A Message from Jerrell Powe to Ole Miss from Forward Rebels on Vimeo.

Do you want another reason to like Athletic Director Ross Bjork?

Rebel fans have listened happily as Athletic Director Bjork has said all the things that fans have been desperate to hear from a leader.  He specifically addressed our former players, some of whom were mistreated in the past, at his press conference saying, "Anyone who has worn the red and blue is always welcome at Ole Miss."  He has talked about Ole Miss's goals and only said that he plans to accelerate and exceed them.  It has been extraordinarily refreshing!

AD Bjork has inherited a long list of issues in Ole Miss Athletics, but he obviously sees those not as problems but as opportunities.  That is leadership.

One of the problems Bjork inherited was in regard to Ole Miss legend Jennifer Gillom.  We posted previously about Gillom's outstanding resume, and we have also been contacted by many close to the situation about the previous AD's handling of Jennifer's interest in the Lady Rebels basketball opening.  In spite of the fact that Jennifer is undoubtedly the greatest female athlete to ever set foot on campus, Jennifer was contacted only by telephone and summarily told that she would not even be considered because she did not meet the criteria, criteria which were set by that same administration.  She was not given even a courtesy interview, and, rightfully so, this caused a great deal of consternation among many.

Enter Ross Bjork.  Before even taking office, Athletic Director Bjork immediately made personal contact with Jennifer and explained the situation in detail with her.  Although Ole Miss has hired Fresno State's Adrian Wiggins as the new women's coach, Bjork spoke at length with Jennifer and assured her that he had thoroughly reviewed all the candidates.  He worked diligently and sincerely to ensure that Ole Miss did not lose the support of the first family of women's sports at Ole Miss.  He succeeded.

This type of class, respect, and attention to all fans and supporters - all of Ole Miss - is certainly reason for hope at Ole Miss!

Image: friendsoftheprogram.net

Forward Rebels welcomes Athletic Director Ross Bjork to Oxford and Ole Miss, and we congratulate all Ole Miss fans on finally having the opportunity to move forward with Ole Miss Sports.

Fifteen months ago, tens of thousands of Ole Miss fans came together and demanded better for Ole Miss. You all demanded an end to the cronyism, elitism and self-serving bureaucracy that had crippled Ole Miss sports. You demanded, in no uncertain terms, a nationwide search to replace our Athletic Director. It took our Chancellor seven months to relent from his support of our former AD, but thanks to the committee’s diligent work, Ole Miss fans are finally first! And, for the first time since Chancellor Khayat took office, our Chancellor can appropriately step out of athletics and back into the Lyceum.

Bjork is not the “M Club favorite,” the “Lyceum’s favorite,” or any other meaningless designation. He is the FAN favorite! Congratulations to every Ole Miss fan! We ARE Ole Miss, and we support Athletic Director Bjork as he takes the reins and moves us forward.

Director Bjork has a huge task in front of him, and we look to him to heal the Ole Miss fan base following the fifteen year nightmare that was his predecessor’s tenure. Every Ole Miss fan is an appropriate stakeholder in her future, and the Ole Miss family is an extremely diverse group of people with wonderful senses of pride. We look forward to Director Bjork treating all fans, of all viewpoints, with the respect and dignity that they deserve. Mutual respect and civil disagreement are vital to mass unity, and Ole Miss has simply lacked the leadership to foster this unity.

Like a biohazard crew cleaning up after a hoarder, Director Bjork also has a mountain of work to do in cleaning up the Ole Miss athletic department, and his record at WKU shows that he is just the man for the job. Did you know that Ole Miss has 36% of Alabama’s athletic budget, but our athletic department employs 75% as many people? Did you know that Ole Miss is the only SEC school to not turn a profit in sports last year? Did you know that we have at least five Associate ADs who are forced to work alongside their “retired” predecessors who continue to collect a check as Emeritus Associate ADs and bear the exact same, redundant, title? Did you know that our retired academic faculty and staff get no such special treatment? It’s time for all this to change!

