Rumble in the Mountains - Troubled Times for West Virginia Mountaineer Football

  In late 2007 all was right in Mountaineer land. The West Virginia Mountaineer football team was on the verge of playing in its very first BCS Championship game. A bizarre series of upsets in college football had left the highly regarded Mountaineers as the only legitimate prospect to play Ohio State for the national title.  There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that, had West Virginia played Ohio State in that game, they would have ripped the Buckeyes to shreds. OSU was a paper tiger that year and the Mountaineers, under seventh year head coach Rich Rodriguez, were the scourge of college football. With Pat White at quarterback, Steve Slaton and freshmen super-recruit Noel Devine at tailback (RichRod prefers the term “Superback” but it’s the running back with the speed to take it the distance) and fullback Owen Schmitt blocking and running as well this was one of the most talented and perhaps fastest backfields in the history of college football. Although they weren’t any great shakes as a passing team, the WVU ground game was nearly impossible to stop. Rodriguez’s read option based offense presented defenses with a serious conundrum; pack your defenders in to stop the run between the tackles and White would make you pay the moment you bit on the fake to the back. Spread your defenders out to keep White from running wild and Slaton and Devine would gash you for fifteen right up the middle. Get them in third and short and the Mountaineer big uglies would drive block while 260 pound Owen Schmitt made you regret hitting him head on.

 But, as college football fans know, they didn’t play in that game against OSU. With melodrama swirling around the program about Rodriguez flirtation with Michigan they dropped a 13-9 game to a 4-7 Pitt team that shouldn’t have been able to stay within 30 points of the Mountaineers.

Rodriguez and his entourage’s handling of the Michigan affair was an absolute clinic of how not to leave your current position for another. Rodriguez lied about his whereabouts, lied to his players, contacted West Virginia recruits from his state-issued cell phone to try and get them to follow him to Ann Arbor and, worst of all, insulted his alma mater and his home state. In California or New York that may not sound like a big deal, but in West Virginia, where state pride is taken very seriously and the WVU Mountaineers are the traveling embodiment of a state that faces continual ridicule, it stirred up a hornets nest of resentment and loathing.

 The Mountaineers bowed up their backs and against all odds, destroyed an Oklahoma team in the Fiesta Bowl that was, by many knowledgeable talking heads, the most talented team in the country. The emotional victory by West Virginia native, interim coach and all around good guy Bill Stewart propelled the university administration to make an emotional (and financial) decision to hire Stewart as the full time coach.

 After two big BCS wins, double digit wins season records and finishes in the Top 10, the Mountaineer nation had arrived. And they weren’t going to tolerate 8 or 9 wins any longer. Although many people don’t realize it, West Virginia is among the top fifteen all-time winning-est programs in the history of college football. They were finally getting the respect and recognition that they had long deserved and many felt that Stewart’s nice guy approach was robbing the team of the reputation it had built for nastiness on the field. (West Virginia also has a reputation for nastiness from its fans as well but that is a discussion for another time)

 After three seasons of sub-par performances, West Virginia Athletic Director Oliver Luck made the decision to let Stewart go. It seemed that the vast majority of the fans and booster thought that he was a wonderful man, a proud West Virginian, someone that you’d love to have as a next door neighbor or the coach of your kids soccer team or even the assistant coach but not someone that most wanted to be at the helm of the ship. He was and is to this day, wildly popular in the state but most were eager to see him go. Tragically, Bill Stewart died of a heart attack while playing in a golf event the following year.

 Here is where our story begins.

 Oliver Luck had reached back to his Texas days and hired Dana Holgorsen, a hotshot offensive coordinator with Oklahoma State who had also had stints at Houston and Texas Tech, all highly productive offenses with star quarterbacks. For the uninitiated among you, Oliver Luck is a graduate of West Virginia University and was the quarterback for the team in the early 1980’s. A Rhodes Scholar finalist, he was drafted by the Houston Oilers and served as the backup to Archie Manning. Luck went to law school at the University of Texas and served as commissioner of the World League of American Football and as president of the Houston/Harris County Sports Authority. Luck hired Holgorsen as head coach in waiting, arguably the one questionable thing he’s done in a career of high achievement. Holgorsen would serve one season as the teams offensive coordinator before taking over the head job.

