Brad Edwards Named New Athletic Director

[wijg]

I have waited for the euphoria to settle down before I posted this as I didn't want to risk coming off as a d-bag (oh, wait...). I think it should spark some good discussion, or at least some flames toward me.

So BE just fired Hewitt and everyone is declaring him Big Balls Brad (and other imagery). While I am so in agreement with his decision you can't even imagine, was it really a move that shows he is making bold moves?. To me, it was a no brainer. We have fired failing coaches in the past at the end of their fourth out of five years on contract. And, Hewitt led the biggest downfall in our history. Hell, even O'Connor fired Paul the 1st in the same timing (Pablo please correct me if that is not statistically accurate). So, should we be idolizing BE for this move?

This got me thinking about what are the things we know about that he (or the AD) has done to date related to the Men's basketball program that we can give a report card on to date. Things that are fairly binary, I'll treat a pass fail. I know at least one of my grades below will be disputed, but here goes.

Survey of the fan base: A-. This is a small thing, but a great idea. Pretty good questions. It may have been timed perfectly to provide him the justification he needed for yesterday's action. Slight execution flaw in that it did not reach to and/or excluded those in our fan base that have stopped coming until Hewitt disappeared.

Handling of longevity bonus (P/F): I currently give him an F, but I am leaving the grade book open since other information may come to light (big donations, had a coach on the hook already and wanted a seamless transition) that exonerates him on this one. But the longer we go without a coach, the less likely we couldn't have fired Hewitt before the bonus was earned without messing up his plan.

Letter to Patriots: A-. This is another small thing, but I loved every word of it. It was a breath of fresh air. This is the kind of stuff I have wanted to hear out of Mason forever. I only ding him on it for one thing. Who did it go to? I am a season ticket holder and I did not get it?

Hiring New Coach: Incomplete currently, but the semester hasn't ended yet. This grade is likely worth 95% of his overall score, maybe even more

Anything else?

P.S. I fully hope and expect BE to be the greatest AD we have ever seen. This is not meant as a criticism or to question him as or AD. Just trying to look objectively to see if he has proven himself yet to be BBB.

 

[Walter]

Agreed. The final exam is worth a lot of points. Classroom participation is nice, but in the end it is alll about the final.

 

[mason2k1]

He was hired to turn this train wreck around, to make the hard decisions, the correct hires and to make us relevant again. #BBB

 

[Pikapppatri8]

Fair assessment. To date he level of communication and transparency is a huge improvement. It looks like he knows what he is doing. He has put forward a totally different vibe than what was presented before.


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[wijg]

I forgot to explicitly mention the grade for firing Hewitt (Pass/Fail): Pass. If he had fired him the day he started back in July, that would have been an A+ extra credit and meant instant BBB status, complete with a statue of him in front of the Bone Dome, I mean Patriot Center.

 

[Dawgs99]

Agree with everything but the longevity bonus issue. Brad obviously didn't put the provision in the contract so basically his hand were tied, what was he supposed to do? College coaches very rarely get fired during the season, and pretty much all that do are guilty of some sort of egregious infraction. So again I really don't see what could have been realistically done here. The blame here falls with TOC and that bullshit contract, Brad was just stuck to deal with it. IMO people are/were way over the top with their criticism of Brad with his handling of the bonus.

 

[disgruntled]

Fair assessment. The BBB comments seem odd given any sentient being could see that Hewitt needed to go. For me, it is all about who he gets to replace Hewitt. If he does land Howland I will immediately renew my season tickets (dormant for several years) and make a contribution. Doing what needs to be done does not constitute big balls for me, simply self preservation. The next hire is the statement for which we can evaluate BE.

Give me a hot assistant and I sit on the sidelines...smacks of complacent.

 

[Pablo]

Brad Edwards‏@BradEdwards5
.@MasonAthletics freshened up athletic fieldhouse looking good!

 

[Quentin Daniels]

Hiring New Coach: Incomplete currently, but the semester hasn't ended yet. This grade is likely worth 95% of his overall score, maybe even more

Incomplete? The coach has been hired. How can that be an incomplete?

