Link to Chattanooga Newspaper

I have to say that sounds an awful lot like a bunch of eggheads in a room throwing ideas up and seeing if one would stick.

Don't you get the mental image the person who recommended dropping athletics, for instance, was a pointy head who has negative prejudices and believes in stereotypes concerning athletes?

I mean, here they say "GET RID OF ATHLETICS AT UT!"

And someone points out- "Uh, they actually make money in Knoxville."

Well, okay, "GET RID OF ATHLETICS AT UT-C AND MARTIN!"

I honestly don't think that's going to happen.

Lets be glad someone didn't propose that to Stanton. He probably would have done it.

From an email that will be released to the media today:
President Petersen's response to the Chancellor Brown:

Roger,
The story was distorted. One of the committee members brought up the
cost of Athletics in a distressful time for Academics. Most everyone
else commented on the value it brings to the University environment
including the engagement of people who contribute to all aspects of the
University. That was all occurred. The reporter choose to make a
benign story into a sensational story. End of Story. Please forward
this to anyone you think appropriate. Cost containment is a must,
cancellation is not on the table.

John

John D. Petersen, President
University of Tennessee
800 Andy Holt Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996
(865)974-2241
Fax (865)974-3753

That's bunk by Petersen. He should really shut up and it shows a desire to butt his head in where it doesn't belong.

Petersen is not the editor of the Chattanooga Free Press. He is the President of UT.

So where does he get off trying to tell the Free Press what to run? ABOUT CHATTANOOGA????

The AD put his football coaching search on hold to address an issue. That is news.

The remainder of the story was "everything is okay- the Mocs aren't going away."

HOW IS THAT SENSATIONAL?

What a bad representation of UT. Petersen must be an idiot with a huge ego.

How many people read things towards the end of an article? All people saw were that athletics was on the chopping block at Chattanooga and Martin, which is absurd. Maybe you cut costs, i.e. cut the crazy trips, tell Chattanooga it's time to find a more geographically and fiscally responsible conference home, but cutting it, nah. And where do you see Peterson telling the paper what to cover? He said they took a non-story and tried to make it a story by sensationalizing it. He felt the need to address the issue and put some checkbooks, I mean people's minds at ease.

An athletic director putting the new football coach hire on hold to address his staff on rumors their jobs are going away is most definitely NOT sensational news.

Sensational news is something like, I don't know, writing the athletic director was about to be fired when you don't have the sources to back it up and said AD, in fact, signed a four-year contract extension during the time in question.

There was NO STORY... it was a reporter with NOTHING better to do that made it seem like there was extensive discussion and was sent for consideration as the options being presented. The problem with "The Media" is the sheer audicity to take some comment and run it as something that was going to be considered. That's irresponsible. Stories like this end up with too much freakin' life and do more harm than anything. Student athletes, parents, staff, supporters really don't know what crap the initial story is when it is presented in the every media format as "fact" ....

I seem to remember some severe damaging being done at etsu in 1998/99 when the media ran the story about the Task Force cutting football... every competitor school Xeroxed those articles and faxed them to recruits and high school coaches... it damaged the program way before stanton ever swung his final axe...

There was NO STORY... it was a reporter with NOTHING better to do that made it seem like there was extensive discussion and was sent for consideration as the options being presented. The problem with "The Media" is the sheer audicity to take some comment and run it as something that was going to be considered. That's irresponsible. Stories like this end up with too much freakin' life and do more harm than anything. Student athletes, parents, staff, supporters really don't know what crap the initial story is when it is presented in the every media format as "fact" ....

I seem to remember some severe damaging being done at etsu in 1998/99 when the media ran the story about the Task Force cutting football... every competitor school Xeroxed those articles and faxed them to recruits and high school coaches... it damaged the program way before stanton ever swung his final axe...

You have GOT to be kidding!

I mean, I am in SHOCK! COMPLETE SHOCK!

