation.  But the purpose of an investigation is holistic.  In this case, my sense is that it was treated with a single target (Rittman) and limited scope (how bad was Rittman?), rather than a process-based investigation; e.g., what rules and oversight were either not in place or not followed?  And perhaps the investigation included that part.

I spent 19 years at Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers.  In the accounting profession, if your client owes you a great deal of money, you can't issue an audit opinion, because you're not truly independent.  And in a situation in which a law firm is not truly independent of a client vis-à-vis an internal investigation -- which is my take on (a) a law firm that had a Stanford board member and (b) a law firm that is one of the two largest law firms as measured by fees paid by Stanford and © Stanford uses other law firms in very small ways for employment purposes and (d) there are at least a dozen firms based in California with exceptional internal investigations practices, well...it is not a good look.

So let's say we put all that aside.  Rittman's guilty, he falsified records to make 21 hours look like 20.  Still...player supporters of Rittman stated that they were not contacted by investigators.  Huh?  Does that sound like a complete investigation to you?  Or does it sounds like one that is incomplete?

We have a minor, but important disagreement here.  For small violations, the middle layer of management should have picked it up, and it would have flown beneath Muir's radar.  However, this is no small violation.  For anything that leads to a Level II violation, senior management had better be on top of it.  I've been a CXO or equivalent  for twenty years, and based on internal evaluations from both the lawyers and accountants I've worked for, a big part of that responsibility has been ensuring that there were no brewing catastrophes based on structural rules.  And at every staff meeting, I ask about adherence to rules.  You have to be able to sniff out BS, it's part of your job, particularly if brand strength is mission-critical, as it is at Stanford.  And this entire debacle ruined a portion of Stanford's brand to the point that they couldn't attract a great coach.

As for the second level of management, how does the AAD assigned to oversee the program still have a job?  My assumption is that the independent investigation found the AAD essentially blameless.  How can that possibly be?

Early on, I addressed this specific situation.  I don't think it was surprising at all.  Rittman was, in all likelihood, an ego-fueled successful coach who stretched boundaries when and where he could, and he likely shut off incoming opinions.  Unlike many of the successful coaches, he had the daughters of two men who were very prominent in the high-amateur softball community.  White's daughter retired for medical reasons, but did not get to retain her scholarship.  The other had very little playing time.  Do I think Rittman got arrogant and careless?  You bet.  I think he also got unapproachable as well. Having had two sons in D1 Sears Cup sports, I've seen the phenomenon.  One of my son's teammates was the son of a very highly placed USA Volleyball official.  You think his coach didn't realize that and pay way more attention both to the parent and the player?  Of course he did.  And that coach encouraged all of us to call him at any time.  We had his office and mobile phones.  Did he make mistakes?  Absolutely.  Did any of us ever once call the AD?  Ah, no.

Rittman thought his record made him bulletproof.  I imagine some of the players tried to talk to him about it.  I'm sure Rittman didn't listen.  But part of your job as AD and AAD is to get your coach to recognize problem scenarios when they develop.

The immediate aftermath was 100% predictable.  It happened because Muir and the AAD botched both management of their employee, communications with players and parents, communications with the coach when the xst hit the fan, the clear preference to deliver a lopsided result in favor of one faction, and the complete lack of respect of the faction that supported Rittman, said faction of which were the best players on the team.  And yes, Muir left Hanson an undoable task -- because he botched the prelims, not the aftermath.  The aftermath was predictable because he botched the early part.

I love that line, BTW "Once Muir fired Rittman, he was responsible for unifying the team, and instead the firing seemed to intensify the divisions between the pro- and anti-Rittman factions."  How, BC?  How was he going to unify the team when he would only listen to one part of it and specifically catered to the demands of that part?  "Seemed to intensify the divisions between..."  Ya think?  What other outcome could there possibly have been?  It was simple to project a horrible three years based on a weak incoming coach because of Muir's very public shortcomings surrounding the mutiny.  That is why players transferred, why players quit early and why prospects decommitted and went elsewhere.

I'm only an observer here and don't have any insight beyond what has been presented publicly, and I am aware that in all these reports, the insiders providing the quotes (whether in support or in opposition to the former coach) have agendas.  Perhaps a better AD could have detected that a coach was over-practicing his players and issued corrective action so that the coach wouldn't have been forced to falsify hours to be in compliance with the NCAA.  And perhaps a better AD would have detected growing resentment of the coach and helped the coach navigate that tricky minefield to heal the divisions within the team before they resulted in a mutiny, thereby enabling us to keep our very successful softball coach and avoid NCAA sanctions.  But honestly, I think the only realistic thing the AD could have done is minimize the fallout.

I agree with you, with respect to average ADs with limited resources.  But this is Stanford, and Stanford has immense resources, and wins the Director/Sears Cup every year.  Stanford has resources substantially beyond those  of other schools, and as I noted before, it is very easy to attract top athletes to Stanford.

Shouldn't our AD and AADs be at least above average?

[fullmetal]

We can only hope Muir has learned from this.  I find Mick's analysis compelling, though we may never be able to substantiate it.  I also hope that Allister is to Jim Harbaugh as Hanson is to tlaW sirraH.

[fullmetal]

We can only hope Muir has learned from this.  I find Mick's analysis compelling, though we may never be able to substantiate it.  I also hope that Allister is to Jim Harbaugh as Hanson is to tlaW sirraH.

[BostonCard]

Muir hires Allister.

http://www.gostanford.com/news/2017/7/18...coach.aspx

All is well that ends well.

[BostonCard]

Muir hires Allister.

http://www.gostanford.com/news/2017/7/18...coach.aspx

All is well that ends well.

[Farm93]

Muir hires Allister.

http://www.gostanford.com/news/2017/7/18...coach.aspx

All is well that ends well.

For those screaming for a midseason firing, and then so concerned about finding a coach in July.  I trust this type of quality find is acceptable.

Either Muir is a true wizard to get this all done in a few days, or this has been in the works for quite a bit of time.

Or in a nod to the 30 pages of naysayers blasts here, Muir is really lucky that a good coach wants to join the softball program at Stanford.

Now, its time to worry about other sports at Stanford.  Skiing, ice hockey, bowling!  If Muir can't get a coach to lead Stanford to NCAA team titles in those sports by 2018 he should be FIRED!!  Let's start the 40 page thread for those sports today. 

:P

[Farm93]

Muir hires Allister.

http://www.gostanford.com/news/2017/7/18...coach.aspx

All is well that ends well.

For those screaming for a midseason firing, and then so concerned about finding a coach in July.  I trust this type of quality find is acceptable.

Either Muir is a true wizard to get this all done in a few days, or this has been in the works for quite a bit of time.

Or in a nod to the 30 pages of naysayers blasts here, Muir is really lucky that a good coach wants to join the softball program at Stanford.

Now, its time to worry about other sports at Stanford.  Skiing, ice hockey, bowling!  If Muir can't get a coach to lead Stanford to NCAA team titles in those sports by 2018 he should be FIRED!!  Let's start the 40 page thread for those sports today. 

:P