It is no wonder that we could not move forward when even our newest leaders were anchored – cemented – to the past. It has become a common joke at Ole Miss that “you don’t get fired from Ole Miss; you just get moved down the hall.” Ole Miss is a public university, and, when a person retires, all special athletic compensation and perks should end immediately, just like every professor on campus. Ole Miss cannot afford the golden parachutes any longer, and the taxpayers in Mississippi should not have to pay for them. We cannot wait for Director Bjork to trim the fattened staff and turn Ole Miss into the lean fighting machine it has to be to compete with the giants nearby!

Now, Forward Rebels! You did it, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise! But, it is now time to lay down your pitchforks and pick up your pom poms. Director Bjork needs our support, and it is our duty to give it to him. We saw the piles of mail tallying the massive donations being withheld, and we are certain that those will now pour in. They will not be “from Forward Rebels;” they will be from One Ole Miss! And as it should be. Ole Miss has currently only raised a portion of its philanthropic goals, and we look forward to seeing that number skyrocket in the coming months. This was never about individuals, control, or glory. It was about our leaders, finally, putting Ole Miss before self. Putting…

Ole Miss First!

For a PDF of this press release, click here.
(Image Courtesy: WKU SID)

This is just exciting.

Finally, some wonderful news for Ole Miss’s numerous leadership searches.  Jennifer Gillom IS indeed interested in the Ole Miss women’s basketball head coaching job, and she meets the criteria to a tee.  Jennifer Gillom is probably the most dynamic and successful female athlete ever to set foot on Ole Miss’s campus, and for her to be willing to return here to coach is an amazing break.

Gillom was recently asked to return to be a coach for the 2012 USA Olympic Women’s Basketball team in a few months, so her hiring would be an absolute slam dunk!

Coach Gillom’s credentials are so incredible that they are best listed in bullet form.  Just look at this resume!

• Six year WNBA star
• All-WNBA Award Winner
• Olympic Gold Medal Winner
• Pan American Games Gold Medal Winner
• Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee
• Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inductee
• Two-time WNBA Head Coach (LA Sparks and Minnesota Lynx)
• Two-time WNBA Assistant Coach (Washington Mystics and Minnesota Lynx)
• Two-time USA Women’s Basketball Olympic Assistant Coach
• Pan American Games Assistant Coach
• 1985 USA Basketball Female Athlete of the Year
• Six gold medals and one silver medal as member of USA Basketball
• 103-23 record playing for Ole Miss including four NCAA tournaments, two Sweet Sixteens and two Elite Eights

Further, her coaching experience is Saban-esque in its strength.

• 2007-08: Assistant Coach of Minnesota Lynx
• 2009: Promoted to Head Coach of Minnesota Lynx
• 2009-10: Head Coach of LA Sparks
• 2010: Assistant Coach to US Olympic team
• 2010-11: Head Coach of LA Sparks
• 2011: Pan American Games Assistant Coach
• 2012: Assistant Coach to US Olympic team
• 2012: Assistant Coach Washington Mystics

And, as we all know, the women’s sports complex on campus is aptly named “The Gillom Center.”  She is an Ole Miss Rebel through and through, and we genuinely believe that even after the most thorough nationwide search, Jennifer Gillom will stand out as the best candidate.

It’s not often that success just falls in your lap at Ole Miss, but, for once, it has, and we are thrilled to learn that Coach Gillom desires – is willing – to coach at Ole Miss.  But, don’t take our word for it.  Read a few quotes from her previous colleagues.

Hiring someone who has the knowledge, talent, and reputation that Jennifer has is an important step for the Minnesota Lynx Organization. Jennifer is one of the greatest players in the history of women’s basketball. She was one of the best post players that the WNBA has ever seen. We are looking forward to seeing what she will teach our players, especially our post players. Jennifer will be a great influence on our team and a tremendous asset to our organization in the community.
-Minnesota Lynx Chief Operating Officer Roger Griffith

 The Minnesota Lynx are getting a heck of a coach who the players will respect because she has been there and done that. The Lynx inside game will get better by having Jennifer on the staff. She is an even better person than a coach and is a great addition to the Lynx coaching staff.
-Van Chancellor

You might recognize that last one, Van Chancellor.  He is Ole Miss Women’s Basketball, and his recommendation is worth its weight in gold.

