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Is Wellman Losing Control of the Program?

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coredeac

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Is Wellman Losing Touch and/or control?

I say he's trending strongly toward losing control or, at least, credibility with the general WFU fan and perhaps some alumni. I'll start with:

(1) Claimed a thorough search would be conducted for a basketball coach. The entire process was exposed as a complete charade in less than 48 hours after he trots out a 58 year old coach who has no significant winning college resume.

(2) Feeling obvious pressure, holds a "fan forum" which is 100% staged and invites no real input from fans other than a a few loyalists in the audience asking such probing questions as whether the new tennis facility could be expanded in the future. Although questions were invited, none were acknowledged during the propaganda session. His actions further distance himself from the larger fan-base.

(3) Declares that he is completely hands-off with his head coaches and then proceeds to do in-depth post-game analysis for the next 4-5 men's basketball games. Wait, I thought he was hands-off. Which is it Ron?


Would love other thoughts on the matter on a board that actually allows discussion, FREELY.
 
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My feelings on Mr. Wellman should be known to most here by now. So, I'll resist the urge and let the discussion go where it may.
 
The op actually proves, imho, that Wellman is in complete control. The question is whether or not that's a good thing. I would say no.
 
coredeac said:
I say he's trending strongly toward losing control or, at least, credibility with the general WFU fan and perhaps some alumni. I'll start with:

(1) Claimed a thorough search would be conducted for a basketball coach. The entire process was exposed as a complete charade in less than 48 hours after he trots out a 58 year old coach who has no significant winning college resume.

The process was not a charade. The job search went on for longer than the proposed 48 hours

(2) Feeling obvious pressure, holds a "fan forum" which is 100% staged and invites no real input from fans other than a a few loyalists in the audience asking such probing questions as whether the new tennis facility could be expanded in the future. Although questions were invited, none were acknowledged during the propaganda session. His actions further distance himself from the larger fan-base.

I think that Ron Wellman was doing the best thing that he knew how to do to try to reach out to the fan base, whether or not it was effective is up to the fan base itselt. Obviously it was not very effective judging by most of the responses on here.

(3) Declares that he is completely hands-off with his head coaches and then proceeds to do in-depth post-game analysis for the next 4-5 men's basketball games. Wait, I thought he was hands-off. Which is it Ron?

I agree that this came off a bit hypocritical.


Would love other thoughts on the matter on a board that actually allows discussion, FREELY.
Click to expand...

My thoughts above.
 
I think it's obvious Wellman is in control. My major question is how could he have misgauged the reaction of the fan base this badly?
 
Wellman certainly has put himself in a very precarious situation, and now he's left with nothing but lose/lose decisions.
 
How did we land such a catch with Skip and then go after Bzz? Has wake really degraded that much since 2001?
 
Wellman's accomplished a lot at Wake, but 19 years is a long time to be at the same place in the same position. It appears to me that Wellman has become a little too comfortable and perhaps feels untouchable. I don't think he's lost control. Instead I think he has asserted too much control. Whatever is going on, in my opinion, he has totally botched the firing of Dino, the subsequent hiring process, and his reaction to the disaster that was this past basketball season.

I'm not yet convinced that Wellman needs to go. However, I would be fine with him retiring or moving on. I think a fresh perspective could be a good thing
 
I believe Wellman to be in complete control.

I'm not thrilled with recent results, but I have not seen evidence of anarchy, etc. but rather the opposite.

Again, I am nowhere close to being satisfied with recent major program performance, but Wellman is most definitely one of the top athletic directors in the country by almost any standard.

Unfortunately, college athletics is nothing more than a business today, and I believe Ron may be grasping too tightly to the reigns of the past when college athletics was about the college, culture, etc.

In my opinion the demand to win at all costs and the recent Orange bowl trip (which fueled high expectations on the girdiron, maybe too high) are more than Wellman is willing to bend to. He's always going to do what he believes is best for the long term success of WFU, the family of fans, and of course his coaches and staff who are loyal to him.

So to summarize I believe he is definitely in control, but is not as adept at keeping fans happy and energized as some of his peers. On the positive side, at least we have a guy who is as transparent as he feels he can be, and truly wants WFU to succeed on all levels, even if that means making some mistakes in the name of doing what he believes is right. On the negative side, these last couple of years has really sucked butt and he may be clinging to a few principles and coaches he could cut ties with now and win more fan support.
 
