Currie can just be left to go work on the stuff he wants to deal with. He won't have to spend a bunch of time worrying about a demanding basketball coach, nor will he have to worry about dealing with constant re-negotiations when other schools make a run at him every year.
Agree with all the points about why football needs to be the profit-maker, but didn't Currie spend a lot of time dealing (rough ridin') with basketball by choice? I mean, Frank didn't insist that Currie come to his Pittsburgh hotel room the night before the Syracuse game when Currie could've been back in Manhattan picking out hardhats for the first WSC guided tour.
You spend 80% of your time dealing with 20% of your "problem employees".
I think. I heard that in some management class. But I think it applies here. If Frank was a big problem for him, and I'm going to assume that Frank was very high maintenance, I can see a guy like Currie wanting him gone if he didn't want to make basketball his primary focus.
I'm sure a part of their friction was Frank feeling like we didn't give him or his program enough focus, and Currie wondering why a basketball coach is demanding so much of his money/time. Both points were probably valid, but in this instance, Currie wins because we just don't have as much pie to go around here like they would at, say, South Carolina.
A good CFO puts money where it makes money. A good executive also knows where to spend his time and effort because time is money. For every meeting he had to take with Frank, or for every little fire of Frank's he had to put out, that was money he wasn't spending hitting people up for money somewhere else. I'm sure it rubbed him wrong.
a couple of things...
-brevity is the soul of whit. remember that for future posts.
-currie sure has put a lot of time and money into the basketball practice facility given how little amount of time and money you suggest he wants to spend on basketball.
-i'm pretty sure frank with have been pretty happy with less currie, not more like you suggest.
-keeping basketball at a high level did not have to mean taking away from football, like you suggest. i expect people to walk and chew gum at the same time.
-losing frank and replacing him with weber provides a data point that suggests currie cannot keep attractive coaches and cannont hire attractive coaches. no more/no less.
-nobody here has ever been against pumping money into football like you seem to think and i personally resent you trying to paint it that way. we all wish they'd pump more into it. like flying the players to dallas for their bowl game instead of trying to make them bus down there for starters.
All valid points. We needed a practice facility, and we had a considerable number of people willing to privately contribute money for it. Why not build it when people will pay for it?
Frank wanted less Currie from a compliance standpoint. That's not exactly what I was talking about.
I personally think that Currie's not as interested in keeping us at a Top 25 level in basketball as much as he is keeping people paying for the games. I agree that I have higher expectations (as you do) and do not like how the process was handled in basketball. I don't want to give the impression that I support Currie's decision or that I "like" him. I do not on either account. I'm just stating what I think his thought process was.
As far as the keeping coaches/hiring coaches thing, it's a valid point. We have one data point. It's bad. We have two data points at Tennessee, and they're good. Maybe he's good at suggesting and supporting high risk/high reward hires when it's not his butt on the line. That is completely probable.
I never said anyone was against pumping money into football, I wasn't talking down to anyone here, and if it came out that way, I didn't mean for it to. But knowing what we know about Currie, and how he's so cheap and bean countery, the Weber hire made perfect sense to me. Doesn't mean I like it, doesn't mean that I don't agree with the anger, and it doesn't mean that I think people here don't get it. I do think people on this site place more of an emphasis on basketball than any other KSU site out there, and I think people are more emotionally attached to it. Currie strikes me as a demographic guy, and I'm assuming he aims for the t-shirt KU basketball/KSU football fans and will make most decisions accordingly.
I have the utmost respect for all of the regulars here, so my intent is not to disrespect anyone. I've been here long enough that you guys know better than that. Also, I wish that I could say more with less, and I've always tried to improve in that regard.
