Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com

Link from the Toledo Blade

Among the highlights:

• All football and basketball players, except for incoming freshmen, must be interviewed by a lawyer before they play next season.

• Replace the team physician, Dr. Roger Kruse.

• Move athletic accounting and bookkeeping to the finance department.

• Establish an education program on gambling, alcohol, and drug use, and how to deal with agents.

• Streamline discipline process for athletes who break team, university, and NCAA rules.

• The compliance officer within the athletic department will now report to UT’s institutional compliance officer.

• UT football coach Tom Amstutz and men’s basketball coach Stan Joplin will now report directly to the Athletic Director. Previously, the two coaches reported through the university’s senior associate athletic director for marketing and promotions.

Wow. This is going to be interesting.

The Blade is going to detail those travel expenses tomorrow. For now, this is what we know:

"A Blade investigation has found numerous examples of questionable spending by the athletic department, spending that Dr. Jacobs confirmed was also being investigated by UT officials.

"Records obtained by The Blade show that the wives and girlfriends of UT coaches, and boosters and other nonessential personnel, were allowed to fly with the football and men’s and women’s basketball teams at university expense. Records also show that coaches traveled to Germany and charged trip expenses to their UT credit cards."

Good for him. It would have been easy to ignore and/or whitewash the issues, but he chose to wade into the swamp.

For me, the pull quote from Dr. Jacobs was "What we’re trying to do is create a culture of compliance in this organization.” I wish him luck, but it'll be like trying to create a culture of health at a pastry shop.

Jacob's is going "right at 'em."

I have to respect that. No nonsense.

I'm going to move this to Football where it'll get more eyes. They're our chief rival... they're not so much an "other school."

ZiggyZoomba wrote:I'm going to move this to Football where it'll get more eyes. They're our chief rival... they're not so much an "other school."

Thanks, G. I wasn't sure where to put it and I didn't want to get busted by the board police

You have to wonder how safe Toledo Tom is at this point

I think Toledo Tom became a little too comfortable with his position at UT. The only other position he could be more comfortable with is at a dinner table.

Records also show that coaches traveled to Germany and charged trip expenses to their UT credit cards."[/quote]

Ya know...that is not a bad thing and lots of companies will let employees use their corp cards for personal use, so long as all balances are identified via expense reports and that all balances are paid in full at billing to avoid fin charges and that any fin charge is the responsibility of the individual.

Flipper wrote:You have to wonder how safe Toledo Tom is at this point

My guess is still relatively safe. There's a fair to good chance that we was at least somewhat insulated from the details, which gives him what Ollie North once called "plausible deniability." Some other heads will probably roll, though.

Flipper wrote:You have to wonder how safe Toledo Tom is at this point

I'm guessing this is partly response to Scooter and some obvious "casualness" within the department and partly Jacob's putting his stamp on the dept. Timing is right for both. MD thing appears to be related to the merger as the team doctor is, I understand, not part of the same medical whatsis that the MEd school is. The extension of O'Brian's contract and his new leading role in managing hoops and FBall (the coaches didn't report to him?) makes me think that the belt, not the noose, is tightening but I doubt very much that Amstutz has much reason to be concerned. The Blade has occasionally been known to be somewhat hyperbolic when it comes to UT.

Of course tomorrow we could find out that Jop, Stutz and Scooter provided Davis weapon so he could knock off a witness in the point shaving case. Nevertheless, I think this is a story that will fade quickly.

A few things kind of jumped out at me about this. The athletes wil be interviewed by outside counsel and a faculty athletics rep.....is that a CYA move or part of a larger look into what's been going on? Why interview EVERYONE by someone fromoutside the University. Why not just have the coaches do the interviewing...because there's concerns with how closely they've been looking at the issues outlined?

Expensing has been put under the accounting office. How tight are those purse strings going to be now? What kind of shenanigans were going on with the department handling expenses? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Discipline will now be streamlined throughout the department. Solich had this happen to him at OU this year. Do Amstutz and Joplin lose discretion on disciplining their players?

Joplin and Toledo Tom now answer directly to the AD who answers directly to the University President....frankly, the previous chain of command that had them going through an associate AD with marketing responsiblities seems odd. It would seem that Dr Jacobs wants a clearer chain of command that puts the two coaches a tad closer to him.

Dr Jacobs has complete confidence in the AD and would advocate an extension. The coaches who have had their expense reporting changed, the coaches who now report directly to the AD, the coaches who no longer have as much, if any discretion on how they dicipline their players, the coaches who's expenses are being "investigated" by the University, the coaches who's players are being vetted by outside counsel to ensure their eligibility to play...those coaches didn't get a vote of confidence today...they got the collar tightened a bit, but they didn't get a vote of confidence.

Finally...how did the Blade find all this out? It's not like UT had a press conference to announce all this...the Blade discovered it? How did the Blade discover the NCAA inquiry into the apparent irregularities on the betting before the Kent State game? Is there a mole within the UT administration that wants to grease the skids for a couple of coaches at UT?

Flipper wrote:Expensing has been put under the accounting office. How tight are those purse strings going to be now? What kind of shenanigans were going on with the department handling expenses? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

What's SOP for other MAC schools, I wonder. Is it typical for some sort of financial oversight outside of the athletic department?

1987alum wrote:What's SOP for other MAC schools, I wonder. Is it typical for some sort of financial oversight outside of the athletic department?

As a taxpayer... I'd hope so! In reality though, I have no idea what is or isn't standard or what is or isn't happening at BGSU.