Thanks to Brooks for his comments regarding UC:

There are some less than ethical things happening at UC right now. First is the suspension of Jihad (Muhammed) and James (White). According to NCAA rules the suspensions do not take effect until the start of the next quarter or semester. UC’s quarter did not start until today. The question now is why did the University do this? Well the answer is Mick Cronin. Mick was going to be offered the job at Ole Miss that day. Mike Thomas (AD) must have decieded to get this season over so they could hire who they wanted, therefore handing down an early suspension to our two key players. (Side note: they still almost beat South Carolina. That would have really been funny then!). Mick Cronin will be a great coach for UC and will being us back to the limelight in 2-3 years. He is a great recruiter and a great coach. We will be fine.

Second non-ethical thing on Friday, as Nancy Zimpher was interviewing at Northwestern to become the next President there. Her two year contract is up at the end of this year. Her lawyer cited that she has burned too many bridges here in Cincinnati. That previous comment makes sense because of the following: UC is in financial trouble. The endowment maybe the largest it ever has been, but donations are way, way, way down from where they should be. The new residental housing erected on Calhoun St., Stratford Heights, and across from the Medical college is at 20% occupencey. This low rate does not generate enough revenue for the monies allocated to cover the construction and now have all been dried up. The general fee has to pay for this construction. That is not good because UC must spend money allocated to run the University to pay for previous construction. This has led to a hiring problem. Nancy’s UC21 plan says to increase the level of education through hiring more renowned faculty. UC has tried this but is usually $15,000 to $20,000 too low on its offers to new faculty. This can only be attributed to a lack of funds.

It is my belief that someone within the Board of Directors wanted some dirty work taken care of so they hired someone who’d do that and then leave. If you stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. Why would you hire someone to run a Division 1 35,000 student university with a minority population of 22% where it is the largest employer in the city and second largest employer in the state, whoes only experience is with a 5,000 student Division 3 university in the middle of Wisconsin? She has no experience with a university of this magnitude.

The University of Cincinnati is the largest employer in the city and the second largest employer in the state (next to the Ohio State University). With the firing of Bob Huggins, many of UC’s problems that he helped control have come to light. Bob brought in a great deal of money for the University through donations and media contracts. Many people in this city were educated here, their children where educated here, P&G (the second largest employer in Cincinnati) gets most of its employees from here, General Electric gets most if its engineers from UC, the list goes on and on. The effects are much farther reaching than just a basketball coach. It is the livelyhood of families that could be touched.