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Link? Confirmed?
Football Rumor Mill @fbrumormill
@BigGoldNation reports that Southern Miss has fired AD Jeff Hammond
It's out there now.
He only made it 1 year. It will be interesting to hear from the USM fans as to why...
Isn't he the one who sold the Nebraska game in order to help buy out the former coaches contract? Never really had a chance to clean up Giannini's mess.
Hammond only had a one-year deal.
http://deadspin.com/5964003/to-buy-o...for-21-millionThe favorite to replace Giannini was Jeffrey Hammond, who couldn't have forseen anything that would happen in 2012. As interim AD, he ended up with a coach he didn't hire. He found that his predecessor had spent the athletics department into debt. He saw the school president, his biggest supporter, retire under curious circumstance amid a battle over Hammond's permanent hiring. It came out that prominent donors and trustees lobbied against his selection. It's enough to make a guy long for the predictability of Iraq.
Hammond also had the support of a large portion of the fan base, who loved that he was a conservative military man—and that he was critical of Giannini, whom they still blamed for Fedora's departure and the Hawaii Bowl fiasco. Hammond was named athletic director in June, but rather than the four-year contract customary for ADs in Mississippi, he only received a one-year deal, as a compromise with the college board that didn't want him in the first place. Hammond had a large debt to address, and he didn't have much time to do it.
Text from my USM-grad brother: Southern Miss To The Flop!
Hammond seems to have been pretty popular among the fans.
Wonder if he'd like Ruston .... ????
Having worked at an Air Force base for the last 12 years, I can tell you that I have a lot of respect for what Colonels and Generals do, but I would not want one of them making business decisions for our athletic department. Because of the nature of their careers, they are stuck in the government mindset when it comes to money. --- i.e. You get what you get, and that's all that you get. Make cuts as necessary to make the money last until the end of the year.
A great example of that is Hammond "selling" the Nebraska game to balance his books. I'm not saying he is incompetent, because most of his problems were handed to him by his predecessor (Gianinni), but ADs need to be creative thinkers and charasmatic fundraisers.
That's the world we have been and will continue to be in. Of course, the college AD is also responsible in generating revenue, where a government employee is not. Southern Miss was, and probably still is, in grave financial condition. Hammond had to fire the coach, but had no money to pay for the firing. Obviously no alums stepped up to do it, so Hammond sold one of his marketble assets. You gota do what you gotta do.
Just remember Karma can be very bad or very good...
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
He was in a no win situation and there were multiple sources saying he was gone at the end of the 1 year contract 6 months ago. The biggest point was he was not the choice of one or two of their biggest donors and that was one reason money was not given to buy out the coach, when he was fired.
Not saying whether he was truly good for them or not, but he had no chance coming into the job, after the Tech hating asshat of the century and not having the support of the big donors!
Choose an AD that can recognize and select great coaching talent and he doesn't have to "sell" anything.
Give them the proper tools and authority to make those decisions and they don't have to worry about going through what currently happened at USM.
Anyone that can run the Stargate Program is alright with me.
Seriously though, he was the 4th ID Commander for a brief time while I was in Iraq . . . his reputation as a Division Commander was lukewarm at best with his troops and staff.