What has Sterk done well? He's made so many mistakes...

Posted on: February 5, 2021 at 16:07:53 CT

I've lost track.

Here's just a few off the top of my head...

• He completely mishandled the Yolanda situation which had severe consequences for 3 of our athletic programs, including football, and cost the AD at least $10M — probably closer to $20M. Then he lost the appeal after wasting millions of dollars on legal fees and that stupid "Make It Right" campaign.

• He fired one of the most successful coaches we've ever had, following a sham "investigation" that he launched purely for PC reasons.

• He gave Cuonzo an iron-clad contract that made it prohibitively expensive (i.e. virtually impossible) to fire him for at least 6 years, no matter how poorly he does.

• He gave Odom, an FCS-caliber head coach, multiple raises & extensions.

• He couldn't find a suitable replacement for Odom. The BoC had to intervene in the process after Sterk's list of candidates leaked, and fortunately they bailed him out by finding Drinkwitz at the last minute (although, we had to substantially overpay due to the position Sterk had put us in).

• He spends excessively on sports that don't matter. Our football budget is still absurdly low relative to our AD budget and deserves a much greater percentage of the overall budget (see: http://www.tigerboard.com/boards/view.php?message=17325972 ).

• He's gotten into embarrassing public feuds with other SEC institutions, notably South Carolina and its women's basketball coach.

Overall, he has extremely poor judgment and isn't fit to be the AD of an SEC school with a top 30 budget nationally (soon to be top 25 with the SEC's new ABC/ESPN deal factored in).