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Time to clean house

ragtimejoe1 said:
Have you ever run or managed a business. Cultures are real and exist. When a particular culture exists, new hires typically regress or improve based on that culture.

It's not a cheap excuse. Sometimes something gets so ingrained in a system, it becomes constant. You can start at the fan/alumni level. Maybe we don't demand enough or donate enough as a whole. Then go to the athletic department. Maybe an excuse is more convenient than a mirror. Then the university level. Maybe the excuse is more convenient than another worry. Then the legislative level. Maybe focusing on other boogeyman is more important especially when constituents aren't complaining (back to fans and alumni).

If there was a culture of excellence Burman would have been reassigned a while ago. Bohl's seat might have been warm some years rather than saying the mediocre years were better than we had before so don't complain. PBJ likely wouldn't have been hired and most certainly been fired. The culture allows this...from fans to legislators.
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Lot of things here that I agree on....with the big exception of lumping in fans as being part of the problem. Fans are consumers....they follow excellence...they do not create it.

A couple things...

Culture ≠ "accepting mediocrity" ... Having a good culture is really really important. When we say we want a good culture we are actually saying we want good people....there is no such thing as culture separate from people. The reason there is not a culture of excellence at UW is because there are not excellent people in charge. As simple as that is....it's really hard to change it. Excellent people are not just lining up to take on the problems of every crap organization. Also, some problems are not sensitive to the quality of the people tackling the problem. Now, the problem of winning in the game of college athletics is not one of those problems. We need excellent people. The levels you pointed out (with the exception of fans) are all places where excellent people can make a difference.

Ultimately when you put down your three word explanation of everything and actually get into describing causes and effects, you make a lot more sense.

I think we could easily describe a situation where somebody comes into leadership at a company or University that hates, hates, hates mediocrity and is completely dedicated to stamping it out but can't make change or actually makes things worse....This actually happens all the time. Highly successful driven people (in sports and business) fail so often. Is this because they secretly accept mediocrity?...of course not...they are just wrong or uninformed or up against insurmountable odds or fill-in-the-blank with a billion other reasons.
 
307bball said:
I think we could easily describe a situation where somebody comes into leadership at a company or University that hates, hates, hates mediocrity and is completely dedicated to stamping it out but can't make change or actually makes things worse....This actually happens all the time. Highly successful driven people (in sports and business) fail so often. Is this because they secretly accept mediocrity?...of course not...they are just wrong or uninformed or up against insurmountable odds or fill-in-the-blank with a billion other reasons.
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Agreed that fans largely follow rather than lead in these types of scenarios. However, at WYO and due to a variety of reasons, it appears there is a general acceptance that UW is so disadvantaged that they can't reasonably be expected to compete consistently for a conference championship. Success (to the level of Bohl) is a privilege that should be met with gratitude rather than expected. The bad years should be expected and met with patience or probably more accurately, indifference. In other words, our fanbase does not expect excellence (consistently competing for the top of the conference) and thus tolerates much less. The fanbases at highly successful places, are much more demanding. This demand likely spurs more action or less patience for less throughout the system. I'm not saying whose fault it is, just a symptom of the culture of mediocrity.

The quoted part isn't wrong and neither are all the excuses. As Sternberg said, they're just insufficient. To break the culture of mediocrity, it will likely take the BOT elevating athletic success as a key indicator of university success. It will take a president who places great emphasis on success and accepting no less in the people he/she hires. It will take a visionary athletic director who is great at generating a buzz around the programs and identifying talent.

Failing to do these things means we accept the current results. It means we accept a culture of mediocrity--from fans to legislators to BOT to president to ad.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
Agreed that fans largely follow rather than lead in these types of scenarios. However, at WYO and due to a variety of reasons, it appears there is a general acceptance that UW is so disadvantaged that they can't reasonably be expected to compete consistently for a conference championship. Success (to the level of Bohl) is a privilege that should be met with gratitude rather than expected. The bad years should be expected and met with patience or probably more accurately, indifference. In other words, our fanbase does not expect excellence (consistently competing for the top of the conference) and thus tolerates much less. The fanbases at highly successful places, are much more demanding. This demand likely spurs more action or less patience for less throughout the system. I'm not saying whose fault it is, just a symptom of the culture of mediocrity.

The quoted part isn't wrong and neither are all the excuses. As Sternberg said, they're just insufficient. To break the culture of mediocrity, it will likely take the BOT elevating athletic success as a key indicator of university success. It will take a president who places great emphasis on success and accepting no less in the people he/she hires. It will take a visionary athletic director who is great at generating a buzz around the programs and identifying talent.

Failing to do these things means we accept the current results. It means we accept a culture of mediocrity--from fans to legislators to BOT to president to ad.
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The jump to pointing the finger at fans has never sat well with me...You and others who make noises that align with what you tend to say are the ones that articulately perceive the narrative that Wyoming "can't" win in response to any discussion that involves challenges or limitations specific to UW. It's like, can we look honestly at them? or do we have to neurotically diminish any assessment that provides explanation for the way things have gone because otherwise it becomes an excuse? Just because something "is", doesn't mean it has to be that way forever...but if you don't acknowledge what "is" it probably will be that way forever.

