Here’s the kind of newspaper column that really irritates me…
On the heels of Mack Rhoades’ decision to bolt from the athletic director’s job at the University of Missouri and take the same post at Baylor University, The Star’s Sam Mellinger posted a column slamming Rhoades as an abject failure during his 15 months at Mizzou. (Rhoades had come from the University of Houston, so it’s not too surprising that he would return to Texas.)
Mellinger is a pretty good columnist, but, unfortunately, I’ve seen indications of slippage. For example, he has offered precious little insight into the Royals’ swoon this season. And he doesn’t seem to be writing as much as he used to…I hope he’s OK. If he’s got some problem — physical, personal, family or other — I would profusely apologize. In the meantime, though, I can only go by what I see.
Let me explain why today’s column galls…In the seventh paragraph of his column about Mack Rhoades, Mellinger dropped this bomb:
“Nobody thought Rhoades was a long-term fit at Mizzou, and he did very little in his 15 months on the job to endear himself to the university or its sports fans.”
Really? Well now, that’s fine and dandy but, as far as I can tell, at no time during Rhoades’ layover in Columbia did Mellinger or anyone else at The Star suggest Rhoades wasn’t at MU for the long haul or that he hadn’t endeared himself to the school and its fans.
I read (present tense) the sports columnists faithfully — the rest of the section, unfortunately, has thinned and slipped appreciably — and I don’t recall one negative column about Rhoades from any of the three columnists who would be in a position to write biting commentary.
Besides Mellinger, the other columnists with standing to take on Rhoades would be Vahe Gregorian, who has a long history of covering MU sports here and at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and college sports columnist Blair Kerkhoff, who would have had any number of opportunities to analyze Rhoades’ performance.
But nothing…And yet, today, out of the blue clear sky (thank you, George Strait), Mellinger makes a grand pronouncement that the guy who treaded water in front of his waterproof goggles the last year or so is a numskull.
Here’s more retrospective insight from Mellinger…
“He (Rhoades) earned a reputation as a poor communicator, both internally and externally, which limited his ability to solve or at times even identify problems.”
…I sure wish somebody had clued us in on that. By God, that’s interesting! (and would have been more interesting several months ago).
“He was hired as a fund-raising savant, but while alumni pride can be seen with the academic side setting an annual donations record, Rhoades has frustrated many by essentially stalling the renovation project at the south end of Faurot Field.”
…Well, I’ll be go to hell — as a friend of mine used to say. The revelation about Rhoades stalling the Faurot Field project is worthy of being carried down a mountaintop on stone tablets, although I would have settled for seeing it in black and white in The Kansas City Star.
“If it’s remembered at all, Rhoades’ tenure will mostly be marked by the football team’s strike and subsequent administrative shakeup, a continued slide for men’s basketball and the mess around the softball team — that last one was an unforced error and could’ve been easily avoided by a more capable leader.”
Now, the investigation of softball coach Ehren Earleywhine, who allegedly bullied and mistreated players, has been in the sports pages quite a bit. But I haven’t read any suggestion in The Star that Rhoades has somehow botched the investigation.
I would have appreciated somebody at The Star weighing in on Rhodes in regard to the Earleywhine investigation. That would have made a compelling column a few months ago. With The Star, though, sometimes you just gotta be happy getting “late-breaking” revelations.
Rhoades is a system of deeper problems in Missouri.
KU (the Okies running the under-the-table basketball ticket operation) and KSU (the secret Ron Price contract) have had their share of scandals, but I don’t know how in the hell the MU Board of Curators got two such tone deaf administrators as former system president Tim Wolfe and that R. Bowen (Bow-Tie) Loftin. That kind of thing costs a school a lot of credibility, and it takes a long time to rebuild it.
FWIW: Here’s Vahe Gregorian’s perspective on “tone deaf” Wolfe from a 3/9/15 column. Obviously, subsequent events cast him in a far different light.
“The bigger point was that Wolfe instantly conjured just the right pitch.
“Words probably don’t adequately express … my sympathy and prayers and thoughts (that) go out to Sasha Menu Courey, her family, her friends and her teammates,” Wolfe began that day. “It’s unfortunately a tragic situation that’s kind of personal to me since I’m a parent of a female freshman student-athlete myself.”
Had Alden said the same sorts of things days before, it might have minimized the outrage over ESPN’s report — which was disturbing in many ways but speckled with leaps of cause and effect.”
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/vahe-gregorian/article13160798.html
Random thoughts in response:
1. I think Mellinger is generally insightful about the Royals and baseball in general; there’s nothing especially mystifying about the Royals “swoon.” This is about how good they were supposed to be–and that was before the spate of significant injuries. The surprise is that with unexpected contributions from Merrifield, Cuthbert and Eibner, they are holding their own in the wild card chase.
2. Gregorian is the guy who supposedly has deep and longtime sources in Columbia, so it really should be Vahe who is giving us insights about the deficiencies of the AD (Was it shunted to less-connected Sam so that Vahe could avoid alienating his MU connections?)
3. All that said, I agree with your basic critique that the trashing of Rhoades as he heads out the door is a little bush-league when the Star has given us little or no clues that he was underperforming or that there were rumblings about his inadequacies.
4. The Star is often late to the game in terms of critical reporting of teams and other sacred cows. Years ago, their coverage of supposed racial tensions on the Royals (specifically Bo Jackson v. Kevin Seitzer) was late and dismissive. As I recall, the situation was explored fully only after Jackson’s hip injury ended his tenure with the team.
I think you’re right about Vahe being the go-to guy on this, and I’m very surprised he wasn’t on top of it — if I’m correct in my assumption (and archives checking) that he has not been critical of Rhoades in any of his columns.
I doubt that the sports editor would divert the hit job to Mellinger to spare Gregorian “alienation of affection.” That kind of thing is a consideration at the beat reporter level but not at the highest levels of commentary, where Mellinger and Vahe reside. They have to be ready to take the gloves off every day. They dropped the ball by not stripping Emperor Rhoades of his clothes well before he bolted for another school.
Thanks for the well-considered comment…
One of the old time rewards of reading out-of-town newspapers was reading KC news that The Star suppressed…often baseball, sometimes Kemper/Halls/Kauffman business dealings…always school district politics and the mafia…(Civellas-gambling-who knew?)…I like Mike’s term, out the door coverage…The Pay Day loan scams are the latest, good example, of this…