SU Human Resource Complaint Towards Heather Lyke | Page 10 | Syracusefan.com

SU Human Resource Complaint Towards Heather Lyke

kingtidge said:
You jest, but given our history and dysfunction, never say never...



We're gonna have a foisting??!!

Love a good foisting, me...
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serious fox tv GIF by Lethal Weapon
 
cliftonparksufan said:
How would people rate Wildhack's and Syverud's tenure?

Wildhack finished strong. Is well respected outside the Cuse community. Screwed up the Autry hiring (because he basically rolled over on the decision making). Fran seems to be a win, as does FLJ, but Dino and Q didn't end well. Lacrosse hirings seem fine but results underwhelming. JMA Dome upgrades were long time coming. I'd give him a C+ but if the next two hires go well (even though technically they are not his), and Football has a solid 8 or 9 game win season, I'd more him up to an A-.

Syverud. A lot of you are a lot closer to the academic ranking situation than I am, but it appears it dropped. I know the party rankings have dropped and there is a lot of development around campus. Although a lot seems to be private student housing. What's his biggest claim that he can be proud of? Not sure, but in an era where a lot of Chancellors and Presidents ended up in trouble or fired due to how they have handled on campus protest issues, he basically kept Syracuse out of the news. Plus, he parlayed himself into a seemingly better job. For that alone, I give him a B-.
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I'd quibble with a bunch of the underlying thoughts here, but don't think your grades are crazy. I think in order to "roll over" on a decision, you need to have some other viable option. JW didn't have that with Red, he played that hand about as well as he could since he had to expend most of his political capital gently easing JB to the door. I'm also going to give him an A on the hiring of Fran regardless - for Syracuse to have any success in football they will need to make some outside the box decisions. Those are by definition high risk. Even if Fran doesn't work out long term, we need an AD willing to push for those types of decisions in an organization which tends to be very risk averse. I think a C+ underestimates the challenges of being AD at Syracuse due to the messed up politics involved - while colleges athletics are political everywhere, there's more focus on winning normally. That there wasn't an internal chorus of people telling JB it was time years ago, but instead he had all kinds of backers as he ran the program into the ditch is evidence personal friendships and loyalty trump on field results at Syracuse. That is something every AD since Jake has had to deal with. There's also enough strikeouts on Wildhack's scorecard that A- is probably too generous. I'd say B but wouldn't argue with B+ or B- either.

I don't think Syverud accomplished anything he'd had as stated goals, and managing to not get fired is a very low bar for a B-. I give him a lot of credit for being able to talk a great game and create the appearance of a vision. My suspicion is that he's very smart, has lofty goals for organizations, but doesn't recognize constraints well. Instead of accepting a small ball approach and hitting singles, he tries to hit grand slam home runs with the bases empty. It negatively impacts his effectiveness. He was better than recent chancellors..but that's also damning with faint praise. B- would be generous in my opinion, I'm closer to C.

The biggest thing I think I've realized during their tenures is that Syracuse University is a bigger clustershow than I realized, and that its been a mess for ages. I was hard on Jake for a lot of the decisions during his tenure as AD, but I now think he did a solid job considering the internal factors he had to deal with. That I realized how tough Syracuse is partly because Kent and John did a decent job navigating through the nonsense is points in their favor. If I was in either of those roles, I think I would have pulled a Coyle and bounced after a year - both clearly have diplomatic and interpersonal skills I both lack and admire.
 
Cusefan95 said:
I'd quibble with a bunch of the underlying thoughts here, but don't think your grades are crazy. I think in order to "roll over" on a decision, you need to have some other viable option. JW didn't have that with Red, he played that hand about as well as he could since he had to expend most of his political capital gently easing JB to the door. I'm also going to give him an A on the hiring of Fran regardless - for Syracuse to have any success in football they will need to make some outside the box decisions. Those are by definition high risk. Even if Fran doesn't work out long term, we need an AD willing to push for those types of decisions in an organization which tends to be very risk averse. I think a C+ underestimates the challenges of being AD at Syracuse due to the messed up politics involved - while colleges athletics are political everywhere, there's more focus on winning normally. That there wasn't an internal chorus of people telling JB it was time years ago, but instead he had all kinds of backers as he ran the program into the ditch is evidence personal friendships and loyalty trump on field results at Syracuse. That is something every AD since Jake has had to deal with. There's also enough strikeouts on Wildhack's scorecard that A- is probably too generous. I'd say B but wouldn't argue with B+ or B- either.

I don't think Syverud accomplished anything he'd had as stated goals, and managing to not get fired is a very low bar for a B-. I give him a lot of credit for being able to talk a great game and create the appearance of a vision. My suspicion is that he's very smart, has lofty goals for organizations, but doesn't recognize constraints well. Instead of accepting a small ball approach and hitting singles, he tries to hit grand slam home runs with the bases empty. It negatively impacts his effectiveness. He was better than recent chancellors..but that's also damning with faint praise. B- would be generous in my opinion, I'm closer to C.