I would have to see some data that would convince me that Wyoming fans are more accepting of mediocre results before I got on board with what you are describing. It's far more likely that we are seeing a threshold type situation. I have no proof of this but it seems coherent that the percentages of high expectation fans at any particular school is not dramatically different even while the raw numbers are enormous at the powerhouse levels in comparison to Wyoming. Among all of the people I know personally, I'm the biggest Wyoming fan by a long shot.....that is not to say that those people are not fans...they just are not as tuned in as I am. If you extrapolate that out to the powerhouse programs, I think the ratio largely holds but because the base number is so much bigger, you can fill entire stadiums with people like me. Now, in the MWC, it's a bunch of pretty small fish with the outlier of what BSU has built. The fans of BSU did not come before the success. Now they have a large national fan-base that would dwindle if they began to get results like the rest of the MWC gets. It's a bit of a self perpetuating cycle once you get it established, and I suppose you could call that "culture" but that "culture" follows excellence...it does not create it.
 
307bball said:
The jump to pointing the finger at fans has never sat well with me...You and others who make noises that align with what you tend to say are the ones that articulately perceive the narrative that Wyoming "can't" win in response to any discussion that involves challenges or limitations specific to UW. It's like, can we look honestly at them? or do we have to neurotically diminish any assessment that provides explanation for the way things have gone because otherwise it becomes an excuse? Just because something "is", doesn't mean it has to be that way forever...but if you don't acknowledge what "is" it probably will be that way forever.

I would have to see some data that would convince me that Wyoming fans are more accepting of mediocre results before I got on board with what you are describing. It's far more likely that we are seeing a threshold type situation. I have no proof of this but it seems coherent that the percentages of high expectation fans at any particular school is not dramatically different even while the raw numbers are enormous at the powerhouse levels in comparison to Wyoming. Among all of the people I know personally, I'm the biggest Wyoming fan by a long shot.....that is not to say that those people are not fans...they just are not as tuned in as I am. If you extrapolate that out to the powerhouse programs, I think the ratio largely holds but because the base number is so much bigger, you can fill entire stadiums with people like me. Now, in the MWC, it's a bunch of pretty small fish with the outlier of what BSU has built. The fans of BSU did not come before the success. Now they have a large national fan-base that would dwindle if they began to get results like the rest of the MWC gets. It's a bit of a self perpetuating cycle once you get it established, and I suppose you could call that "culture" but that "culture" follows excellence...it does not create it.
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I doubt there's even a reasonable way to measure fan engagement accurately. To be clear I'm not blaming fans necessarily just pointing out that in my opinion fans at WYO are more forgiving or perhaps indifferent. Maybe that's true of all small market teams.

You point to bsu's culture and it was established. I agree. Ours is the same just the other direction.

One component of accepting mediocrity.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
I doubt there's even a reasonable way to measure fan engagement accurately. To be clear I'm not blaming fans necessarily just pointing out that in my opinion fans at WYO are more forgiving or perhaps indifferent. Maybe that's true of all small market teams.

You point to bsu's culture and it was established. I agree. Ours is the same just the other direction.

One component of accepting mediocrity.
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So if we want a "culture" like BSU....I think it starts by getting really talented people in...at the coaching level, the AD level and even higher...if we just replace them all with try-hard mediocrity rejectors with the same capacity as the mediocrity acceptors...we end up nowhere. I am merely trying to keep the focus on what I and others can see. It's entirely possible that Burman and his bosses do, in fact reject mediocrity and are low talent people that could not coach, hire, or lead their way out of a wet paper bag. In fact...that last part seems obvious at this point.

Anyways..if you want to draw the circle around all of the things you described that I largely agree with and call that "accepting mediocrity"....I guess you can...it falls short as a description with any specificity though.

Well...that's probably enough pedantism for now :P
 
307bball said:
So if we want a "culture" like BSU....I think it starts by getting really talented people in...at the coaching level, the AD level and even higher...if we just replace them all with try-hard mediocrity rejectors with the same capacity as the mediocrity acceptors...we end up nowhere. I am merely trying to keep the focus on what I and others can see. It's entirely possible that Burman and his bosses do, in fact reject mediocrity and are low talent people that could not coach, hire, or lead their way out of a wet paper bag. In fact...that last part seems obvious at this point.

Anyways..if you want to draw the circle around all of the things you described that I largely agree with and call that "accepting mediocrity"....I guess you can...it falls short as a description with any specificity though.

Well...that's probably enough pedantism for now :P
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PBJ and Burman (for nearly 2 decades) both are still in place. No comments about disappointment from prez or bot. nothing.

I'd say that's a system that accepts the results we're seeing. A system that rejects mediocrity would have moved on long ago for Burman and even PBJ this year (he would have likely never been hired).

You are focused too much on the individual aspirations. Not moving on from mediocrity, even if the potential for worse exists, is accepting it.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
PBJ and Burman (for nearly 2 decades) both are still in place. No comments about disappointment from prez or bot. nothing.