Deacon2002 said:
Wellman's accomplished a lot at Wake, but 19 years is a long time to be at the same place in the same position. It appears to me that Wellman has become a little too comfortable and perhaps feels untouchable. I don't think he's lost control. Instead I think he has asserted too much control. Whatever is going on, in my opinion, he has totally botched the firing of Dino, the subsequent hiring process, and his reaction to the disaster that was this past basketball season.

I'm not yet convinced that Wellman needs to go. However, I would be fine with him retiring or moving on. I think a fresh perspective could be a good thing
Click to expand...

I'm not sure we'll get that if someone from inside is promoted. On the other hand, maybe Wellman has very good soldiers who want change, but don't upstage their general.
 
Deacon2002 said:
Wellman's accomplished a lot at Wake, but 19 years is a long time to be at the same place in the same position. It appears to me that Wellman has become a little too comfortable and perhaps feels untouchable. I don't think he's lost control. Instead I think he has asserted too much control. Whatever is going on, in my opinion, he has totally botched the firing of Dino, the subsequent hiring process, and his reaction to the disaster that was this past basketball season.
Click to expand...

I don't get the perception that hes become too comfortable in his position. If things really did shake out like some of the insiders have said, with him getting a cold reception from his top basketball candidates, its not hard to imagine him reverting to his back-up, but safe candidate Buzz.

The last two years have been pretty tough in Deaconland, but I don't think the blame can be placed on Wellman for a lot of it. Sports are somewhat cyclical and outside of the top echelon of teams its pretty rare to find college athletic programs that are successful year in and year out.

This is not to say I fully supported the Buzz hire or still think he's the right one. I think we'll know a lot more next March after his second season. I do think we are back on the right track in Football and Baseball and am looking forward to watching progress in both those sports.
 
I for one appreciate the tough spot Ronnie was put in. Skip dying was terrible on a number of levels. I seem to recall there were a fairly strong SkipOut sentiment in the year or two before his death. If he hadn't died, my guess is that he may not have been at Wake much longer. But he did die and hiring Dino at the time was really the only move that Ronnie could make, especially once Battle declined to be considered. So Ronnie was stuck with someone he probably didn't want in the first place, but that was the situation he was handed. But then he completely botched the firing of Dino and hiring of Bzzzz, though the degree to which it is his fault I'm not completely sure of. Did he actually talk to any of the top tier coaches we were all clammoring for? I don't know. Maybe he did and they told him to fuck off. Maybe Ronnie was scared off because he reads the Boards and saw how much fun we were all having at the expense of State a few years ago with their searchparty disaster. I don't know, and the CIA-esque secrecy with which the WFU administration and athletic department operate on for any matters certainly doesn't clear anything up. So maybe it's just some bad fucking luck that we are in the shitstorm we are in, or maybe it is really mostly RonRon's fault because he went and hired Bzzzz without considering other alternatives. I don't know, but it's all very frustrating and will likely be so for the next few years, at best.
 
Wellman is in complete control. Whether he is wielding his power and control properly is probably a more appropriate question.

I'm getting a little concerned over his use of power. At the time of the coaching search, he had made some great hires, so I guess he had developed good equity and was entitled to trust his own judgement. I'm not going to be hypocritical, I was okay with him searching on his own then so it's okay to me now (however, his actions in the coaching search are not beyond reproach). But I truly hope he uses an external committee for any future hires necessary.
 
I support Wellman for now. I won't base my decision of him on just one year. Yeah, this was a bad year for WFU sports in a lot of areas. But I remember the late 90s also where the best thing we had to look forward to was Baseball and Field Hockey. things changed and got better. If I'm going to hold this year against Wellman, I have to give him credit for the good ones as well.

As for his control of the program, I don't think it's an issue right now. Remember, the opinions of posters on ANY message board usually do not represent the majority opinion. The most vocal message board posters are usually representatives of one of the extremes. The majority is usually less vocal on-line, preferring to voice their opinions in other ways.
 
Wellman regained some credibility with me by the hire of Clawson. Of course we don't know if Clawson will actually perform as well as we need for him to; but to this point he appears to be an excellent hire. As I have stated before I have alwasys liked Ron Wellman and while his leadership style is subject to criticism I think he is a good man. That said I cannot understand how he could have missed so badly on Bz. Even if he thought that he is a brilliant strategist surely he had to know how awkward he is dealing with the public. That is a mystery...a troubling mystery.
 
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