51percentcorn wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:03 pm
jhu7276 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:20 pm
Extremely disappointing and Daniels has to take the hit as Pres...(rant now over).
Still don't understand what Daniels should have done that he didn't do or did that he should not have done.
Should he have recognized that Petro was going 50 cal guns blazing on early recruiting and put a stop to it? Boy that's asking alot - while life is not bad for RD out in Montecito - alot of things cross a University President's desk these days and lacrosse is probably legitimately on the back burner. I still get back to the following:
- He let Petro have his season in 2013 when he could have stopped it
- The facility that was badly needed to put some street cred into the program's resources was built under his watch
- I have not heard of one example where a lacrosse recruit was denied admission evidenced by the fact that the all too full Hopkins early recruiting classes often had 90-100% enrollment and if players were lost it was likely due to poaching or Petro gently orchestrating things behind the scenes
Again give me a specific example of where his leadership failed the program - I freely admit I don't know anything to the contrary but nobody has produced anything to the contrary except that opinions that he has chased good profs/drs and administrators away which has nothing to do with lacrosse. You have my attention.
Here are FIVE:
1) Daniels pushed AD Tom Calder OUT. No successful AD like Tom suddenly has a desire to go into fundraising for a university at that point of your career, when you have a much more fun job at being an AD, around sports, and around the student-athletes. Fundraising is like prostitution, asking a bunch of old farts for money. There is NO WAY that was voluntary. Tom has, in fact, told me that it was time to move on and voluntary, but there are things you have to say after the deed is done to keep what job you have. I respected what Tom told me, but I know damn well he couldn’t tell me the full truth. And he’s got far more PR skills and smarts to keep his job than PM is exhibiting lately.
Long term - this has severely damaged the “Hopkins Brand” on the sports-related side of that Brand, because look what’s transpired since Calder got moved out. The Hopkins Brand absolutely DOES tie into fundraising, maybe not as a huge percentage compared to what a few major Bloombergesque gifts from dying people can do to inflate fundraising totals, but I’ve told my friends in Development for years to keep touting the sports-related Brand to Alumni. Now look where we are.
2) Daniels was behind the hiring of Shanihan. Look how that turned out. Penn connections. I was convinced at the time that I was looking at a hired hitman to do one main job: get rid of Petro. The way they made that staff walk the plank to the very end of their contract was cheap, BS and demeaning. Hopkins was too damn cheap to even buy them out a year earlier and give them ways to plan ahead with their lives.
Instead, not only did they make them walk the plank, which I figured meant they had a job until around Jun 30th, 2020, but HOLY HELL - apparently Petro’s contract had a statement in it that the contract concluded 30 days after the end of the season (or something to that effect), and with the season ended in mid-March due to COVID - they lowered the boom in mid-April, thirty days TO THE DAY (IIRC) after the MSM OT win.
That was just stone cold. Yeah, it might have been time for a change, but how Hopkins went about this was pathetic. I will not donate one further red cent to Hopkins because of this. No, I’m not Bloomberg. But I could have continued to contribute modest sums and healthy sums at death, but NFW now. That ship sailed. I’m contributing to the USNA instead, an institution that I respect.
3) Shanihan hires Baker. That might be one or two levels removed from Daniels, but it still has his fingerprints on it. He had to allow Shanihan to move away from being the AD so soon and letting an even newer AD be hired. Talk about moving away from Technique and Tradition. The best part of hiring Baker? Shanihan didn’t have to be the triggerman in the hit job on Petro and staff. The old adage: hire someone else to do your dirty work.
I hear Baker is good at PowerPoint presentations, especially those delivered to the NYC-area lacrosse alumni. And when her presentation makes no sense and her two coaches try to help her out by offering explanations to the attendees, what does Baker do? She calls the two coaches into her office back in Baltimore first thing the next morning to ream them out. Tucker and Petro put up with that crap - around DEC 2019. Fact. Would have liked to have been a fly on the wall for that. Here’s an upstart AD, reaming out two legendary coaches who have devoted most of their professional lives to Hopkins and supporting the many kids - student-athletes - in guiding them to become better people, great athletes, graduating, and staying the hell out of national headlines like Duke and Virginia. They represent The Brand.
That’s the state of Hopkins’ current front office leadership.
I contend it’s a bunch of newbies who have a severe lack of respect and no knowledge of the history that’s gone on before them, and they are making great strides in tearing down that great history. It’s their way or the highway.
4) Baker hires Milliman - a connection of hers from Cornell. Again - this definitely is a level or two away from Daniels, perhaps by design, see above, but I severely doubt he didn’t have it run up his flagpole and approved it before the hiring was done and announced. And it directly traces back through events 1 through 3 described above. It’s how we got to where we are today.
5) Daniels closed PJ’s. He and he alone killed it. And that is directly from Jerry Smith (RIP) to me, at the last Hopkins Fall Alumni event that I attended.
If you don’t know the significance of that, well, trust me. There’s a reason why Petro very respectfully referred to Jerry as Coach Smith at events. Jerry was a huge presence in the Hopkins sports world, with a huge heart, a friend to everyone, and I will forever miss him and what he did for the program.
Some of you can praise Daniels forever. I’m waiting for him to go away and rot in Montecito.
