More on Cincinnati Defunding

I can't claim any insider info, but my brother does work with a parent of a scholarship athlete at Cincy.

He described the opposition to the defunding move as "vociferous". The AD was recently on local sports talk radio and apparently savaged for the full hour (men's swimming and wrestling are to get the same treatment). I've seen the same situation up close; the only way a decision like this can be reversed is if the AD believes his career is at stake.

At about the same time that the scholarship eliminations were announced, plans to upgrade Cincy's football stadium came out. My bro said he thought the Cincy AD didn't want to be known as the guy who didn't do everything he could to keep head football coach Brian Kelly on campus. He won't stay, of course, when some other college outbids UC, but image is what the AD is looking for.

The situation is much like CEOs at major financial institutions that put their own compensation ahead of their feduciary responsibilities to shareholders. One destroyed college sports, the other destroyed the world financial system. In this day and age, I can understand if we save our torches and pitchforks for the guys on Wall Street. In both cases, however, the stakeholders could have and should have reined in their foolih behavior--but everyone had dollar signs in their eyes that blinded them to reality.