Leaderboard

May, as a member of the Predent's cabinet (what SLU actually calls it), is responsible for supplying that information to the trustees for the athletic department. It his his responsibility to not only have the materials concerning his department ready for them before meetings, but to make sure that information concerning important university matters inside his department can be communicated to trustees between meetings.

Top 10 moment, Ford invited my son to practice after the Myrtle Beach trip. He learned of him getting sick and being hospitalized last summer which would cause him to miss some of the home games this season. He has been a season ticket holder since he was born (now 13). Ford walked him around the court after practice and they had a cool chat.

In my world, corporate boards meet 4 times a year, maybe more if there are special circumstances. SLU - a multi-billion-dollar organization - states explicitly that they meet 4 times a year. I'm not sure how many times I can say the same thing but this contract discussion was a single item in a quarterly meeting. It may have been voted on between things like whether or not to sell the hospital and which departments might need cuts. As SLU sports fans, we want everyone in any position of power to care about the minutiae of the athletic department the way we do, but that's just not how it works. We need to keep it in perspective.

SLU baseball now starting to receive votes in USA Today baseball rankings.

Yeah, May completely fumbled the baseball gift. Plus the actual surface of the field this year, that's inexcusable. And yet, this team has started 8-0 for the first time since 1966, they lead the nation in runs, and they broke the program record for home runs in a game. They have a legit shot to start 11-0 with a 2-5 Le Moyne team coming to town this weekend. Everybody needs to get out to The House That May Didn't Build on Friday or Saturday or Sunday (or all of the above) and watch these guys mash.

Weber, Crean, Cuonzo, Tatum, Ahearn

This may be a bit non-controversial, but that team would've performed better with someone else coaching it.

The fact that there are 38 members of the BoT tells me its a joke and that the members have no real power other than to rubber stamp decisions. Normal boards have, what, like 9 members? 38 is just ridiculous and highlights the idea that Pesty probably has no real oversight.

This 100%. I admittedly don’t know what the voting standard to pass the BOT is (unanimous, 3/4, 2/3, majority), but do we really want (insert name of BOT member who isn’t involved in athletics here ) delaying personnel decisions for athletics by going all Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men, or like a city council member holding legislation hostage to get a carve-out for their district? Absolutely not. Just think about it…we have an agreement on a deal with a new coach, but then 3-4 board members slow up the process because someone told them that we should be hiring Bruce Weber or Tom Crean instead. Then the deal with the other coach falls through. That would be a bad deal.

Clean House.

For what reason? He hasn't kept his finger on the pulse the last 24 months. We have neglected both Zyree Collins and Luke Walsh.

I just hope we hire that f’er from Maryville or that f’er from Terre Haute.

I worry different boosters have very different opinions on the next coach. And I'm sure the AD differs from both of them too. I don't necessarily expect an organized effort here

Some of us MBMs have been waiting 30+ years for the AD to work in an advisory capacity to the Board. All we've ever seen is the Board or the President running over the AD. That's the culture at SLU. We have no reason to believe that hiring another AD will change the culture. A small group of boosters will determine who the next coach will be and whoever the AD is will rubber stamp the decision. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Others have responded to this well, so I don’t need to repeat their comments. The bottom line is that Chris May and whoever else was involved in Ford’s last contract extension on SLU’s behalf made by all indications a bad deal. The fact that the BOT approved the deal does not absolve May from responsibility at all. If Chris May or anyone else at SLU is just willingly agreeing to questionable deals and figuring “I’ll just let the BOT decide if it’s good or not”, that’s ridiculous.

Right imagine if Trudy Busch Valentine was coming into BOT meetings slamming her fist saying the athletic department shouldn't do xyz or hire abc. These people defer to each other BOT member's area of expertise. And Chaifetz/May thought this was a good contract. It wasn't. I don't even mind the salary. I think that's a good thing. But they bid against themselves. It should have never even gotten to the BOT. May should have laughed when Ford's agent first brought up the idea.

If anything I happy that our BOT is willing to approve a contract paying the head coach 2.5M per year over 8+ years. It's up to the athletics boosters and the athletic director to pick the right guy though. They failed.

The high school talent in the St. Louis metro area has been solid but unspectacular in the last two years. That's not Coach Tate's fault.

You can say that again

Bills move to 8-0 with a 13-8 win at SIUE.

Terrific self-awareness.

Sounds like a vacation at this point.

It is the standard among private universities, but it probably isn't the best way to operate. Huge boards tend to dilute accountability, make needed changes harder and give oversized roles to a limited number of members that decide to be more engaged. I understand why it is the standard. You are trying to keep so many different groups and donors both happy and involved, but it is damn near impossible to have board that offers true and effective oversight and leadership when it is that big.

Marquette currently has a lean board of 30 trustees and Butler is at 32 members. Xavier, Creighton, DePaul, and Wash U. all have over 40 members. The size of SLU's board is not a reflection of a lack of institutional control, nor an indictment on the president's oversight. It's industry standard.