The biggest thing I think I've realized during their tenures is that Syracuse University is a bigger clustershow than I realized, and that its been a mess for ages. I was hard on Jake for a lot of the decisions during his tenure as AD, but I now think he did a solid job considering the internal factors he had to deal with. That I realized how tough Syracuse is partly because Kent and John did a decent job navigating through the nonsense is points in their favor. If I was in either of those roles, I think I would have pulled a Coyle and bounced after a year - both clearly have diplomatic and interpersonal skills I both lack and admire.
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Really good post. You do one of the best jobs at explaining some of the politics that were involved in the JB situation, at least from what I have gathered from the outside (I'm far from an insider, but just based on what transpired publicly since Hop left in 2016, it seems quite apparent to me that ADJW couldn't just pull the plug on JB anytime he wanted)

The one thing we slightly disagree on is your grading on Fran. Totally get your logic that we have to think outside the box to be successful in football. But at the same time, I still think you have to give some weight to if the ideas actually work. I haven't given up on Fran, but this is a big season to turnaround from last season.
 
Cusefan95 said:
I'd quibble with a bunch of the underlying thoughts here, but don't think your grades are crazy. I think in order to "roll over" on a decision, you need to have some other viable option. JW didn't have that with Red, he played that hand about as well as he could since he had to expend most of his political capital gently easing JB to the door. I'm also going to give him an A on the hiring of Fran regardless - for Syracuse to have any success in football they will need to make some outside the box decisions. Those are by definition high risk. Even if Fran doesn't work out long term, we need an AD willing to push for those types of decisions in an organization which tends to be very risk averse. I think a C+ underestimates the challenges of being AD at Syracuse due to the messed up politics involved - while colleges athletics are political everywhere, there's more focus on winning normally. That there wasn't an internal chorus of people telling JB it was time years ago, but instead he had all kinds of backers as he ran the program into the ditch is evidence personal friendships and loyalty trump on field results at Syracuse. That is something every AD since Jake has had to deal with. There's also enough strikeouts on Wildhack's scorecard that A- is probably too generous. I'd say B but wouldn't argue with B+ or B- either.

I don't think Syverud accomplished anything he'd had as stated goals, and managing to not get fired is a very low bar for a B-. I give him a lot of credit for being able to talk a great game and create the appearance of a vision. My suspicion is that he's very smart, has lofty goals for organizations, but doesn't recognize constraints well. Instead of accepting a small ball approach and hitting singles, he tries to hit grand slam home runs with the bases empty. It negatively impacts his effectiveness. He was better than recent chancellors..but that's also damning with faint praise. B- would be generous in my opinion, I'm closer to C.

The biggest thing I think I've realized during their tenures is that Syracuse University is a bigger clustershow than I realized, and that its been a mess for ages. I was hard on Jake for a lot of the decisions during his tenure as AD, but I now think he did a solid job considering the internal factors he had to deal with. That I realized how tough Syracuse is partly because Kent and John did a decent job navigating through the nonsense is points in their favor. If I was in either of those roles, I think I would have pulled a Coyle and bounced after a year - both clearly have diplomatic and interpersonal skills I both lack and admire.
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Re JB, I wouldn't call it easing him the door. From what I've heard JB was more thrown out the door, most likely by KS who may have been concerned about certain donor activities being looked into. What JW did is ease JB to keep him inside the tent so he wouldn't make any possibly disparaging statements. JB wanted to stay on in some capacity and wanted to have an office (Julie probably wanted him to have one also). JW made that happen and kept JB inside the tent.
 
FloridaCuse said:
Re JB, I wouldn't call it easing him the door. From what I've heard JB was more thrown out the door, most likely by KS who may have been concerned about certain donor activities being looked into. What JW did is ease JB to keep him inside the tent so he wouldn't make any possibly disparaging statements. JB wanted to stay on in some capacity and wanted to have an office (Julie probably wanted him to have one also). JW made that happen and kept JB inside the tent.
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Does JB keep his office when the new HC arrives and it’s not someone from his tree?
 
MSOrange said:
Really good post. You do one of the best jobs at explaining some of the politics that were involved in the JB situation, at least from what I have gathered from the outside (I'm far from an insider, but just based on what transpired publicly since Hop left in 2016, it seems quite apparent to me that ADJW couldn't just pull the plug on JB anytime he wanted)

The one thing we slightly disagree on is your grading on Fran. Totally get your logic that we have to think outside the box to be successful in football. But at the same time, I still think you have to give some weight to if the ideas actually work. I haven't given up on Fran, but this is a big season to turnaround from last season.
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I gave Fran credit for his first year in that assessment, but year two was the worst football I have ever seen and made me long for the competence and success we saw in the GRob era. I’m assuming year three will be at least five wins and competitive in losses - I’d feel comfortable with my A grade if that happens. If we see another trainwreck, I will request a do-over.