 After some shenanigans that seemed to suggest that Bill Stewart night not be quite the nice guy that his image seemed to portray, Holgorsen found himself taking over as head coach immediately. Luck no doubt felt some pressure to act quickly on the Holgorsen hire. West Virginia’s arch rival Pitt was also looking to replace their departed coach in Dave Wannstadt and was looking hard at Holgorsen. (Pitt’s embarrassing coaching carousel is also a subject for another time) Holgorsen had produced prolific offense everywhere he’d been and was going to get a head coaching job somewhere. Luck pulled the trigger and signed him to a contract with an $11.6 million dollar buyout clause. Luck can be forgiven for the size and scope of this buyout. West Virginia had been involved in incidents with both RichRod and Bill Stewart over aspects of contract buyouts. With Holgorsen as an Oklahoma native with deep Texas recruiting roots, West Virginia needed to be certain that, if Holgorsen was going to be their man, he was going to be there for a while or else someone was going to pay a bundle to hire him away. If Holgorsen did well at West Virginia and an opening came about at say, Texas, he would have been on the short list of possible candidates to replace Mack Brown.

 Although the 2011 season wasn’t magical by Mountaineer standards (understand that this team has had two undefeated seasons in the past 25 years and won three BCS bowls in a six year span) they did manage to squeak out the Big East’s automatic BCS bid over Connecticut and Cincinnati. In the Orange Bowl they did what West Virginia always seems to do in BCS games; they made broadcasters and pundits look stupid, not to mention the Clemson Tigers. In 2006, West Virginia was picked to get mauled by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Nobody told the Mountaineers. They jumped out to a 28-0 lead before Georgia managed to wake up and at least make a game of it. In 2008 they obliterated the Oklahoma Sooners in the Fiesta Bowl. West Virginia was given no chance to win the game. Sooner players were seen having their pictures taken beside the Fiesta Bowl trophy in the days leading up to the game, stating that once it got back to Norman, it would be put in a case behind glass and they would never be able to get this close to it again. I wasn’t able to ask any of the Sooner players from that game if they’d made the drive to Morgantown

To visit “their” trophy.

 But now those heady days seem long past to West Virginia fans. The 2012 season saw them ranked fifth before dropping five straight games. The Tavon Austin, Geno Smith and Stedman Bailey show couldn’t put up enough points to make up for a defense that was just awful. Historically awful. The Mountaineers finished that season 7-6, getting manhandled by a Syracuse team in the lowly Pinstripe bowl who looked and acted like they actually wanted to be there.

  This season was a giant question mark for the Mountaineer faithful. How would they replace the productivity of their wide receivers? How do you replace a quarterback who starts in the NFL as a rookie for the New York Jets? How do you improve a defense that was one of the worst ever against the pass? The answers are quite simple really, even if the end result isn’t good.  Tavon Austin was a once in a generation player. If you doubt me I suggest that you go watch his three touchdown performance in the NFL a couple of weeks ago against the Colts. No one as much as laid a finger on him all day. He is hands down the fastest and quickest player in the NFL. Stedman Bailey simply caught everything that was thrown his way. You can’t replace those things. However, you do what West Virginia did. You open up playing time to true freshman if they earn it,  you bring in Juco players to try and fill holes and you encourage transfers. (encouraging transfers is tricky business but you are naïve if you think that every team in the FBS doesn’t do it) In part the strategy has worked and in part it hasn’t. West Virginia’s defense is vastly improved from the previous one. They may not always look the part but its not easy when your offense turns the ball over on your own ten yard line and then says, “go out and hold them to a field goal for us.”

 The quarterback position at West Virginia is a disaster. The guy with the knowledge of the system and the ability to read defenses is a marginal scholarship athlete at best who has a weak arm and panics in the pocket. The transfer student from Florida State with Blue and Gold blood in his veins has the heart of a lion but seems to have little grasp of the playbook other than to either throw a middle screen or toss it up for grabs to wideout Kevin White (Juco), who will become a beast with time and will play on Sunday but right now is mostly unrealized potential. The gunslinging 6’5”, 230 pound redshirt freshman with the cannon for an arm has no clue what to do with the football once its snapped to him. He has time to improve. The other two will be seniors next season. They are both as good as they will ever get, although Clint Trickett will benefit from at least knowing the system next year. If West Virginia can find another transfer or junior college quarterback that can enroll in Janiary and participate in spring football, they would be foolish not to take the chance and offer him a scholarship. Auburn did it with Cam Newton, Wisconsin did it with Russell Wilson. The fact that the job is wide open for the taking and that your last quarterback is making millions in the NFL will add considerable weight to the recruiting.

