Fresh to town is new UW President Bob Sternberg, formerly the Provost at Oklahoma State. As reported by the Casper Star-Tribune last week, Sternberg commissioned a $35,000 review of the men's basketball and football programs from an outside consulting firm, the results of which broke on Monday.
In short, even though Sternberg insists no blame is to be laid on any one player or coach and that the move was a "systems approach" to large-scale issues, the review claims that a culture of acceptable mediocrity persists inside Wyoming's two largest revenue-generating sports. Just as he's making local headlines for shaking up UW's academic rosters, so too does Sternberg seem set on making changes in athletics.
"There were a lot of heads in the sand. People thought certain things were acceptable, and they were wrong," Sternberg tells me Sunday afternoon. "You can talk about the altitude and the cold and the distance from a particular airport, but the reality is that we're not where we want to be. It's not like this is the first year football hasn't been where we want it to be. It's a trend."
"There's always excuses for a sports program not winning or academic program not succeeding. And it's not that the excuses aren't true; it's that they aren't sufficient," Sternberg said.