Unless of course your grade is based upon an impossible standard of being able to see into the future and gauge performance in games that haven't been played. Mine is based on having a solid evaluation process that casts a wide net, is done in relative secrecy, and makes what is almost universally considered an excellent hire at the time for the position.

I'm giving him an A.

 

[A.-Siegfried]

Please tell me you were joking here QD. Look at the date of the post when he gave BE and incomplete. Paulsen hadn't been hired yet.

Sooo......

 

[Quentin Daniels]

Please tell me you were joking here QD. Look at the date of the post when he gave BE and incomplete. Paulsen hadn't been hired yet.

Sooo......

Sooo.....

I'm tempted to delete the post and pretend like I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[GMUgemini]

Please tell me you were joking here QD. Look at the date of the post when he gave BE and incomplete. Paulsen hadn't been hired yet.

Sooo......

Though, it would be interesting to see how wijg would grad Edwards now.

 

[wijg]

Though, it would be interesting to see how wijg would grad Edwards now.

He gets an A for the most important aspect, hiring a new basketball coach. Everything I have read about and heard from Coach Paulsen leads me to believe that he was the right choice and will be successful at Mason.

I give BE extra credit for signing the Eagle Bank deal. That cancels out the longevity bonus issue that I had downgraded him on, and then some. Closing this deal in less than year after taking over is impressive.

I give him an A for addressing most of Five-Two's issues like the location of the student section closer to the opposing team bench and closer to the court, overall, and strategically located at the end of game end of the court.

I give him an A- for the season ticket holder rewards program that was recently announced. The only points deducted were for similar issues with some of the other communications. While you do need to let your season ticket holders know you appreciate them, you also need to make non-season ticket holders aware of these things as well in order to grow the fan base.

So, his overall grade is a solid A. I really couldn't be much more happy with what I have seen to date.

Now, he can't rest on his accomplishments so far, and I wouldn't expect him to do so. Some of what I would like to see going forward, is a lot of outreach to students to try to fill those student sections up. That will help with atmosphere and home court advantage. Along with that, is more outreach to potential new (or lapsed) season ticket holders. Other, longer term, things I would like to see include: improvements to the arena starting with the locker room, possible practice facility, video score board, possibly box seats.

 

[Pikapppatri8]

I have not come across one story related to moves made by BBB to make me go - WTF??!!??

Given the coaching hire and the attention he has paid to even the small issues identified on these boards. I give the man an A and a strong bro-hug.

I feel much better about where we are now than we were before he came to Mason.

Give the man an A and throw some drunk coeds into the back of his car.

 

[masonnatswiz]

Brad Edwards has done nothing to make me think he is anything yet to make himself earn a title of BBB. Yes anyone is better than the peice of S&*t TOC, but what has brad done? Fired a coach anyone would have. Ok. Hiring the what 4th or 5th choice for BBall coach, Cool. Naming an arena, well that was in the works before he got there. Addias, ok, thats all him. I do like his non basketball hire aka jessy morgan (wlax), and the wsoc and w vol coaches. He has done nothing with the dead weight in the AD department thou. Jay Marsh, Ron Shayka, Nena Rogers, and Sue Collins, most of the Assoc AD's are all useless. Its not 1980 anymore. Fix the department and maybe he will get credit but do some thing first. Then the nick name. I hope he proves me wrong.

 

[A.-Siegfried]

Brad Edwards has done nothing to make me think he is anything yet to make himself earn a title of BBB. Yes anyone is better than the peice of S&*t TOC, but what has brad done? Fired a coach anyone would have. Ok. Hiring the what 4th or 5th choice for BBall coach, Cool. Naming an arena, well that was in the works before he got there. Addias, ok, thats all him. I do like his non basketball hire aka jessy morgan (wlax), and the wsoc and w vol coaches. He has done nothing with the dead weight in the AD department thou. Jay Marsh, Ron Shayka, Nena Rogers, and Sue Collins, most of the Assoc AD's are all useless. Its not 1980 anymore. Fix the department and maybe he will get credit but do some thing first. Then the nick name. I hope he proves me wrong.

