I knew it would happen. After the Lyin' Mike Anderson packed his bags and scurried off to Arkansas and MU swang and missed on Matt Painter, the Mike Alden haters came out in full force. If you read message boards, and I read a lot of them, you'll hear people bitching about how embarrassed they are that Alden is the head of the athletic department at the school they claim to love. Now if you've read this blog often, or much at all for that matter, then you know I'm an Alden fan. I've met him several times and have always been treated very well, and no, I'm not a huge $$$ booster by any means. I just happen to believe that he's done a very good job at a place where it isn't easy to have success considering the financial restraints the university operates under.
Alden took over as athletic director on July 16th, 1998 after Joe Castiglione left for greener pastures in Norman, Oklahoma citing a lack of support from an administration that had deemed that athletics simply weren't important enough compared with the academics the university wanted to be known for. It had been a problem since the 70's when then chancellor Barbara (Babs) Uehling basically ran Dan Devine out of CoMO, giving him zero support. That started a 30 year slide of Missouri football. When he arrived there was sort of a mini revival under then head coach Larry Smith, but that was dying just as he arrived, and some of the worst losses in memory happened during his last 2 years. All Alden did was go out and hire an unknown guy from Toledo named Gary Pinkel to take over and he's going to be the winningest coach in Missouri history by the time he retires.
Several things have happened, at least in my opinion that have turned a portion of the fan base against Alden. The first was the firing of Norm Stewart after he spent 32 years coaching the Tigers. Now I loved Norm. He was about all we had during those dark days of the football program, but he'd lost his zest for coaching and it was really time for him to go. It also brought a 25 million dollar donation from Bill Laurie toward the construction of Mizzou Arena, one of the finest basketball venue's in the country. Sadly, it also brough Quin Snyder from Duke, who spent 7 years dragging down the program until, he was fired in a clumsy manner, that, again in my opinion was the lowlight of Alden's career. A segment of the fans also blame him for the Big Ten expansion last summer, but anyone that really follows how these things work should know that was something being decided by people way over Alden's pay grade.
Right now, the basketball program is absolutely in a perilous position. No coach and no recruits courtesy of Mike Anderson. But the majority of sports are doing quite well, and Alden has made some good if not great hires in addition to Coach Pinkel. I know it isn't a popular notion right now, but I have faith in Alden to make a good hire. The fact of the matter is, that with the fan support, Missouri just isn't perceived to be as good a job as many of us feel that it is. I hope things are going well, and want to thank you guys for reading. I've been averaging over 2,500 hits a month on this blog and am starting to do better at my website, merlinsedge.com. In addition to the stores, I've added a news and sports page titled
current events. It's full of articles and columns about Mizzou athletics by real writers like Mike DeArmond and his son Gabe who runs an excellent Missouri site, PowerMizzou, as well as guys like Bryan Burwell and Bernie Miklasz from St Louis today. Please stop by and let me know what you think. It's still a work in progress, but I'm actually pretty happy with how it's turning out.
Lost in the shuffle of the opening day loss, 4-2 to the Los Angeles Angels, something we're probably going to see a lot of this season, was the reopening of the George Brett Bridge in time for the first pitch. It was really remarkable to me that the contractor, Clarkson Construction was able to get this done in the time allotted. The bridge was imploded on January 14th, following the Chiefs final game, which was later than expected following a season that included a home playoff game. Had the bridge, with it's I 70 access not been completed in time, it would have been all that much tougher a sell to get people into Kauffman Stadium. Realistically the Royals could struggle to avoid losing 100 games again this year. But it does make it easier for us to make a snap decision to head out to the park on a warm summer evening.
