DeSmetBilliken

What are you doing? Now she’s not going to be surprised when it happens.

No thanks

It’s a SLU basketball coaching search tradition. Local media types pushing the names of people with any connection to STL whatsoever…from STL, parents live/grew up there, the guy has eaten at an Imo’s or at a restaurant on The Hill before, knows a member of the local sports media, etc. It’s really annoying, but it always happens. All we can do is hope that those people are not actually influencing anything.

https://www.ksdk.com/article/sports/college/slu/slu-basketball/travis-ford-fired-as-head-coach-of-slu-billikens-basketball-team/63-182f7573-0d74-4765-a8ac-20cf4b494b48 video in the article

Wow. I was sure that he had been notified in advance, but didn’t have 3 weeks on my bingo card.

I agree with this. Frank gives more attention to SLU than anyone else in the market. The over the top Ford cheerleading is ridiculous and annoying, but at the end of the day, I want him talking about SLU.

Here is the link to the segment. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pressbox/id1477633789?i=1000648796755

I’m not sure about what was mentioned above, but the other day, Frank legit said something to this effect : ”If SLU does let Travis go, people should know that he’s a good guy. He’s done a lot of good things around St. Louis. He hasn’t done anything bad for the city. He hasn’t gotten a bunch of DUIs, he doesn’t beat his wife, he doesn’t mistreat his players…”

Has he crossed me directly? Probably not, but I was in a position to witness or know about a steady stream of athletic department nitwittery over a good portion of May’s tenure as AD. Him and his staff have a vision for what they want the athletic department to be, and I think that their vision is largely stupid and a failure .

My guess? Slip up.

Exactly. I’d be interested in hearing the actual audio from May’s quote, as I’ve generally assumed his silence on men’s basketball is related to him being bitter over boosters forcing out what he viewed as his prized hire, so I read that quote as him being angry about having to talk about it.

Until the time comes when Ford is fired, I’m going to be annoyed because I view every hour that Chris May doesn’t have to officially fire Ford as a win for May, who I don’t like. With that said, once it’s done and if we replace Ford with a good coach, I’ll likely quickly forget about the fact that May delayed the announcement for a few days.

During last season, I broke my foot and was in a boot for about a month . I wouldn’t have been able to walk down or up the steps to and from our normal seats. You can have your tickets converted to handicapped seats. It’s a nice option if you need it.

Bingo

It’s because Chris May can’t deal with the look of him not being in control, and he seemingly views the media reporting something before SLU announces it as evidence that he isn’t in control. Examples: 1) when Ford was hired, it was reported by a bunch of basketball reporters. SLU denied it for 1-2 days until they officially announced the hire. Sure, maybe there were final contractual provisions to complete, but this looked to go beyond that. 2) Crews was fired right after his last game ended. I saw something on Twitter with the report, and texted a friend who was in or near the interview room at the game. He ran it by someone at SLU…they denied it. 15-20 minutes later, Crews was talking about his career being over in the post-game press conference.

Evening news isn’t likely to be the place to have the news first. If SLU is trying to control things and announce it when they want, which according to the Post-Dispatch may be Monday, Frank Cusumano will likely play along and not report anything. It would be a national college basketball reporter who would report the news if anything broke tonight.

Honestly, that’s kind of what I’ve been thinking. Announcement or leaked to normal media tonight , with formal confirmation tomorrow.

My vote is for the last 2 of those.

So a win on the road over a 1-75 NET team is a Q1 win. Bonnies were #74 going into the game. I’m assuming a loss to us is going to bump them clear out of the top 75. Is the Q1 vs Q2 determination made at the end of the season, or at the time of the win? Either way, our first Q1 or Q2 win this season.

The part about Holtman assumes that Chris May is being allowed to make decisions in this process. I’m not entirely sure that that is accurate.

I agree with you, but if the decision has been made that Ford is gone no matter what happens in Brooklyn, no need to put yourself in a position to look silly for canning your coach after he just got you in the NCAA tournament, however minuscule that chance is.

Exactly. If we got our ducks in a row, it could be a deal where the news officially broke that a coach was coming to the day after their team got eliminated, but that’s the earliest it would be.

I get that mindset as well. If this timing was Chris May’s decision, I have no real idea what his thought process was. My comments were focused on if the boosters are truly driving this process. If that angry exchange between May and Chaifetz, the one where May was supposedly trying to tell Chaifetz “trust the process, it’s getting better, we could still win the conference tournament, etc”, actually took place, he may have tried to say that to other boosters too. It puts a smile on my face to think of boosters telling May “ we have to pay a bunch of money to get out of this contract you gave Ford, so no…we’re not letting you keep the hope that Ford can get out of this with a good few days in Brooklyn. It’s over.”

It could just be an attempt to get ahead of things by a few days. Depending on who is driving making the call (boosters vs May/Pestello), it could be a little bit of a repudiation of May. My observation of the SLU athletic department under Chris May is that they view things very optimistically. In the last few years, SLU has salvaged several seasons by winning the A10 Tournament, with women’s team last year, men’s team in 2019, as well as probably a few seasons for men’s and women’s soccer. My theory is that because of these instances, Chris May views winning the tournament as a very real possibility every year now, and therefore won’t consider this season a failure yet, because there was still the chance that they’d catch lightning in a bottle in Brooklyn. Firing Ford before the tournament tells May, “this season was a failure. It’s over now”. Also, don’t forget, I think it was in the lead up to the A10 tournament last year that May got on Cusumano’s radio show and made his idiotic comments in support of Ford. Firing Ford before the A10 tourney would seemingly prevent May from running those comments back.

Knowing the way SLU operates, it’s probably cheaper to scramble a flight home for Ford from NYC than Olean.