Channel 10/WPLG-TV News: Trustee: Shalala's Response To UM Scandal Disappointing.
UM President Refuses To Speak To Reporters. August 19, 2011
Story and video at: http://www.local10.com/canes/28919960/detail.html
Local10's Senior Political Correspondent Micheal Putney interviews University of Miami Trustee Michael I. "Mike" Abrams about the national scandal that broke this past week Courtesy of Yahoo! Sports involving the university's football team, and the school's response to it, particularly, President Donna Shalala's.
I've always liked Shalala personally and since returning to South Florida from the Washington area in late 2003 -where she had been President Clinton's HHS Secretary- I have often found myself defending her efforts to improve things in Coral Gables, mainly by raising academic standards - and expectations- against other sports fans who seemed a little too quick to intentionally misunderstand her and paint her with too broad a brush.
Given the flood of information that has already appeared in so many different national media outlets about her longstanding love of athletics, how anyone can remain ignorant of all that, I don't know, yet even after all her time down here, I still hear her attacked by know-it-all dopes on local Miami sports radio stations as being part of the (genuine) anti-athletics adademe, which could NOT be further from the truth.
(As I've written in this space a few times previously, what I've personally long found most galling about the UM's varsity athletic program -and never ever see anything about in the South Florida news media- is how truly un-competitive the UM Women's sports teams are nationally and within the ACC, and in particular, the very strange choices the school has made about what teams to field.
The decision to have a Rowing team but NOT field either a Field Hockey or Lacrosse program -or both- when the ACC is by far the most-dominant conference for those two popular sports nationally -esp Maryland, North Carolina and UVA, where my niece goes- while elsewhere in the state, the Gators have become a clear top-caliber Women's Lacrosse program almost overnight -making it to NCAA Quarterfinals- by actually investing resources and actively recruiting many top-flight players from the Mid-Atlantic areas where the sports are huge is a very, very puzzling and hugely disappointing choice indeed.
I'm not saying this just because all three of my nieces play(played) both sports, but both sports are very popular among female high school students in a fertile recruiting area for the UM student body, so NOT having them puts the UM at a real dis-advantage, and frankly, in my opinion, makes it hard to take the UM's commitment seriously.)
Frankly, because of Shalala's demonstrated ability to think both clearly and long-range, skills sadly lacking in numbers in South Florida, I've long thought that if this were a more normal part of the country, she'd actually already be the Mayor of Miami-Dade County.
She'd make sure there was a LOT MORE accountability to the taxpayer with the public dime than the crowd in downtown Miami is used to.
She's friendly-but-firm, and demands a lot of herself, but also expects others to produce RESULTS, not excuses, and a steady diet of excuses is what South Florida residents have been hearing everyday from their local elected officials since I returned to this area.
I could very easily write pages and pages here on the blog about the latest scandal involving the University of Miami football team, based on the extensive things I have read and heard and know.
I could also write about the many side-stories that, curiously, are NOT appearing in print or TV but which really ought to be.
I'll soon be writing about one of those important journalism side-stories that EVERYONE in South Florida is currently ignoring, and when you hear it, trust me, you'll have to nod in agreement -everyone really is ignoring it.
Surprise! It involved the Miami Herald.
But for now, at a little past 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning, both tired and bored silly from watching the dreadfully tedious Dolphins-Panthers preseason game earlier tonight, I'm going to confine myself to one thing at a time.
In this case, Michael Putney's very interesting interview airing Friday night with University of Miami Trustee Mike Abrams, whom I first met in 1976.
Mike has become the very first person with any weight in South Florida thus far to publicly go on the record about their dis-satisfaction with the way this whole story has been dealt with from Day One the university's administrators.
I sort of botched my comments on Channel 10's website and approved them before I noticed some small mistakes. I'll have more on this scandal in the days ahead, but for now, here's what I meant to post there:
I know from longstanding personal experience what a straight-shooter Mike Abrams is, and how dedicated he is to the UM and how much he wants it to strive to be even better. This scandal must really pain him, both as both an alumnus and as a Trustee, and when he says that the school administrators need to be more forthright, from President Shalala on down, he is 100% right.
Since it's not mentioned here, for context's sake, I should mention that before he graduated, Mike was the UM Student Government president in 1969, and years later, became the Dade County Democratic Party Chair in the mid-1970's -when I met him and began working with him- as he played a crucially important role in helping underdog Jimmy Carter win the 1976 Florida primary -a win that helped make Carter a national candidate in the minds of voters and the national news media- which helped propel him to the Democratic nomination.
(I worked in all sorts of capacities for the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign.)
Later, Mike became one of the most-influential and respected members of the Florida Legislature while representing my hometown of North Miami Beach and surrounding NE Dade in the State House.
I'm also pretty sure that while I was living up in the Washington, D.C. area, Mike was tapped and invited into the UM's Iron Arrow Honor Society, the most prestigious honor for a UM student or alumnus.
So who's going to be the next person in South Florida -after Mike- to stand up publicly and demand that the UM be more publicly accountable to the larger South Florida community?
Those of us who care about this school and this community will be watching carefully
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Some information about me and my longtime interest in the U-M and the Hurricanes, copied from my other blog, South Beach Hoosier, http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/
which is soon to be renovated before the new college football season starts with a new face in charge at IU.
Not mentioned below is that my nephew Mario graduated from the UM in 2010.
SEBASTIAN THE IBIS, THE SPIRITED MASCOT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI HURRICANES
Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.)
After that first ballgame against Tulane, as I often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio.
A few times, I was just about the only person on-board besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside.
I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do.
Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!)
For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?)
I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale?
To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game.
I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out with Texas on the cover, below. I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.
THE ISSUE I TOOK WITH ME THE NIGHT OF U-M'S 20-15 UPSET OF #1 TEXAS AT THE ORANGE BOWL
College Football, Texas No. 1, Hook 'em Horns, September 10, 1973.
And for those of you who forgot or never read my previous references to it, on January 2nd, 1984, at the 50th Anniversary Orange Bowl game where the Hurricanes upset Nebraska 31-30 for their first national championship, I was out on the field celebrating within seconds, having watched the entire last quarter in the row directly behind the team's bench. Now THAT was a night to remember!
MIRACLE IN MIAMI
The Hurricanes Storm Past Nebraska, Halfback Keith Griffin, January 9, 1984