You lost me when you called Jay Marsh "useless". You either A) have zero idea of what anyone does in the athletic department or B) have zero idea of what anyone does in the athletic department. In either case, you should ask around Mason and see how "useless" Jay Marsh is.

 

[gmubball09]

Yea, you definitely don't know anything about our Athletic Department if you think Jay is useless. That man is far, far FAR from that.

 

[Walter]

I think we all agree that only in time will we know if Brad truly deserves the "BBB" moniker. However, most of us like what we have seen so far.

 

[Pikapppatri8]

Brad Edwards has done nothing to make me think he is anything yet to make himself earn a title of BBB. Yes anyone is better than the peice of S&*t TOC, but what has brad done? Fired a coach anyone would have. Ok. Hiring the what 4th or 5th choice for BBall coach, Cool. Naming an arena, well that was in the works before he got there. Addias, ok, thats all him. I do like his non basketball hire aka jessy morgan (wlax), and the wsoc and w vol coaches. He has done nothing with the dead weight in the AD department thou. Jay Marsh, Ron Shayka, Nena Rogers, and Sue Collins, most of the Assoc AD's are all useless. Its not 1980 anymore. Fix the department and maybe he will get credit but do some thing first. Then the nick name. I hope he proves me wrong.

OK I have to take some issue with this. Under the old AD and University President - Hewitt is still here book it and gets a renewal based on "only two really bad years". I doubt the Patriot Center Naming rights deal would have gone down under TOC/Merten and the level of communication we have now is heads and tails above what we ever had. We now have an AD that seems normal and not the "unique experience" we had previously. Paulsen was one of the top three targeted for the coaching position and we got him and he is a vast improvement over the virus. If you think the firing of Hewitt would have been what anybody would have done - look to JMU and see their tale of woe.

 

[wijg]

Brad Edwards has done nothing to make me think he is anything yet to make himself earn a title of BBB. Yes anyone is better than the peice of S&*t TOC, but what has brad done? Fired a coach anyone would have. Ok. Hiring the what 4th or 5th choice for BBall coach, Cool. Naming an arena, well that was in the works before he got there. Addias, ok, thats all him. I do like his non basketball hire aka jessy morgan (wlax), and the wsoc and w vol coaches. He has done nothing with the dead weight in the AD department thou. Jay Marsh, Ron Shayka, Nena Rogers, and Sue Collins, most of the Assoc AD's are all useless. Its not 1980 anymore. Fix the department and maybe he will get credit but do some thing first. Then the nick name. I hope he proves me wrong.

While I disagree with much of your assessment above, I am a partially in agreement with you about BE and earning the nick name BBB. That was why I started my little sub-thread about giving him a grade on his first year to date.

Much like the players for the last 4 years, I find it hard to assess the performance of the individuals in the athletic department under the former leadership duo. I think there has been a definite change in the athletic department, at least from an outside observers perspective, since BE has taken the reins. I can only think that means that BE and AC have given them new marching orders and they are now marching in the correct direction.

I don't have intimate inside knowledge about the Eagle Bank deal and the timing of negotiations. I do know that naming the Patriot Center has been in the works for a very long time, but just never seemed to get to completion. Maybe it is coincidence that it finally happened now that BE is the AD, but there have been a lot of good coincidences since he has started.

So, while there is not one single event I can point to that causes me to say, wow, that was a huge move that took big balls to make that call, I think the sum of his work at least earns him our respect, if not the BBB nick name. While I still disagree with the longevity bonus decision, I understand it and accept it as his way of doing business, a way that appears in these early stages to be taking us in the right direction. I also appreciate that he did not come in and just wipe the slate clean; that he took the time and effort to see how the department functions under his leadership, and to make only the changes necessary after that. In some ways, it might have been easier to have done the opposite on both of the above actions.

So, I will admit there is at least an argument to be made that he is earning the nick name through a steady and determined progression of small and medium sized changes, rather than with one huge, jarring change.