If you don’t want to make assumptions and want to hold on an assessment until after this year, that’s reasonable.
 
Cusefan95 said:
I gave Fran credit for his first year in that assessment, but year two was the worst football I have ever seen and made me long for the competence and success we saw in the GRob era. I’m assuming year three will be at least five wins and competitive in losses - I’d feel comfortable with my A grade if that happens. If we see another trainwreck, I will request a do-over.

If you don’t want to make assumptions and want to hold on an assessment until after this year, that’s reasonable.
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Yawn. Worst football season ever my a$$. The first few weeks were electric. 2019, grob years were far worse.
 
FrancoPizza said:
Does JB keep his office when the new HC arrives and it’s not someone from his tree?
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Honestly to me it's time for JB to call it a day, get him retired, let the new AD and coach come in and let them reach out and bring him in when ready because you know whoever comes here will. Maybe new coach invites him to guest speak. Give him and Julie 4 tickets in a box or near the bench and hopefully get JBs quiet support for the new structure and team.
 
FrancoPizza said:
Does JB keep his office when the new HC arrives and it’s not someone from his tree?
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I think that'll be up to the new A.D. as his position I believe is something like special assistant to the A.D. I'd think he would if he wants to.
 
Cusefan95 said:
I guess “revenge is a dish best served cold” is a tough concept for some people. Considering he appears to have imploded Kent’s best laid plans with his approach and got what he wanted in the end (NOTE: I think, although I’m still not 100% sure the administration won’t go out of their way to screw this up and hire her as AD), the most anyone proposing he could have done something differently are saying is “hypothetically, he could have gotten this result faster!” Personally, I’ll go with the real world result over the hypotheticals.

More than likely Red is still here because firing him in season would have cost a bigger buyout and wouldn’t have salvaged anything anyway. Patience was the right choice. It’s clear from your inability to see how well JW played his hand here that you lack it, so it’s unsurprising this is baffling to you.

I remain convinced anyone still critical of JW overall isn’t worth paying any attention to. It demonstrates a lack of any vision of the big picture.
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I don’t care that JW played his hand well.

No matter what you feel about him and he’s probably a great guy who brought c suite maturity to the dept, he’s leaving w a mess here.

I’m a Syracuse fan not a JW or infastructure fan. The university is in transition with some drama. I don’t recall Jake creating this environment and he may have been using lotus notes as opppzed to what JW brought from espn to organize things

We treated red like he’s prince Charles and his coronation and succession has to be handled w pomp. Guy has been as bad as any hc we have made fun of for decades while we were humming. I think these schools have to be ruthless about winning because it’s become imperative for the schools health to have a performing sports dept if u want students to attend and pay 90k.

We agree to disagree. My patience w Syracuse is zero. I just see bad decision making on these big tent decisions. Not sure why u would ignore an opinion that disagrees w u.
 
The more I see how JW’s “retirement” unfolded the more it reveals just how dysfunctional Kent’s leadership team and the whole university is/was.

Not totally surprising because universities are generally a groupthink mess where typical top down decision making is circumvented. Having said that two things just completely jump out at me.

Coyle definitely jumped ship because he realized that he didn’t really control areas that should have been in his control. Especially the replacement of JB. Which leads me to the second point…

The hiring of Red involved many more people than people in athletics. I think JW’s original intent was to do a full blown search, but he quickly realized that was not going to be the case. His messaging to boosters changed to support the inevitable “internal hire”. I honestly don’t think he had much decision making power here at all. But JW loves the school, loves its athletics and spent ten years trying to position it the best he could. Now he’s being forced out.

I wish Carparelli the best. It looks like the pieces are falling into place for what seems to be a series of solid decisions. But I caution that it also appears the choice of Head BB coach is being made for him…just something I’d keep an eye on..,
 
elimunelson said:
I don’t care that JW played his hand well.

No matter what you feel about him and he’s probably a great guy who brought c suite maturity to the dept, he’s leaving w a mess here.

I’m a Syracuse fan not a JW or infastructure fan. The university is in transition with some drama. I don’t recall Jake creating this environment and he may have been using lotus notes as opppzed to what JW brought from espn to organize things

We treated red like he’s prince Charles and his coronation and succession has to be handled w pomp. Guy has been as bad as any hc we have made fun of for decades while we were humming. I think these schools have to be ruthless about winning because it’s become imperative for the schools health to have a performing sports dept if u want students to attend and pay 90k.