Coach Gillom meets all the criteria for the job posting (found here), so we look forward to the exciting opportunity she provides for Ole Miss.

We are thrilled to learn that Grandmama is ready to come home and turn this program around, and we look forward to the Committee’s work going forward!

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Update; 03/16/2012: Some have voiced concerns that we could not afford Coach Gillom.  This is untrue as, thanks to her generosity, she is willing to help Ole Miss for a salary within our budget - even though she's worth much more.

“Hey, Powe!  You still making fun of my dad!”

NFL player and Ole Miss favorite Jerrell Powe heard those words screamed at him in the Ole Miss football weight room recently.  As Mr. Powe stood with other NFL stars, he was stunned to turn and see that Ole Miss Athletic Director Pete Boone’s son, who never played football at Ole Miss and who works for Regions Bank, not Ole Miss, was yelling at him angrily.

Not to mention the fact that Jerrell Powe is 6’2”, 335 pounds, the audacity of a non-Ole Miss employee simultaneously treating our team facilities like his personal weight room and accosting one of our most beloved players is astounding!

The next day, NFL player and Ole Miss legend Jerrell Powe was kicked out of Ole Miss practice facilities by Pete Boone.

Boone called out at Mr. Powe disparagingly, “Hey Powe!  You make sure you come see me before you ever work out here again!”  It is widely known that Mr. Powe has been an outspoken proponent of change at Ole Miss, and he went public last year regarding Pete Boone’s efforts to keep him from playing football at Ole Miss.

As retaliation, Pete Boone has now personally banished one of Ole Miss’s current NFL players, a guy who dedicated almost seven years of his life to Ole Miss football.  Beyond that, he allows his own son to work out in that very gym and allows that son to mock our NFL heroes!  You want to talk about “uncivil”?

Pete Boone’s rationalization for forcing Mr. Powe to leave the Indoor Practice Facility (IPF) was a claim that NFL players who did not graduate are not allowed to exercise at Ole Miss facilities.  This is simply false, and we can report with 100% certainty that Boone picks and chooses which non-graduating former players are allowed to use Boone’s IPF.

Boone continues to treat Ole Miss like his own personal country club, kicking people out at will, yet, at the same time, letting his own family, who never played sports here, use the IPF at no charge.

We believe that all NFL players should be allowed to use the IPF, so we are not going to list those players who did not graduate but are allowed to use the IPF.  However, we have obtained personal confirmation that Boone’s policy is selectively applied to suit his preference.

Boone personally choosing which players to allow in the IPF is not new, and he treated Iraq veteran Tony Fein (RIP) and Linebacker Ashlee Palmer the same way.  Prior to Fein and Palmer signing with NFL, they were kicked out of the IPF by Boone for not having graduated.  Fein and Palmer had to literally sneak onto the field at Vaught Hemingway to train for NFL Pro Day, but, after they got on an NFL roster, Boone suddenly dropped his policy and allowed them back in the IPF.  Palmer, a Compton native, simply never returned to Ole Miss.

Fein and Palmer asked Pete Boone and other athletic staff for the policy that was used to kick them out of the IPF, but Boone could never produce this on-again/off-again policy.

That is unadulterated exploitation.  All the while, other more prominent players, players who did not graduate, were granted unfettered access to the IPF.

Today, if you speak out against a University official at Ole Miss, that public official will then use his authority to ban you from Ole Miss.  It’s a common refrain… “You either support Pete Boone, or we don’t need you at Ole Miss!”

No one desires to be forced to reveal such pathetic facts, but, in the case of Ole Miss, the public must stand up for our school and defend it against such a discriminatory despot.  If no one else will make a stand, we will!

It is a sad state of affairs when a lame duck failed athletic director is allowed to arbitrarily wield power – over publicly owned property – just to bolster his ego and to serve his son.

Voice your support for Jerrell.  He gave his all for us, and he does not deserve to be treated like this by a failed AD, much less his child.

This must change, and it is the duty of our Chancellor and governing Board to eliminate such discrimination once and for all.