I'd say that's a system that accepts the results we're seeing. A system that rejects mediocrity would have moved on long ago for Burman and even PBJ this year (he would have likely never been hired).

You are focused too much on the individual aspirations. Not moving on from mediocrity, even if the potential for worse exists, is accepting it.
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If we are taking about cultures and longer arcs of cause and effect.... We aren't really taking about any individual coach or mid-level administrator.... We are talking about Burman right? If that's the case, why is he still in charge? I'm a bit surprised that your answer to that question satisfies you.

I'm stuck looking at individuals because the number of people that are in charge of keeping Burman around is very small. That small group of people are leading a university that is struggling at a lot of things... Not just athletics. That says to me that it's very likely that they are just not excellent (not good at the very least) at what they do in general.

Now...if culture follows excellence, and it seems like we agree that it does, then focusing on culture in the midst of prolonged failure is the wrong way to fix it. Wyoming needs to get high performance folks in place as soon as possible. Because it has been so bad for so long there is not really a functional pipeline of those types of people lining up. It will be a debacle of hiring and firing until we hit on the right people. Again...this is a BOT/Pres level issue. All this culture talk is downstream of ineffective or untalented people. Get the right people in and they will change the culture. Winging about culture while the wrong people are in charge is pissing into the wind. To the extent that the Sternberg report's recommendations would have resulted in massive upheaval and turnover, that is exactly what is needed. The problem with a focus on "cultures" of mediocrity is that it gives cover to untalented and ineffective people. These administrators and Burman are not dynamos who are operating in a bad culture...they are bad at what they do.
 
307bball said:
If we are taking about cultures and longer arcs of cause and effect.... We aren't really taking about any individual coach or mid-level administrator.... We are talking about Burman right? If that's the case, why is he still in charge? I'm a bit surprised that your answer to that question satisfies you.

I'm stuck looking at individuals because the number of people that are in charge of keeping Burman around is very small. That small group of people are leading a university that is struggling at a lot of things... Not just athletics. That says to me that it's very likely that they are just not excellent (not good at the very least) at what they do in general.

Now...if culture follows excellence, and it seems like we agree that it does, then focusing on culture in the midst of prolonged failure is the wrong way to fix it. Wyoming needs to get high performance folks in place as soon as possible. Because it has been so bad for so long there is not really a functional pipeline of those types of people lining up. It will be a debacle of hiring and firing until we hit on the right people. Again...this is a BOT/Pres level issue. All this culture talk is downstream of ineffective or untalented people. Get the right people in and they will change the culture. Winging about culture while the wrong people are in charge is pissing into the wind. To the extent that the Sternberg report's recommendations would have resulted in massive upheaval and turnover, that is exactly what is needed. The problem with a focus on "cultures" of mediocrity is that it gives cover to untalented and ineffective people. These administrators and Burman are not dynamos who are operating in a bad culture...they are bad at what they do.
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Semantics. You're right that it needs a shake up at the top. Because we have a culture of mediocrity, that shakeup won't happen.

If enough fans cared enough, they'd pressure administration and legislators. If legislators cared enough they'd pressure bot. If bot cared enough they'd pressure the prez. If the prez cared enough he/she would pressure the ad. If the ad cared enough, he'd, well you get the point.

People not doing a good job leads to mediocre or worse results. A culture of mediocrity allows it to sustain within the system.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
Semantics. You're right that it needs a shake up at the top. Because we have a culture of mediocrity, that shakeup won't happen.

If enough fans cared enough, they'd pressure administration and legislators. If legislators cared enough they'd pressure bot. If bot cared enough they'd pressure the prez. If the prez cared enough he/she would pressure the ad. If the ad cared enough, he'd, well you get the point.

People not doing a good job leads to mediocre or worse results. A culture of mediocrity allows it to sustain within the system.
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It is definitely kind of semantic...i suspect we are saying a version of something similar to one another. My main difference with you is I don't like the emphasis on culture since there is no way to change that (if in fact that is a problem) without getting rid of people and getting better people...good culture is created by good people and vise versa. How do you get rid of them?...I would say the quickest path is pointing out how bad they are at their jobs...not carrying on about culture.

I see you are backdooring the "fans don't care enough" argument in again as well. When you lay out your theory on this, everything is pretty coherent except for this point. Fans do not drive the bus. Every bad program, coach, AD or whatever has gone down in flames eventually with complaints about the fans...that is such loser talk. Get good and watch the fan support swell.....it can't happen any other way.

If you really want something fixed, and I think you do, you have to be clear eyed about the problem. We have people who are not fit for purpose in positions of responsibility at UW and rather than call them out on it, you focus on "accepting mediocrity" and a culture problem. If you or I could wave a wand and fix the culture instantly we still have a bunch of middling talents running the show. at the highest levels. At this point you have explained your reasoning well enough that when I hear you say they "accept mediocrity" I at least know that you mean something nuanced and meaningful even if you have to be pressed to express it.
 
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