It's pretty clear what your beliefs are and your willingness to overly go about to try and discredit my statements. I don't think no matter what I post you will look to discredit them but that is fine with me - free country last time I checked the history books.
I've been operating from the beginning as though you heard something after the fact from Doug or someone close to him as to how things went down. Just like I heard comments from one potential donor about him. I was willing to own the fact that said potential donor could have simply felt slighted, but you have not been willing to own the fact that the same could be true of your source.
One thing that isn't making sense to me though is that everyone close to the program/college knows (or at least should know) how major facilities projects are funded at SU, whether they are athletics facilities or academic facilities. And it just appears to me based upon your posts and this statement in particular:
Because he clearly understood the national landscape that football drives the bus but couldn't convince anyone here - ergo - the IPF has been on the table for 3-4 years but no support from the Board to even consider building it - they told Doug go find the money yourself and you can build your IPF.
that this is not fully understood by either yourself or your source or both since there is no way one can "demand" an IPF (at least any IPF worth building) just simply be built without getting enough "seed" money to make the project viable. Again, see the article I linked on VT's IPF which was a goal since 1998. VT, an athletics school whose sole focus appears to be on football and who has been receiving ACC monies since 2004. Nor is it likely Doug would have been told to go find the money himself, but he was probably told that he would have to be very much involved with the raising of said seed money. Again, not surprising since major donors want to be wooed by the stars of the athletic programs which are the coaches and former athletes from said program, not simply ADs.
Oddly enough, it is my understanding of that the donor meeting in NYC I referred to previously was about - getting some seed money for the IPF with both TGD and Marrone there to attempt to do this, so again, it wasn't simply Marrone as your post seem to imply. Again, the donor may be full of crap though.
Lastly, and then I'm done, wanting the coaches to play a major part in fund-raising for specific projects isn't much different than faculty members writing grants for research projects. Yes, there are people in the research office that can assist in this, but faculty tend to find the grant and then right up the proposals which then may be massaged by the research area to help strengthen the proposal before submittal. The faculty member(s) are selling a project and competing with other faculty at other institutions to get said limited grant monies. The Office of Research cannot be expected to get this done on their own. And neither should the athletic department and certainly not the BOT to fund such projects out of the college operating budget.
Peace,
Neil