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All of the above facts were reported first-hand and verbatim from the parties involved.
Update 1: This incident did not occur on or near Pro Day, and Powe's expulsion had no connection to other uses of the IPF.
Update 2: As stated in this article, Pete Boone justifies kicking select persons out of the IPF by saying that only players who have completed a degree or are currently enrolled and seeking a degree may use the IPF and that all others must ask for Boone's permission to use Ole Miss equipment. First, we have verified that numerous players who did not meet those criteria and who did not "ask permission" use the IPF without difficulty. Boone selectively enforces this mysterious "policy." Second, as discussed, when asked for this so-called policy, Boone has never been able to produce it.  Boone uses this rationalization as a pretext to enforce his personal grudges.

In late January, Dan Jones promised the following, “[The Ole Miss AD Search Site] will provide accurate and up to date information about the search process.  It is a part of our commitment to have a transparent process that will lead to a successful search…”

Unfortunately, that site has only been updated twice in the almost six weeks since Jones made this promise, and those updates provide little to no information about the substance of the search.

However, this search has been much less tight-lipped than the coaching search, and the public is much more equipped to consider AD candidates as opposed to coaches.

With that, we offer you a complete list of all the known with detailed profiles, histories, and ratings of the candidates in various areas of expertise.  Vet these guys yourself!  There is some stellar talent out there, and Ole Miss needs it.  We have the opportunity to explode!

You may download a PDF packet of all the candidates here.

The table below lists ratings of the candidates.  Although these scores are subjective, each candidate’s score was based on the exact same formula with no adjustments made for any candidate’s strengths or weaknesses.

As always, you may view these profiles online at forwardrebels.org/adsearch.

Join the movement to make Ole Miss great.  Be involved in this process and demand accountability!

Forward Rebels!

The unified voice of Ole Miss fans demanding better is strong! As of this writing, Forward Rebels' Facebook posts have been viewed 5,270,080 times, and forwardrebels.org has been accessed almost half a million times.  Add to that our email list of well over 50,000 people and growing, and Ole Miss has indeed woken up!

We regularly receive reports from Ole Miss staffers in the Lyceum and in the athletic department describing the powerful effect your unified voice is having on our school, and these numbers prove it definitively.

Chancellor Jones echoed Pete Boone when asked about public opinion as he glaringly omitted common fans as "appropriate stakeholders" in Ole Miss's future.  He said:

I have looked to guidance from people who are appropriate stakeholders. I have spent a lot of time in consolation with our governing board and the Commissioner of High Education, Hank Bounds, talking about these problems. Our athletics committee and particularly its leadership, our UMAA board and its leadership, our University of Mississippi Foundation board and importantly, the leadership of our Alumni Association.

Ole Miss is a public university, and YOU are an appropriate stakeholder... even if you don't happen to be one of the twenty or so board members referred to by Jones.  Ole Miss depends on fans, and your united voice is making a huge difference.

Continue to light that fire, and good things will keep happening.

Forward Rebels!

Ole Miss is a public university which means that each and every Ole Miss fan and, really, every Mississippi taxpayer, is a stakeholder in her future.  Part of being a good fan and a good custodian of this public university is to stay educated and involved in the processes which shape Ole Miss.  We want to help provide fans the resources to take part in the future of Ole Miss.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard about “the College Board” at one time or another.  But, if you care about the future of Ole Miss and other public colleges and universities in Mississippi, take a minute to understand what the College Board is and how it works.  Then, if you want to share praise, you know whom to credit.  If you have an issue, do something productive about it.

What is the College Board?

None of Mississippi’s eight public colleges and universities have their own Boards of Directors as private universities do.  Instead, all eight are under the control of the same board, the “Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning.”  This is not uncommon as twenty-eight states have one board for all state schools.

Mississippi’s Board consists of twelve appointees and is also known as the “College Board” or the “IHL Board.”  The governor appoints members to the Board in rotating nine year terms, and the Board itself appoints a Commissioner of Higher Education.  Similar to many judges, although the governor appoints members, he does not have the authority to remove them once in place.  As a result, each appointee has a great deal of insulated power.