This is a bit right? You’re not being serious at this point and trolling now, correct? You’re literally blaming “the organization” and Chris May’s in charge of the organization to which you’re referring. Chris May’s role is literally that, to present the necessary information to the BoT.

He couldn't find us a JUCO big man with 40 minutes to give?

If only the Board of Trustees would have hired a few people to handle athletics department and university operations including but not limited to negotiating, signing and terminating contracts of employees like the Head Basketball Coach. I’m thinking we give these positions names: athletics conductor….noooo no that’s not it, athletics czar, nooo too political, athletics director, that works.

Gotta clean house. New guy will bring in his people. New faces on the bench, new faces in the AD. This isn't a charity operation.

The guys been fired twice by East Carolina. He certainly moves the needle, but in the wrong direction

How do you know that? We offered them first.

Perfect pick for me is Mack but I don't see that. I would like to see Schertz come over and bring Avila, Kent, and Conwell. Offer Tate to stay on board to keep the pulse on St. Louis which also helps with players we want to stay. I like a lot of our guys and would like to see what a gameday coach could do with a few more pieces.

My message to the local media:

I’ll bet Dusty May at FAU was looked at as an uninspired hire. That’s finding a gem in the rough. Or in other words, a crapshoot. If, big if, we actually fire Ford, we have to get this right. There’s no good reason this program should be languishing at the bottom of the A10.

Never Crean. I have a friend who’s an IU fan. He was hated there and failed at UGA. What would make anyone think he can save SLU? Total retread. Weber’s too old. Ahern total unknown. What we need is NIL $$’s and a guy who has done something. I’d look at guys like the UVM coach.

My worry on Ahearn is that he'll be hired for the wrong reasons and have the wrong expectations. If they hire him because they think he'll focus a lot on St Louis recruits and he'll have a team of predominantly local guys then he's going to be set up to fail. You won't win with a team like that and the boosters who hired you will be mad if you win with other guys. If you hire him because you think he can develop players with his NBA experience and he can run a modern offensive system, you still may not win but at least you're thinking progressively

This is objectively false. Ahearn is very interested in the SLU job.

To be fair, the local media has also mentioned other names, like DeVries and Schertz. They're not only putting those names out there.

More money, higher profile job, more autonomy, and located in hometown. There are probably more but those are the easy ones. His agent has major clout in the coaching carousel every year. It's possible he's pushing Blake's name out there to gain leverage for the Missouri State job. But he has enough supporters within SLU's donor base that he could be a candidate that fans need to take seriously. And by the way, those fans are all entitled to their own opinions on Ahearn as a candidate, and all the opinions are entirely valid because we truly don't know how good he'd be at this job.

You know exactly where it started. You've been active on this board. This schtick of talking about how SLU can do better, only to tell us we'd never have a shot at some 4th assistant on some NBA coaching staff because you went to the same high school is really fu*cking old.

The only real hope is that May is allowed to walk off into the sunset pretending like the OFCC was his magnum opus and he's leaving SLU in a better place.

It is way too late for that. May realistically needed to be gone January 1st in order to have a new person in place to make this hire.

Why have the candidates for the SLU job that the local media has mentioned (fed by SLU officials or boosters) all been awful? Crean, Weber and now Ahearn?

Others have already pointed out some massive differences, but to add to those: Kim Anderson was 58 when he was hired at Mizzou and Ben McCollum is 42 right now. That's a fairly significant gap. The jump from DII to SEC is bigger than DII to A10. I think Mizzou had some restrictions / was under probation from Frank Haith stuff during Kim Anderson's tenure. That not to say that there wouldn't be some risk in hiring McCollum, but Anderson's failure at Mizzou does not count at all as a negative for McCollum.

When I read this article, I had one takeaway: Ford is gone. I already thought Ford was gone, but this strengthened it. Even if it was covered up a bit with some spin, Chris May isn’t being quoted acknowledging that our record is terrible, or talking about lower attendance if he’s preparing to keep Ford around. This is about setting himself up to say that SLU had no choice.

Thanks to those who helped track down all the BoT mailing addresses. I certainly learned a lot about our Board during the process. Sorry for the delay in the letter campaign. Sometimes I do have better things to do.

Fixed it for you

I hate to see Martin go.

The 2019-20 season was under-rated. We were red-hot down the stretch winning the last five games of the season, including blow out wins over VCU and Bonaventure - destroyed them 72-49 on the final game of the season, also had wins over URI and Mason on the road during that stretch. We had a NET ranking of 47 and were considered on the NCAA bubble. Conventional wisdom was win the opening round of the conference tourney, we likely get an at-large bid, win the first two and it's a lock. But in very SLU fashion, the season was shut down right before the start of the conference tournament. That team was fun to watch, Got a bad break with Gibby going down early in the season, but Perk was really coming into his own late in the season and was on fire.

My interest in Schertz is that he seems like the rare ascending coach that we could land.

I’m not going to look back fondly on any of these moments until his security badge no longer works at Chaifetz.