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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > July > 31
Friday, July 31, 2009
Venom Flows Around Wright State
Well, it’s been just over 24 hours since Matt Liddy and Matt Zircher were let go from the Wright State athletics department due to what is being called “the bad economy” and already the venom is flowing.
Both guys were long-time fixtures at the school.
Liddy, an assistant WSU athletics director and member of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame, swam for the Raiders in the early 1980s and then was Wright State’s super-successful swim coach, winning 16 either men or women’s conference titles and 11 league Coach of the Year awards in his 16 years running the program.
Zircher, an associate sports information director, worked 16 years at WSU. He is a good guy and was a hard worker.
Both were deemed expendable by athletics director Bob Grant, who is trying to pare $1 million from the Raiders’ annual $10 million athletics’ budget.
Because both Grant and Liddy vied for the AD job when Mike Cusack retired last year, there are all kinds of conspiracy theories being floated by people responding — anonymously, I might add — to stories posted on the Dayton Daily News sports web page.
People get real brave — and sometimes quite reckless and hurtful — when they can fire away in secrecy and this is a perfect example.
Not only are Grant, Liddy and Zircher being targeted, but everybody from current basketball coach Brad Brownell to former coaches Ralph Underhill and Jim Brown have been splattered in the internet discourse.
In a day’s time, I’ve read people calling Grant a “back-stabber” and a “master manipulator.” He’s been said to feel threatened by Liddy. Someone wondered why he hadn’t been fired because he couldn’t raise money in his previous job as a WSU fund-raiser. Somebody even compared him to Hitler.
Liddy has been called an “idiot…a pouter…and dead weight.” Someone said he tried stirring a coup and turning people against Grant. Someone else countered that Grant can do that all by himself.
Someone suggested Zircher’s job could have been done “by a trained monkey.”
In the process of this mud-slinging free-for-all, Brownell was accused of only wanting a boss who was “a lackey. ” Underhill was painted as a thief and Brown was called a bad coach.
I know all these guys. I like them all — naturally, some better than others — and I know all of them to be dedicated to WSU. And most of these charges are flat-out wrong or nastily skewered.
Yeah, I think there was some friction between Grant and Liddy — that’s not surprising considering the history — but I don’t think it was debilitating and I wish things would have played out differently. But I also think the bum economy is a big factor here. Not just at WSU, but at so many work places in the Miami Valley.
I know Grant’s in a tough spot cutting his budget, but that said — if Liddy’s and Zircher’s positions were decided to be expendable — I wish the university would have found some other position for them after they pretty much gave all their adult lives to WSU.
As for the drive-by mudslingers on the Internet, have the courage to use your own name if you are going to smear the name of someone else. Better yet, just skip some of the most hurtful stuff.
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