First of all, THE STORY THAT ETSU MIGHT DROP FOOTBALL TURNED OUT TO BE PRETTY LEGITIMATE, DIDN'T IT?

And you're blaming THE MEDIA for running it?

Talk about shooting the messenger!

If anything, here's what killed ETSU football. We knew what was going on and nobody- myself included- seemed inclined to run a series that followed up on it.

Give you an example. I'm a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. When I grew up it seemed like all anyone could report was "Bucs are going to leave town! Bucs are going to leave town!"

But there was never, ever a formal offer to move the team from Pittsburgh. There was merely a bad team that didn't draw.

The ultimate result was, however, that people took proactive measures to insure the team would stay in town.

We never had that. We had "the team might go" in 1998 and we had nothing else. We never had the follow up asking Todd Stansbury how fundraising was going. We never had the enterprise saying "How football can survive at ETSU." We never had so much as a real question of "Why does Paul Stanton go through so many ADs?" We never asked (except me on the boards) "Does hiring a tennis coach mean the end of ETSU football?"- Which I was scoffed at and punished by the ETSU athletic department for.

In 1985 when the Pittsburgh Pirates were bad, the community got involved. A columnist and talk show host got together to promote a single game fans should attend to show the team should stay in town. The result was the largest crowd of the season for the year- almost double any other crowd of the season sans opening day.

Another time KDKA radio had a 10,000 ticket giveaway to a game.

Where did we do this?

Had there had been a follow up- a 1999 story that said "FUNDRAISING IS AT NIL! PROGRAM IN CRISIS! COMMUNITY MUST STEP UP!" Had Bill Meade done more than "Ya'll ought to go to a Bucs game!" and some "Join the Pirate Club" PSAs, HAD WE DONE MORE this program might have been saved.

In the case of the Chattanooga story, an athletic director went off his coaching search to have an internal meeting concerning the future of the program to stop rumors. THAT IS NEWS! IT IS SELF-EVIDENT IT IS NEWS!

And if you read it, it was hardly a snarky "PROGRAM IS GOING AWAY!" story.

The fact the UT President seems inclined to try to tell the press to run speaks of not a president, but a Communist Prime Minister!

Of course, this is the same crowd who met David Mullins' hire with "he's a great guy!"

The same people who seem inclined to praise Paul Stanton every chance they get.

Do you realize that TO THIS DAY- the BFFF is met with "Why don't you meet with Stanton and ask him to bring back football?" from ETSU officials?

It is disturbing, actually disturbing that ANYONE would side with Petersen here- including Mrs. Petersen!

But I guess we live in such a "shoot the messenger" environment where the masses would rather remain unwashed and vengence is applied to the media when it does its job.

I will now be called a "drama queen" and an extremist. I am neither.

This was apparently at least somewhat seriously discussed, although the day that the story ran, the university started saying that it was not going to happen. I heard that the administration sent EMails to all of the students downplaying the story. The story ran in a competing online newpaper, as well as the Times Free Press. Pitt's idea about an egghead comment may very well be true.

I think that this does illustrate a real problem that UTC has in that their purse strings are to a large extent controlled in Knoxville. I'm sure it was also very embarrasing to the AD. He's out trying to recruit a new coach now to replace Allison (his contract expired and was not renewed). You can blow it off and say athletics won't be dropped, but I'm sure there were rumors of ETSU football being dropped when Paul Hamilton came to JC. Stuff happens.

BTW, the basketball team down here is reeling. They've had a tough schedule, but they are a mess right now. We need to put a lickin' on them in a few weeks. I need bragging rights restored. GO BUCS!

For those of you in Chattanooga, is there any indication of how the sale of Chattem Pharmaceuticals will impact the flow of money to UTC sports?

Have not heard anything about them being sold, they are expanding.
http://www.newschannel9.com/news/chattem...ducts.html

Seems like I heard on the news last week that they were going to approach the County Commission about some tax breaks for their expansion, and they announced a major stock sale today.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_140449.asp

Link to story about sale of Chattem.