 The Mountaineer offensive line is just terrible. Trickett’s father, Rick Trickett, coached at West Virginia under Rodriguez and built one of the most effective units in the country. When Bobby Bowden (another West Virginia tie) came calling with more money, Trickett bolted for Tallahassee. His offensive line this year for head coach Jimbo Fisher (native West Virgninian) is one of the best in the country. WVU needs to hire an offensive line coach that can bring back the attitude that produced All-American talent like Jozwiak, Compton, Mozes, Paige and Stanchek. They are out there. They aren’t cheap. Maybe the university can part with a little of that new found Big Twelve TV money to pay for a coach that will make a difference. The current one isn’t. The Mountaineers need to go trolling for the best Juco talent that’s out there. Of course, so is everyone else. But the Mountaineers have a pretty good pedigree of putting offensive linemen into the NFL. They need to leverage that along with the carrot of early playing time for those who can prove that they can do the job. Blocking junior college linemen and safeties and blocking Jackson Jeffcoat are not the same thing. No matter how good an offensive line recruit is coming out of high school, he isn’t likely to be big enough, heavy enough or strong enough to start a D1 game.

 They could also potentially get that money from ridding themselves of ineffective coaches with exorbitant salaries. Special teams coach Joe DeForest (yep, the same one from the Okie State story that went nowhere) adds little to the staff and is essentially paid to be Holgorsen’s party pal. DeForest presided over the defense last season (yes, that defense). He simply needs to go and his salary needs to be divided on an inexpensive special teams coach while the rest goes to find someone who can teach twenty year olds how to block. Holgorsen will not likely be amenable to letting his running buddy go. Luck will need to be forceful. Head coaches of 4 or 5 win teams that used to be 9 and 10 win teams don’t get to be indignant and picky. Sorry, Dana.

 That brings us to Holgorsen himself. The truth is that Luck took a chance based on Holgorsen’s past performance as an offensive coordinator and so far, it’s not panning out. It may yet, though. Although his play calling is not good, Holgorsen is being forced to use what he’s got. If the offensive line can’t pass protect for a seven step drop, you can’t run plays that require a seven step drop. If you have to keep two protectors in to block in order to buy yourself enough time to execute a pass play, you can no longer employ a four wide look. He’s hindered by the lack of talent on the line in everything he does. But Dana Holforsen’s shortcomings as a coach aren’t really on questionable play calls. They are in leadership. They are in the way he conducts himself on the sideline. Right now, he is not head coach material. He may grow into the role and mature if given time.

 When the man in charge looks like he’s losing control of his composure on the sidelines, it has a detrimental effect on the players. These are young men that need to be led. Throwing play cards and destroying headsets is immature and serves only to lessen his authority over his team. Most parents want to be assured that their son will be part of a program that is headed by a mature, level headed coach. When that parent brings their child to a game at Mountaineer Field, does it look like a situation where that is the case? Not now it doesn’t. It looks like you’ve got a man in charge that isn’t in any more control of his emotions than your eighteen year old son. That has a detrimental effect on recruiting, something that West Virginia has historically done very well. In a state that ranks 41^st in population and produces only two or three FBS-level athletes each year, it is absolutely vital that West Virginia keep a sterling reputation as a place to come and play. Very few kids from Florida or New Jersey or Texas grow up wanting to wear the Blue and Gold as children.

 Dana Holgorsen can turn things around at West Virginia. He won’t be fired no matter what happens against Iowa State, no matter what some fans and boosters want. However, his leash is short and the seat of his trousers should be getting very warm right about now. If West Virginia doesn’t win eight games next season, and they probably won’t, he’ll be gone. The schedule next year is less favorable than the one this year.

 If he’s fired from his first head coaching job with a below .500 record at a school that has always been a winner, he will have to wait a long time before he gets another chance to coach at the D-1 level again.

 Should Holgorsen be fired after next season, or even in mid-season if things are going badly, Oliver Luck won’t be able to go the “aggressive young assistant coach” route again. He’ll be forced to hire a coach who has proven he could recruit and win in the past but has for some reason or another been tarnished to make him more affordable for West Virginia’s limited budget. The Mountaineers aren’t poor by NCAA standards but they also aren’t Texas or Michigan or Alabama (Sorry, West Virginia but Nick Saban isn’t coming home to coach – yet another West Virginia link)

 There are six tarnished coaches right now that would jump at the chance to come to Morgantown, and would do it on the cheap. I have listed these in order of likelihood.

1.     Rich Rodriguez – I know what you all said, Mountaineers. Never in a million years. It’s amazing how quickly a million years can go by.

