[Mick]

Hopefully the stink is gone and great candidates are willing to come here

I wouldn't count on the stink being gone.  Our major, major problem is that Bernard Muir is still here. 

Muir fired John Rittman, who led Stanford to 16 NCAA appearances in 18 seasons.  He did it for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that the coach falsified time entries, showing 20 hours of practice in weeks when the actual average was 21 hours per week, a clear violation.  Muir also welcomed a player parent rebellion that expressly excluded players who supported the coach.  Not only that, he didn't tell the coach or invite the coach to participate.  At best, he was asleep at the switch when Rittman filed time reports.  Essentially, an end run was planned by two parents of softball players with comparatively little playing time, it was successful and Muir didn't so much let it happen as welcome it.

According to a sports reporter acquaintance of mine who reported on Stanford's softball coach search, four highly-qualified softball coaches essentially laughed at Stanford's entreaties.  Muir's solution was to hire softball's version of  Buddy Teveens, a former Dartmouth coach who crashed spectacularly.  Four conference wins in three seasons.  Team strife that Hanson tried to clamp down on, leading the best players to leave.  Literally unbelievable.

I've thought a lot about the nature of marginal senior management who need to find top-notch candidates.  A friend of mine is an "A" list CMO, one of the titans of our profession, who literally wrote the book on business development.  He once took a job working for a genuinely bad guy, a boss who had a number of execrable habits...among them, like Muir, he encouraged the end run.  I, and other friends of his told him his future boss had a terrible reputation, but the money was good, so he took it.  It was a very, very long 19 months, and after he resigned, they weren't able to hire anyone for more than a year.  I literally laughed when they called me.  After about a year, they hired a "plan B" CMO.  Even he quit after a year, and they have never been able to replace him since.  Toxic management prevents great hires, or as my first boss once told me,  "1s hire 1s and 2s hire 3s."

Muir is exceptionally fortunate in two ways; first, the coaching communities of most Sears Cup sports are in silos, meaning they depend upon each other almost exclusively for information and opportunities.  The gymnastics coach, in other words, will not provide substantial independent information on the experience of working for Muir.  Secondly, Stanford largely sells itself.  I've listened to the pitch, it's pretty darned great.  Stanford is a singular experience, and represents a uniquely appealing option for Sears/Director's Cup athletes who otherwise could not expect to matriculate at a top-flight university.  In other words, if you're a coach and actively recruiting, you don't just have the wind at your back, you have a tornado at your back.

At the same time, recruiting isn't enough, or Hanson would have been successful.  It is mission critical that the actual coaching be superb when competing with Pac-12 level teams.

I genuinely hope we get an A-list coach.  I'm not confident.

[Mick]

Hopefully the stink is gone and great candidates are willing to come here

I wouldn't count on the stink being gone.  Our major, major problem is that Bernard Muir is still here. 

Muir fired John Rittman, who led Stanford to 16 NCAA appearances in 18 seasons.  He did it for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that the coach falsified time entries, showing 20 hours of practice in weeks when the actual average was 21 hours per week, a clear violation.  Muir also welcomed a player parent rebellion that expressly excluded players who supported the coach.  Not only that, he didn't tell the coach or invite the coach to participate.  At best, he was asleep at the switch when Rittman filed time reports.  Essentially, an end run was planned by two parents of softball players with comparatively little playing time, it was successful and Muir didn't so much let it happen as welcome it.

According to a sports reporter acquaintance of mine who reported on Stanford's softball coach search, four highly-qualified softball coaches essentially laughed at Stanford's entreaties.  Muir's solution was to hire softball's version of  Buddy Teveens, a former Dartmouth coach who crashed spectacularly.  Four conference wins in three seasons.  Team strife that Hanson tried to clamp down on, leading the best players to leave.  Literally unbelievable.

I've thought a lot about the nature of marginal senior management who need to find top-notch candidates.  A friend of mine is an "A" list CMO, one of the titans of our profession, who literally wrote the book on business development.  He once took a job working for a genuinely bad guy, a boss who had a number of execrable habits...among them, like Muir, he encouraged the end run.  I, and other friends of his told him his future boss had a terrible reputation, but the money was good, so he took it.  It was a very, very long 19 months, and after he resigned, they weren't able to hire anyone for more than a year.  I literally laughed when they called me.  After about a year, they hired a "plan B" CMO.  Even he quit after a year, and they have never been able to replace him since.  Toxic management prevents great hires, or as my first boss once told me,  "1s hire 1s and 2s hire 3s."

Muir is exceptionally fortunate in two ways; first, the coaching communities of most Sears Cup sports are in silos, meaning they depend upon each other almost exclusively for information and opportunities.  The gymnastics coach, in other words, will not provide substantial independent information on the experience of working for Muir.  Secondly, Stanford largely sells itself.  I've listened to the pitch, it's pretty darned great.  Stanford is a singular experience, and represents a uniquely appealing option for Sears/Director's Cup athletes who otherwise could not expect to matriculate at a top-flight university.  In other words, if you're a coach and actively recruiting, you don't just have the wind at your back, you have a tornado at your back.

At the same time, recruiting isn't enough, or Hanson would have been successful.  It is mission critical that the actual coaching be superb when competing with Pac-12 level teams.

I genuinely hope we get an A-list coach.  I'm not confident.