Link

As I understand, the buyer Sun Pharma is an Indian company.

I here they are now going to drop football at UTC, but they are planning on adding cricket.

As long as they have hot apple cider and churn some apple butter for homecoming, otherwise, UT-C fans should be pissed off.

Whew...a lot to answer, refute and explain in this thread.

First, let me explain what BOT committee was for. It was a meeting to come up with different ideas of way to cut the budget...over 600 ideas were sent in and they were going thru them (all the way down to, literally, cutting off the lights in vending machines to save electricity).

One (singular) trustee brought up cutting the budget for UTC and UTM...the other trustee immediately dismissed it out of hand and that was it (as Peterson said in his email...athletics will not be cut, end of story).

But, a Knox News Sentinel reporter who was sitting in on the meeting ran with it as a lead...and unfortunately, a couple of over aggressive TV station news editors decided to run it on the nightly news...at which point the TFP had to also run something.

On an interesting side note, in talking with people at both the TFP sports department and the on-air sports caster at Channel 3, both told me that they thought it was absurd to even think it would happen. The sports department purposely didn't run a story (the news department did)...and the sports guy at Channel 3 did nothing until the news director directed him too.

Just a great example of sensationalism running the news these days.

As for the budget, well, every public university athletics department outside of Knoxville uses money from the State of Tennessee. Everyone is in the same boat because the pie is getting smaller. The irony of the whole "cutting the entire athletics department" is even more absurd when you realize that only $3 million (out of $10m total) comes from the "State"...the rest comes from fees, revenues and donations. So even if the money from the State dried up tomorrow, 70% of the budget would still be there. (more proof of the sensationalism aspect of leading with "cutting the entire program")

As for the comment that the UT system has great sway over the UTC when it comes to the budget...not true in the at all. While we might be somewhat under the thumb of the UT system, in the last decade or so, each school was given much more autonomy. The person in charge of cutting the budget at UTC is Chancellor Roger Brown. All the UT system can do is to tell Dr. Brown how much has to be cut overall (in this case, $6.3m overall) and he and his staff decide which department and programs get cut (whether it be athletics or the library or class, etc).

As far as Chattem Chemicals goes...

Chattem and Chattem Chemicals are two different entities (Chattem Chemicals was sold to Elcat years ago)...it was simple a division of the overall company that makes base chemicals. The company that brings you gold bond, bull frog, flexall, selsun blue, etc, etc, etc...is still alive and well...and expanding in Chattanooga.

http://www.chattem.com
http://www.chattemchemicals.com (at the bottom of the front page, it says "if you are looking for Chattem, Inc, click here)

Plus, the real money company for UTC athletics is Coca-Cola, not Chattem. :)

Thanks Chatt-Moc. I have been posting these types of things in hopes that ETSU fans (and others) posting here will be better informed about the issues facing ETSU's athletic department and our sister athletic departments across the state.

I am going to post a follow-up, marginally sports related thread.

It is NOT sensationalism.

I think it's a pretty good story. I come away not thinking that sports will be cut, but with a firm understanding of why so many eggheads thought destroying ETSU's athletic department was a good idea.

The fact the sports department passed makes me wonder if they would know how to do anything investigative, or if they are just about highlights and scores. And then they wonder why sports is cut to two and a half minutes.

Pitt... sensationalism... defined as: putting crap in a paper/news broadcast that is worthless garbage, they know it's worthless garbage but the worthless garbage still print it/ read it on the airwaves...

big difference in reporting an actual story which would have been: the committee sent the recommendations suggesting that UTC's athletics be eliminated verses what really happend is a man reading from a list of suggestions that had come in from the email suggestions listed on the utk website... the monetary figures weren't even brought up in the meeting, that came from the "reporter"...
stop defending crap journalism... you do know the difference....