2.     Terry Bowden – another West Virginia link. Bowden played at West Virginia.

3.     Tommy Bowden – Ditto Terry but without the hint of scandal. He’d like to coach again.

4.     Bobby Petrino – somebody is eventually going to do it.

5.     Mike Locksley – West Virginia is a better job than Maryland. He’d jump but he’s not well liked by those at West Virginia who write big checks.

6.     Lane Kiffin – He can recruit like nobody’s business. He may be a jerk but you already had RichRod. Could this be any worse?

Stephen Walker writes blog articles on a wide range of topics. He is a novelist and short story fiction writer who writes for the Erudite Aardvark and other online concerns. He can be reached at stephen.walker@eruditeaardvark.com.

This article is the intellectual  property of The Erudite Aardvark, which reserves all rights to the content. It may not be copied or re-transmitted in any fashion without the express, written permission of the owner.

Longhorn: Is it Time For a Change in Austin?

 This is going to be painful to watch. Although Mack Brown's tenure at Texas since 1998 doesn't come close to the tenure that Bobby Bowden had at Florida State, the end looks to be just as ugly. The sharks are circling in Austin and elsewhere around the state. After this season DeLoss Dodds, the Longhorns longtime Athletic Director will retire. His yet to be named replacement will not want to inherit the headache that comes with ending its relationship with an iconic coach.
 This is the situation; Texas has arguably done less with more than any other team in college football in the last few years. In the 41 games since the start of the 2010 season the Longhorns are 23-18. That doesn't sit well with Texas fans who are used to being in the national championship discussion every year.
 In 2010 Texas went 5-7. A losing season is almost unheard of in Austin but most fans and boosters were willing to concede that the cupboard runs a little bit bare on every team once in a while. That season was followed up in 2011 with a 8-5 record and in 2012 with a 9-4 record. At UNC that wouldn't cause much of a stir. Texas isn't UNC. Success at Texas means winning at a minimum ten games. Eleven is acceptable. Twelve is expected. You could probably keep your job indefinitely as the head football coach at Texas with a ten win regular season as long as one of those ten wins was against Oklahoma. Lose the Red River Rivalry and you'd better win the rest of your games. That's a high bar to clear. But that's what you sign up for when you wear the big boy pants in Austin.
 So when the Longhorns started off the 2013 season 1-2, losing to BYU and Ole Miss by a combined score of 84-44, noses began to twitch, faces began to turn red and seats began to get warm. Yes, the 'Horns beat New Mexico State 56-7 to open the season but that won't cut the mustard with a demanding fanbase. Longhorn Nation knows full well that the competition in Texas' annual spring game in April has better talent than the Aggies.
 When Brown came to Texas at the end of the 1997 season he was known as Coach February due to his ability to sign high profile recruits during National LOI Day in February each year.  Brown has largely lived up to that billing, and that's actually part of the problem. It isn't that Texas doesn't have talent. They do. In fact, they have it in droves. Texas annually produces about three hundred and fifty Division 1A football recruits. That would equate to about three Texas high school kids for every Division 1 team in the NCAA. The Longhorns get their share of this bevy of talent, too.
  In 2011 the Longhorns signed 22 recruits. Of these 22, 21 were from Texas. Eleven were rated as four star recruits and four were rated as five star recruits by the main recruiting services. Texas had the #3 ranked haul that year.
 In 2012 the 'Horns signed 28 recruits. 24 of these were Texas high school stars. Thirteen were four star rated and five were five star rated. This got the Longhorns the title of the nations #1 recruiting class.
 In 2013 Texas signed a slightly smaller class, although still impressive. Of the 15 total recruits, 13 were products of the Texas high school football factory. Nine were four star kids and one was a five star kid. As UT goes, this class was a disappointment at #23.
 So far in the 2014 class, UT has already inked verbals for 24 recruits. So far, 22 of those are from the state of Texas. Nine are currently rated with four stars. Since the season is still ongoing this could change for the better or worse. So far the class is rated overall at #3.
 So here's the question that the nation's media, the Longhorn faithful and college football fans everywhere are asking themselves; with all of those built-in recruiting advantages and the embarrassment of riches with regard to talent, why are the Longhorns 23-18 since 2010?
 Make no mistake, the Longhorns do have competition from other schools for their recruits. The rise of schools like Baylor, Texas Tech and TCU and the increased allure to some of playing in the SEC for Texas A&M have had some impact. But let's face it. Most kids don't grow up dreaming of wearing the Purple jerseys of the Horned Frogs. A few do. The majority grow up in a world where the lenses in eyeglasses see the world through one hue and one hue only - Burnt Orange. If you can't get a scholarship offer from UT then you begin to look to the Red Raiders or Aggies. That's not a universal truth but it's the case far more often than its not.
 Brown has said that all that the "Horns need to do to right the ship is to win the Big 12. That is indeed true. The likelihood of that happening is slim. In the two pole-axing's by BYU and Ole Miss, Texas' run defense was exposed. If you can't stop the run with your front seven then you have to commit an eighth defender to take up the slack. In the pass happy Big 12 that is a deadly gamble to take. Looking at the schedule as it stands now the Longhorns can probably count on wins at Ames against Iowa State and home against Kansas. Kansas State, West Virginia, Texas Tech and Baylor may be too close to call. At best they will probably come out of those four games 2-2. That makes for another 5-7 season like the one in 2010. If that happens there's no question that Brown will be gone. If they could manage to finish the season on a 7-2 run it might be enough to keep the wolves away from the door for one more year, but with Dodds departure the pressure will be high to make a clean start in Austin. Brown could make it easy and just retire, but most icons never make it easy on themselves or their universities. (See Bowden and Paterno situations. Paterno not for the sexual abuse scandal but because the university tried to get rid of him at least five years before they were finally were able to)
If Brown is ousted at the end of this season, you people in Boise better open your wallets wide. The Eyes (and dollars) of Texas will most certainly be upon Chris Petersen. With almost unlimited resources and an insatiable appetite for winning, if they really want him they will get him. If Petersen isn't the apple of Texas' eye then there are also a number of other appealing options out there. James Franklin from Vanderbilt? Will Muschamp returning home? Maybe Art Briles from Baylor? If the 'Horns get really desperate just remember that Bobby Petrino is lurking out there, just waiting for the right opportunity to get back to the big time. Don't laugh. When people with money get bored on Saturday afternoons anything can happen.

