FreeStateDeac
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 5, 2011
- Messages
- 569
- Reaction score
- 77
The positive:
1. He has kept Wake Forest athletics out of the muck and corruption attendant to big-time college athletics. This is no small thing, as demonstrated by UNC athletics -- a citadel of hypocrisy that has given the world a new term, the "UNC Defense" (you can't blame the athletics dept. if the entire university is academically corrupt). More than anything, keeping Wake athletics out of this mudhole is reason to honor and appreciate Ron Wellman.
2. He has raised a ton of money for facilities and transformed the physical assets of the athletic program. Of course, the luck of being in the ACC when the TV rights money exploded did not hurt.
3. He made two brilliant hires of football coaches, Jim Grobe and Dave Clawson, without doubt the two best coaching hires in Wake football history.
But the negative:
He has destroyed Wake's flagship program, men's basketball. Like #1 above, this is no small thing. For a small, private school like Wake, basketball has always represented the only big-time revenue sport in which Wake could realistically be a nationally prominent, consistently winning program. Bones McKinney, Carl Tacy, Dave Odom and Skip Prosser showed it could be done, and done regularly. Villanova, Xavier and Gonzaga, among others, continue to show it can be done. But it requires consistently hiring excellent coaches, and that requires an AD capable of doing so. Wellman has failed. He was dealt a terrible hand when Skip died, but he played that bad hand miserably. The Dino hire, under those circumstances, was defensible, but the [Redacted] and Manning hires were indefensible from the start. Neither had the slightest track record that indicated they were capable of building a college program that could compete and win at an ACC level. The disastrous results have been totally predictable. Moreover, Wellman defended his Bz hire until the bitter end and obviously had to be pressured to fire him. That was clearly evident from the bizarre press conference where he announced the firing. In stark contrast, that same year the Va Tech AD knew a coaching change was necessary, went after Buzz Williams early, and locked him up the second the season was over. Wellman inexcusably dallied and delayed, resisting making a coaching change until it was literally too late to hire a decent coach. Manning was a desperation hire after all the choice candidates were taken or refused to be considered.
Ron Wellman should have retired when he finished his moment in the national spotlight as chair of the NCAA Selection Committee and let his successor choose the successor to Bz. Instead he lingers on, presiding over a basketball program that has cratered. No corporate board would ever allow a CEO of a major division to preside over this level of failure, year after year, yet Pres. Hatch and the BOT refuse to demand accountability from one of the highest paid employees of the university. The BOT should thank Wellman for the positive aspects of his legacy, detailed above, but insist he now retire and let his successor take the tough steps that will be necessary to salvage a once-proud basketball program.
1. He has kept Wake Forest athletics out of the muck and corruption attendant to big-time college athletics. This is no small thing, as demonstrated by UNC athletics -- a citadel of hypocrisy that has given the world a new term, the "UNC Defense" (you can't blame the athletics dept. if the entire university is academically corrupt). More than anything, keeping Wake athletics out of this mudhole is reason to honor and appreciate Ron Wellman.
2. He has raised a ton of money for facilities and transformed the physical assets of the athletic program. Of course, the luck of being in the ACC when the TV rights money exploded did not hurt.
3. He made two brilliant hires of football coaches, Jim Grobe and Dave Clawson, without doubt the two best coaching hires in Wake football history.
But the negative:
He has destroyed Wake's flagship program, men's basketball. Like #1 above, this is no small thing. For a small, private school like Wake, basketball has always represented the only big-time revenue sport in which Wake could realistically be a nationally prominent, consistently winning program. Bones McKinney, Carl Tacy, Dave Odom and Skip Prosser showed it could be done, and done regularly. Villanova, Xavier and Gonzaga, among others, continue to show it can be done. But it requires consistently hiring excellent coaches, and that requires an AD capable of doing so. Wellman has failed. He was dealt a terrible hand when Skip died, but he played that bad hand miserably. The Dino hire, under those circumstances, was defensible, but the [Redacted] and Manning hires were indefensible from the start. Neither had the slightest track record that indicated they were capable of building a college program that could compete and win at an ACC level. The disastrous results have been totally predictable. Moreover, Wellman defended his Bz hire until the bitter end and obviously had to be pressured to fire him. That was clearly evident from the bizarre press conference where he announced the firing. In stark contrast, that same year the Va Tech AD knew a coaching change was necessary, went after Buzz Williams early, and locked him up the second the season was over. Wellman inexcusably dallied and delayed, resisting making a coaching change until it was literally too late to hire a decent coach. Manning was a desperation hire after all the choice candidates were taken or refused to be considered.
Ron Wellman should have retired when he finished his moment in the national spotlight as chair of the NCAA Selection Committee and let his successor choose the successor to Bz. Instead he lingers on, presiding over a basketball program that has cratered. No corporate board would ever allow a CEO of a major division to preside over this level of failure, year after year, yet Pres. Hatch and the BOT refuse to demand accountability from one of the highest paid employees of the university. The BOT should thank Wellman for the positive aspects of his legacy, detailed above, but insist he now retire and let his successor take the tough steps that will be necessary to salvage a once-proud basketball program.