These twelve people have the final say on hiring and firing for every college or university leader, deans, professors, and administrative employees.  One of their most important roles is that they alone choose the university presidents, and they alone can fire them (”at any time for malfeasance, inefficiency or contumacious conduct, but never for political reasons”).  See the image below for a graph of the chain of command at Ole Miss.

The College Board was established in the 1940s as an addition to the Mississippi Constitution (Article 8, Section 213).  The purposes for its creation are complex, and Ole Miss professor Dr. Charles Eagles’s book, The Price of Defiance, covers some of this history, but this post does not.

However, the rules governing the Board have undergone many changes since then, and due to recent legislation, there will be a great shift on the College Board over the next few years.

The Khayat Effect

Chancellor Khayat served as Ole Miss’s chancellor from 1995 to 2009.  Every single one of the current IHL Board members was appointed during Chancellor Khayat’s tenure.  As we all know, Chancellor Khayat was a highly respected chancellor, and, as such, he wielded great power in higher education in Mississippi.  Although each current member was appointed by a governor, Chancellor Khayat certainly, and appropriately, provided advice for many of the appointments.

Thus, the policies and goals of such a powerful educational leader as Chancellor Khayat have had a great effect even beyond his retirement.  As an analogy, United States Supreme Court justices are appointed by the president, and, logically, each president’s appointees will share common philosophies with the president.  Thus, although the president’s time is limited, the justice and his philosophies will extend far beyond the president’s departure.  College Board appointments often similarly extend a retired official’s goals.

Although IHL Board members are time-limited and governor-appointed, Chancellor Khayat, presiding at the time of appointment of all the current members, has had a major impact on the current Board.  This impact logically extends to the hiring of current Chancellor Jones as well as the policies and operation of the current administration as a whole.  Chancellor Jones inherited most of Chancellor Khayat’s staff, notably Pete Boone, and he has made very few changes to this staff.  Consider the following chart of hirings and appointments.

Chancellor Khayat did many great things for Ole Miss; that cannot be debated.  However, as time progressed, it has become apparent that, at least in athletics, some changes were due.  In spite of this undeniable need, though, it is unsurprising that neither Chancellor Jones nor the College Board chose to take action to change Chancellor Khayat’s choice in athletics.  Jones and the entire Board were chosen under Khayat, and, unfortunately for athletics, they continued the path set by him.

Governor Bryant’s Change

Although the last decade of the IHL has been very predictable and consistent, due to recent legislative changes to the Board, a sea change is imminent over the next few years, and, as Chancellor Jones is a much more junior chancellor than Chancellor Khayat, it is unlikely that he will exert as much influence over the upcoming appointments.  Governor Bryant will likely play the pivotal role in the upcoming selections, and his appointees will probably share many of his opinions on what is best for the future of Ole Miss and other schools.

Four College Board members will be replaced in May 2012.  Four more will be replaced in May 2015, and, then, another four will be replaced in May 2018.  Governor Bryant will definitely choose the 2012 and 2015 replacements, and he will select the 2018 replacements if he is re-elected.  Governor Bryant could end up choosing 100% of the College Board.  That’s a big deal.

Governor Bryant must choose these appointments in such a way as to keep an equal distribution of four members each from the three Mississippi Supreme Court districts. See map below.

The Local Voice cartoonist Michael Ikeda-Chandler has his finger on the pulse of Ole Miss's woes.

Ole Miss recently released its job posting for our new Athletic Director.

We have collected job descriptions from a broad array of other universities and compared their requirements below.  Click on a school’s name to view the job posting.

Ole Miss has the fewest objective requirements

Ole Miss’s job description contains the fewest objective requirements of all which could turn out to be an opportunity or a threat.  On the one hand, by creating a less stringent set of requirements for candidates, Ole Miss gives itself the opportunity to consider a larger set of candidates for AD, and, due to the fact that over the last decade or so the pool of candidates considered for high level administrative jobs at Ole Miss has often been limited to a select group of connected individuals, this could be a good thing.  However, by increasing the subjectivity of the job description, there is less accountability for our Administration in the selection process and ultimate hiring decision.  And, it is troubling to many fans to see Ole Miss follow a procedure that diverges greatly from the paths of more successful programs.  With trust of the Administration at an all-time low, fans will be looking for our hired leader to be a proven winner.