We agree to disagree. My patience w Syracuse is zero. I just see bad decision making on these big tent decisions. Not sure why u would ignore an opinion that disagrees w u.
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I don't view it as all on JW. I attribute part of the problems and disfunction in the basketball program to KS and the BoT for the way JB was "retired" abruptly and deeming that his successor had to come from his staff. And the first part of that may have been due to JB's arrogance that he could stay in the job as long as he wanted. See his interview with Pete Thamel of ESPN in January 2023 after the game at BC.
 
Jake said:
I wish Carparelli the best. It looks like the pieces are falling into place for what seems to be a series of solid decisions. But I caution that it also appears the choice of Head BB coach is being made for him…just something I’d keep an eye on..,
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Does that mean Hop!?
 
Jake said:
Coyle definitely jumped ship because he realized that he didn’t really control areas that should have been in his control. Especially the replacement of JB.
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1000% agree on this statement. And this is why the folks critical of JW generally just don’t get it. We had a guy near the end of his career with personal emotional investment in SU who was willing to deal with the dysfunction and having his hands tied on key decisions because he felt he could still have a positive impact. The likelihood of that happening again is very, very low. Anyone with any career ambitions is going to bounce fast (like Coyle), anyone who stays is almost certainly going to be a snake oil salesman (like Gross).

I’m skeptical Kent was the cause of the dysfunction - it’s gone on long enough that it appears deeply embedded in the culture, processes, and personnel at the university. Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll start to improve now…but I think us longing for the good ole days of Wildhack seven or eight years in the future is far more likely.
 
Jake said:
No.
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just my opinion. Methinks the name Lally is going to be hard for a new Chancellor and AD to overcome at least right now in the short term.

I know people don't want to hear more talk of how football runs the machine but it just does. Lally can put his finger on the scale for football and has been for some time and now if he really wants to influence Hoops he can right now as well. He's given more and more consistently than anyone else and he sits on all these board positions.

I'm sure there are plenty of people and former hoops players that don't like the idea of it working this way but if the plan was to promise 30 mil in NIL to change things up now I think they prob needed to start down that path long ago. Promises are just promises.

I guess it's good that BH seems to be a solid choice that checks alot of boxes and they're in the same camp with Lally.
 
RedtheGOB said:
just my opinion. Methinks the name Lally is going to be hard for a new Chancellor and AD to overcome at least right now in the short term.

I know people don't want to hear more talk of how football runs the machine but it just does. Lally can put his finger on the scale for football and has been for some time and now if he really wants to influence Hoops he can right now as well. He's given more and more consistently than anyone else and he sits on all these board positions.

I'm sure there are plenty of people and former hoops players that don't like the idea of it working this way but if the plan was to promise 30 mil in NIL to change things up now I think they prob needed to start down that path long ago. Promises are just promises.

I guess it's good that BH seems to be a solid choice that checks alot of boxes and they're in the same camp with Lally.
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I have no doubt that Hodgson can and will draw and raise NIL funds.
 
Cusefan95 said:
1000% agree on this statement. And this is why the folks critical of JW generally just don’t get it. We had a guy near the end of his career with personal emotional investment in SU who was willing to deal with the dysfunction and having his hands tied on key decisions because he felt he could still have a positive impact. The likelihood of that happening again is very, very low. Anyone with any career ambitions is going to bounce fast (like Coyle), anyone who stays is almost certainly going to be a snake oil salesman (like Gross).

I’m skeptical Kent was the cause of the dysfunction - it’s gone on long enough that it appears deeply embedded in the culture, processes, and personnel at the university. Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll start to improve now…but I think us longing for the good ole days of Wildhack seven or eight years in the future is far more likely.
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This first paragraph is absolute money. Coyle told his employees (!?) that he was "sold a bill of goods" in his interview process. Gross was too incompetent to get a better job.

People that run down JW really would've enjoyed the extra greenspace at the athletic complex where the big shiny new facilities are.
 
Jake said:
The more I see how JW’s “retirement” unfolded the more it reveals just how dysfunctional Kent’s leadership team and the whole university is/was.

Not totally surprising because universities are generally a groupthink mess where typical top down decision making is circumvented. Having said that two things just completely jump out at me.

Coyle definitely jumped ship because he realized that he didn’t really control areas that should have been in his control. Especially the replacement of JB. Which leads me to the second point…

The hiring of Red involved many more people than people in athletics. I think JW’s original intent was to do a full blown search, but he quickly realized that was not going to be the case. His messaging to boosters changed to support the inevitable “internal hire”. I honestly don’t think he had much decision making power here at all. But JW loves the school, loves its athletics and spent ten years trying to position it the best he could. Now he’s being forced out.

I wish Carparelli the best. It looks like the pieces are falling into place for what seems to be a series of solid decisions. But I caution that it also appears the choice of Head BB coach is being made for him…just something I’d keep an eye on..,
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Interesting read overall and especially the information in the final paragraph Jake, thanks for sharing .
 

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