I thought that the Big Ten proposal to give Jim Delany some sort of say so over firing coaches was more about taking control away from the NCAA than anything else.
Jeebus, was I wrong about that.
One person I talked to mentioned another proposal that didn’t make it into the document. The idea, which Delany outlined for a Big Ten athletic official during this year’s bowl season, would give the commissioner even broader authority to help institutions make coaching decisions.
Expressing frustration at bad hires that certain Big Ten institutions had made, which had led to NCAA violations and other problems, Delany said he thought he could do a better job of vetting candidates. He also believed he could pull the trigger sooner on coaches whose poor behavior could damage the Big Ten’s reputation.
For those reasons, he thought it would be “useful” if he had the authority to make hiring, firing, and evaluation decisions involving football and men’s basketball coaches.
“He wanted to offer that he would play a very central role in hiring and managing the power coaches in the conference—that the commissioner would be insulated from boosters and campus politics,” this person said…
Well, we all like to be “useful”.
Seriously, when Delany walks, how does he keep his balls from clanging too loudly?
Get The Picture 
Because Mike Slive keeps them ‘tell ‘Ol Jimbo REALLY needs them.
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I hope The Big Teneleven does this. Delaney has been successful, but even a successful megalomaniac is still a megalomaniac. Approving this would be the ultimate downfall of the conference.
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Put Mike Adams and Delany in a small room, now I would have time for that shit.
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Again, such a setup simply would not be legal in the state of Georgia. The SEC and the University system are separate entities. I don’t see the USG being willing to turn personnel decisions over to someone who doesn’t even work for them. Not sure why other schools and systems would feel differently. I’ve always thought Delaney was a particularly unique kind of idiot. Now I realize I seriously underestimated the sheer depth of his egocentric dumbassery.
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Lord Acton approves.
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+1, good suh…
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I didn’t comment on this yesterday, but I can’t resist the urge today. The notion that a conference commissioner could fire a coach at a member school is as insane as anything I’ve heard in a while. And, since this is an election year, that’s really saying something. I can’t even begine to enumerate the idiocies involved or the Pandora’s Boxes which would be blown open by it.
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Delany doesnt worry about how loud his balls are.
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I hope this wakes some folks up about what kind of a person Delany truly is. Previously, when he did something like pooh-poohing night games or defending the Rose Bowl at all costs or even slagging the SEC, you could still make a tenuous defense that, well, the man’s just looking out for the good of his conference. But it’s becoming more and more clear that Jim Delany is only looking out for the good of Jim Delany.
But is this a case of Delany having King Kong balls, or is he really just panicking here? I don’t mean to trivialize the Sandusky horror here, but it seemed to be a black eye not just for Penn State but for the whole conference, in that it blew up all of Delany’s moral superiority and the image he was trying to sell of the B1G “doing things the right way” in contrast to conferences such as the venal, mercenary SEC. If you look at it one way, this could be just a massive overreaction in the service of damage control — i.e. “I’m SO outraged by this that I’m going to take it upon myself to punish the schools that besmirch our image and/or whip them into shape.” Of course, even so, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it would massively expand Delany’s personal powers.
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I’d argue that the Ohio State Tatgate did more to blow up that image than anything that Penn State did or, in the case of Joe Paterno, didn’t do.
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“Legends” indeed….
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I think it’s even more specific than that. I think this all stems from his outrage over being used to defend Ohio State playing in the Sugar Bowl and then looking like an idiot in the aftermath.
If there’s one thing you shouldn’t do in the Big Ten, it’s make Jim Delany look stupid.
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This sums it up nicely…
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Nice commissioner y’all have up there, Big Ten.
I would have loved to have seen the reaction if Jim Delaney had tried to block Ohio State from hiring Urban Meyer because of the potential damage he could do to the Big Ten’s vaunted reputation. I am not sure win which city the Big Ten is headquartered, but I do know that city would burned down.
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So the two most visible cases of embarrassment in that region of the country can be attributed to Joe Paterno and Jim Tressel (Lord knows what else has been swept under the rug over the past few decades in those 10/11/12 schools). Would Delany have us believe his vetting process would have driven him to block their hires? Really? Another Emperor from Chicago that knows what is best for us children. Thank you Massah.
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Legally I don’t think the Big 10 can do this. These are, for the most part, state institutions. So the Big 10 thinks it can usurp hiring decisions from the Administration at a State Uinversity? Good luck with that one. The first time Delaney tries that and the school says “no” to him and the Big 10 tries to discipline that institution there will be hell to pay in court.
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Hopefully we look back on this as Jim’s Jump the Shark moment.
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+10000.
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If he decides to fire a coach from a university and the school has to pay a big buyout because of it is the Big-1x going to step in and pay the buyout on the contract?
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