Buh-bye Rick Greenspan

No shocker at all in reference to Greenspan. He knew the baggage Kelvin Sampson was carrying, yet hired him anyway. Turned a blind eye to what Sampson did in Bloomington.

It could be spun that it's a wonder Greenspan didn't get tossed out when Sampson did.

 

And Greenspan was supposed to bring a little bit of stability to IU's athletic program after a long term of turmoil, at least until president Adam Herbert hired Kelvin Sampson for him and Greenspan then had to spend two years keep covering Sampson's @$$ ... something he mishandled pretty badly this fall & winter.

Greenspan won't get the credit for it, but some big things happened under his watch -- some much-needed facility upgrades (closing in the north end of Memorial Stadium with a football office/weights facility underneath a new tier of seats, a basketball practice facility, renovations to the bb & sb diamonds, which were hardly high-school quality). While it didn't work out due to circumstances beyond everyone's control, he hired Terry Hoeppner, the single-best athletic department hire IU has made since bringing in Bob Knight and promoting Jerry Yeagley's soccer program to varsity status in the early 1970s.

Greenspan made two huge mistakes besides the handling of the Sampson fiasco. He hired Sharon Versyp for wbb (initially a good hire) and didn't give her a buyout clause, allowing her to walk away to arch-rival Purdue for nothing one year later, and then passing on Kevin Borseth to pick Felicia Leggette-Jack to replace Versyp. L-J has done a nice job, but Borseth is a helluva coach and was much more of a known commodity at the time (but he had something against him -- a Y chromosome attempting to coach major-college women's basketball). His hire of Tracy Smith to take over the baseball team has also been pretty widely-praised.

IU's athletic departnment has been a wreck ever since Ralph Floyd passed away 20 years ago. Knight toadie Clarence Doninger was ineffective at best (he almost never fired even an incompetent coach -- but let Myles Brand can Bill Mallory -- the facilities didn't get much better, he eventually turned on Knight), Michael McNeeley was a disaster (two words say it all -- Gerry DiNardo), and a university VP ended up being interim AD for more than a year before Greenspan was hired. A lot of the people charged for compliance, for example, came aboard during the Doninger years, when incompetence was rampant.

Not coincidentally, the slide also seemed to coincide with Myles Brand's hiring. To call him a spotlight-seeking attention hound would be putting it nicely.

 

This will be a good job for a MAC or high-level I-AA guy who doesn't mind a little hoops probation.

And if I'm Bill Lynch, I'm talking extension the day the guy gets there.

 

I'm no Feinstein honk, but he forewarned anybody who would listen about Greenspan dating back to the Army days.

 

McRobbie is a major upgrade on Herbert.

 

The seats aren't the issue ... what's under the seats, however, is. There is a large workout/office facility for the football program that is likely to be on par with the new basketball facility in terms of quality. The fact that they're putting seats above them is a bonus. Besides, it can pay for itself every time Ohio State comes to visit.

Creating a horseshoe allows for the football stadium to not look so much like a high school stadium on TV, too.

 

My only question is -- what took so long for this to happen? This dude, along with the president of the school, should have been out the door five minutes after Sampson was fired/resigned or whatever he did.......


These two green lighted the hiring of a guy who had NCAA issues at just about every stop and they didn't go into it with no clue that he might cheat -- they knew what they were getting, they knew this could happen -- someone, somewhere should have had the balls to say "if he crosses the line here or brings embarrassment to us, you two guys are responsible and will play with your jobs since you two guys hired him......"

 

Was Greenspan once at University of Miami in some capacity?

 

Is he Allen Greenspan's son?

 

The current president didn't hire Sampson, nor did he hire Greenspan. The former president, Adam Herbert, did on his way out the door. So, as usual, the perpetrators of the NCAA crimes won't be around to suffer for them.

And, playthrough, while I agree it seems like it's a waste of money to add seats to an empty stadium, Indiana had to upgrade its football facilities to even have a hope of keeping a major-league athletic department budget, and getting recruits to Bloomington (especially the worthwhile in-state players who, with the exception of the late 1980s, go anywhere but Bloomington to play football). The only hope of paying the freight is football, not hoops, even at Indiana. Purdue has an advantage overall because it's had a football program that's been worth more than a damn, which gives Matt Painter a little more money to play with. Indiana can overcome this if it gets someone who knows what he or she is doing in the AD's chair, but now it's spent the last decade falling behind as football became a bigger financial deal.