(11-05-2018 05:38 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(11-05-2018 03:32 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-05-2018 02:55 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  University presidents aren't commies.

They are much more like the aristocracy of city states. They know and understand that while they hold the crown the AD and football coach (or hoops coach) in general hold the hearts of the masses.

They know flushing more money into the hands of the AD and coaches increases their power even more, especially if the AD is able to flow some money into the academic side.

In one way, yes. In another way, a university president is like a CEO of a corporation that has its hands in several different lines of business, athletics being only one of those lines of business. It's possible, in some situations, that mismanagement of athletics could prematurely end a university president's tenure, but it's far more likely that his or her tenure would be endangered by more fundamental things such as failing to raise enough money, or failing to accomplish some goal that is important to the university's board and major donors (which might be something like launching a medical school, or improving the university's overall academic reputation).

And in most, but not all cases, the university president wants to keep football and/or men's basketball from being the tail that wags the dog, because that's a distraction from the overall business of running the university. Which is why many university presidents may be happy that the richest athletic programs don't generate even more money than they already do.

Chancellor at Arkansas got sideways with Frank Broyles a few years before Frank retired. Care to guess who outlasted who?