Here's the recap of Fitz's interview with Kevin Kietzman on "Between the Lines"...
- Are you surprised it took this long for Currie to leave?
He's been looking for well over a year. I think he's ready to make the next step in career. Apparently, he's been on the hook for jobs recently and this one seemed to work to his advantage.
The UNC AD bailed out of it and that opened the door. We heard this morning he was emerging as a candidate and an hour later, he was the guy. He's come full circle now- heading back to Knoxville.
- Thoughts on the reaction from K-State fans. Seems opposite of most reactions when losing an athletic director.
Well, he came in with a specific job and that was to fix the mess he inherited from a budget and leadership standpoint, most of which was just out of disorganization and a lack of planning. He attacked it with gusto and things have been greatly upgraded; those missions were accomplished.
Lately, he was undermining his own good work though by meddling in his employees affairs and getting between people and their good jobs. It was going on with Frank Martin and it's been going on with Bill Snyder too. Throughout the whole department of coaches, I think there's a sense of relief that John Currie has moved on. He'd gone into destructive mode in terms of handling personnel by micro-managing.
- What happens next in regards to the position?
I thought it was interesting in today's announcement that Laird Veatch was named "acting" and not "interim". Not sure there's anything to that though.
I've had a number of prominent donors call me already about Chad Weiberg, the Deputy AD at Texas Tech. Chad is an Oklahoma State guy who spent a lot of time in Manhattan.
There's really no shortage of candidates. Sean Snyder is a guy who comes up as an organizer and is so prominent with football. He also carries the title of Associate AD already.
Seems that hiring an AD may be much more simple than hiring a football or basketball coach.
- How will President Myers proceed with all of this?
With that "acting" tag, I don't know if he's empowered Veatch to do things with the basketball program if he feels necessary or not, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.
I'm unclear on where this leaves things with Weber and the basketball program; it's a bit of a gray area. Many people have asked what happens with hoops, but I just don't know. We're going to try and find out over the next several days.
- Is there any truth to things I've heard about Weber going to President Meyers saying his job could be done better without Currie? That Currie was meddling too much in basketball?
That is a possibility.
I will say this: I think the biggest misconception fans have had is that Weber and Currie are two peas in a pod. Currie may have hired Weber, but they're not. Weber has had similar complaints to Frank Martin and Bill Snyder of Currie getting into the day to day operations, talking to players, etc. and almost throwing discontent at times. I've never heard of such a thing happening like it has at K-State.
I doubt Weber is upset that Currie is gone. One thing that's frustrated all the coaches isn't that Currie wants to enforce or play by the rules implemented by the NCAA, but more Currie creating his own rules. That's even trickled down to me and enforcing things with me and radio entities that aren't even on the books. So I know there are some things coaches can't or couldn't do simply because Currie didn't want them to.
- It seems moving forward that you're either considered a Currie guy or Snyder guy in athletics. Laird Veatch is in weird spot because he's tied to both. Where does he fall?
I guess I'm not equipped to answer that because I don't know daily operations up there. I'd venture to guess Bill Snyder knows though.
I don't think anyone would want to be viewed right now as being a "Currie guy" though because you're definitely going to suffer the consequences in furthering your career here.
From talking to people, I could see Weiberg quickly emerging as the guy but I could also see him waiting for the possibility of a position opening at Oklahoma State.
It's going to be very interesting because we could be hiring an AD and a men's basketball coach very near to one another.
- What do you hear about the future of football and if that's changed any?
I think this does have an impact.
Not sure Sean is interested in AD position but I think he's someone worthy of looking into.
A lot of people put too much stock into duties of the AD. You're a leader and you have to have people around you to handle things like fundraising, compliance, etc. That all seems to fit Sean better than being the head football coach.
I do know this for a fact: Bill Snyder was going to do everything within his power, including battling cancer, to prevent retiring and therefore putting Currie in a place to hire his successor. I feel comfortable coming out and saying this now but it got ugly. Coach might deny that, but the relationship had been destroyed.
The irony in saying that is I think they both want Leavitt. That's just my suspicion. Honestly, I wonder if the constant pushing by Bill to promote Sean as coach was a tweak of the nose at Currie. That's my instinct. I think they both liked Leavitt, but Snyder didn't want Currie to get one ounce of credit making that decision. Currie met (Leavitt) at the Hall of Fame induction for Coach and overnight became enamored with him despite blocking him from coming back to fill roles on the program in years past.
So, who knows. Maybe Snyder comes around this spring and says let's do it now- I don't know. I do think we're much closer to those types of decisions than we were this morning when Currie was AD.
- If that takes place, do you think Snyder will take the new hire personally and ensure to make this transition work? I know he was involved somewhat in the interviewing of Ron Prince and we know how that ended.
Last time around, if you recall in 2005, the consensus was with Leavitt. At the time, Jim felt like he wasn't in position to leave USF for personal and professional reasons. Looking back, it probably would've saved controversy in his career had he moved on to K-State. Anyway, they went to a wider search from there which included Ron Prince.
Upon meeting Prince, President Wefald and Bob Krause were very focused on him. They decided he was the guy but wanted Snyder to sit down and talk X&O's to see if he knew football. As far as I know, that's the only thing Snyder ever signed off on. After all, the problem was never not knowing football with Prince- it was his personality.
In fact, there are a lot of similarities with Prince to what we witnessed with Currie. They were both very confrontational and didn't fit the lifestyle of Manhattan.
- Finally, you wrote a piece on GoPowercat explaining your opinion on the future of basketball. Can you reflect more on your reasons why this year should be it for Weber?
I do think enough is enough. Part of that column started off with the fact that they could still make the NCAA Tournament. Wednesday, I'll be at TCU and that's a huge game when it comes to those implications. I've heard Joe Lunardi say it's an elimination game but I still don't think they are completely out if they lose. That's the issue this year -- the bubble is so bad.
My argument to that is Weber shouldn't get to save his job simply because the field is so watered down with mediocrity; he shouldn't benefit from that. We all see the product, we all see the players quitting at Oklahoma and getting beat by 30.
What a lot of people aren't talking about is I'm seeing body language that's seemed to spiral since the game at Iowa State. The team is not as cohesive as they were early in the year. There's a ton of "I gotta get mine" type stuff among players. When players don't show up for postgame press conference, and all you wanna do is get on the bus, that tells me you're not being held accountable by the head coach and being sheltered too much. This team seems to lack leadership from the top down.
I've seen enough and I stand by what I said in ending it right now and letting Chris Lowery take it from here for the rest of the season. What happens with Currie puts all that on hold. Weber lives to fight another day, maybe another year. I'm intrigued to see how it plays out.