A non-traditional hire is a risk

The common wisdom suggests that since we want an athletic director who will excel at athletic administration, we should hire a candidate who has proven himself successful for a number of years as an athletic administrator.  However, some major programs, most notably Michigan, have recently departed from this trusted model.  Michigan hired Domino’s CEO David Brandon in 2010, and they made this non-traditional hire in the midst of a challenging time for Michigan as it faced NCAA scrutiny and the backlash of fans over the failure recently hired head football coach Rich Rodriguez.  Although not an athletics administrator, Brandon had previously served on Michigan’s Board of Regents, played under Bo Schembechler, and as CEO of Domino’s he oversaw a company with gross revenues of over $1.4 billion.  Although his hiring was non-traditional, his corporate experience was incomparable.

If Ole Miss does go the non-traditional route, it will face a huge challenge in justifying the hiring of an inexperienced athletic director at such a critical time for Ole Miss sports.  Furthermore, the performance of Ole Miss’s most recent athletic director with a non-traditional background (banking) should give pause to continuing in that vein given the current caliber and availability of talent with relevant experience.

Opportunity

The most commonly desired attribute among all the athletic director job descriptions is that the leader must have outstanding communication skills and be able to engage fans from all walks of life.  For example, take a minute to read Oregon’s AD job description; it is a beautiful document that embodies the spirit of an explodingly successful program. 

Other schools have long recognized the need to capitalize on the support of all fans, not just a select few, and this corroborates why Ole Miss has struggled so much under Pete Boone’s failed leadership.  We have been unnecessarily and severely held back by his continued presence at the helm.  Notably, upon his first and second hiring by Chancellor Khayat, Boone would not have been qualified for a single athletic director job according to the descriptions’ most basic requirements.

Our next leader must be different.  He must respect and appreciate all fans.  It will be his responsibility to find common ground among fans in an inclusive way.  It will be up to him to speak on behalf of the athletic department.  He will no longer be able to delegate communication to his subordinates.  This next director has a huge task in front of him, but we believe it can be done.

Pick the Best… period

Forward Rebels has never endorsed a particular candidate, and it has no plans to do so.  However, all Ole Miss fans should watch closely and stay informed as our administration prepares to take this next step.  Even Chancellor Jones demonstrated a shift in policy recently and promised a transparent selection process saying, “[Ole Miss's AD Search Site] will provide accurate and up to date information about the search process. It is a part of our commitment to have a transparent process that will lead to a successful search.”  However, he has yet to make good on that promise, and it is proper of the public to hold him accountable.  We believe he would ask for that accountability.

Regardless, the candidates’ credentials are widely available, and we have provided them in detail at forwardrebels.org/adsearch.  Ole Miss is a public university, and she has struggled in athletics as of late due to an entrenched bureaucracy with a false sense of entitlement.  However, Ole Miss is your school, and in order for us to help Ole Miss, we must educate ourselves and remain abreast of the situation so that when we do act, our actions are effective.  Thanks to the work of a united Ole Miss family, fans are no longer in the dark, and that’s good for Ole Miss.

Take part in the process.  Demand to be involved.  Hold our leaders to the standards of excellence we should always expect from such a talented base as Ole Miss has.

All Ole Miss fans yearn for a leader in whom we can believe.  Although our Administration has chosen to avoid objective requirements, it will be clear enough to all fans upon the final hiring whether our Administration is committed to progress and winning or whether it is committed to more of the same.

Ole Miss has an opportunity to move forward.  The Ole Miss family expects progress, and no one should be satisfied until we see it.  Hotty Toddy!  Forward Rebels!

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Update, 02/15/2012: This post contains every job description we could obtain; none were excluded.  We didn't even know what the results would be when we began the research, but, considering history, it wasn't too surprising.  We obtained these through various search utilities as well as by emailing a wide variety of schools for their documents.  If you have one you'd like to offer, please let us know about it on our Facebook page.