department and make their own decisions about hiring and investing and everything else? Isn't it ironic that you think Tom is the one who has failed when you just wrote about how his own bosses have his department way down their list of things to care about? And yet they won't let the department run things better?

Gotta admit, there's some irony here. If it's down the list, just set them free to run things and leave people who have no business deciding on certain things in the athletic department, out of it. They shouldn't have as much of a hand in it as they do, if what you say is true. Quite a bit missing as far as you connecting the dots preventing inconsistency. And further ironic that you assume people think they need to be spending more time thinking about the athletic department. No, that's the point. They need to take their hand out of it and stop strong-arming the athletic director.