Stephen Walker writes blog articles on a wide range of topics. He is a novelist and short story fiction writer who writes for the Erudite Aardvark and other online concerns. He can be reached at stephen.walker@eruditeaardvark.com.

This article is the intellectual  property of The Erudite Aardvark, which reserves all rights to the content. It may not be copied or re-transmitted in any fashion without the express, written permission of the owner.

The Inevitablility of College Football's Pending Upheaval

 It's now just a question of when, not if. As West Virginia University Athletic Director Oliver Luck said, "it's a fait accompli." The day is now in sight when the college football "haves" will pick up the ball and walk away from the "have nots".
 During the so-called BCS era the football factories were increasingly forced to include schools from non-BCS conferences like the Mountain West in the national championship discussion. Schools like Boise State and Utah repeatedly ruined the BCS dance by appearing, and then again by winning against teams that they should not be able to compete against.
 With the end of the Bowl Championship Series as we know it ad a true college football playoff on the horizon, a new day is dawning. Even if the college football playoff isn't fully matured yet it is still mature enough to be able to tell the massive dollars that it will generate. This time around there won't be any sharing with the have-not's of the world. It's estimated by many that ESPN will pay out at least $500 million dollars to televise the college football playoffs in their current configuration. When the playoff expands from four teams to eight teams expect that amount to double as well.
 With so much money on the line the football factories realize that they are in the drivers seat to maximize their share of the pie. In order to do this there will have to be a divorce from the have-nots. What does this entail? Well, for starters it means that college football programs that have legitimate aims to try and compete at the highest level need to sequester themselves from those that do not. I've identified 72 teams that all have a few key things in common. Although there is great disparity even among this group of 72, these are programs that have the ability maximize the value of big-time college football. What are these qualities? Name recognition, participation in a BCS conference or the demonstrated ability to compete in one had they been afforded that opportunity, merchandising & licensing appeal, stadium and facilities, fan support and quality of program. Not every school among these 72 starts out every year expecting to win the national championship. It merely aims to identify the programs that are committed to pursue big-time college football and can demonstrate that desire. By satisfying that requirement they will contribute to the highest possible quality of the product that gets placed on the field.
 The 72 teams would be divided into six divisions each consisting of twelve teams each. Those teams would play a rotating group of nine games against the other teams in their division. Additionally they would play two games against a rotating group from the other regional conferences. It will take years to rotate through but eventually every team in the big-boy group will play every other. Finally, each team will have the ability to choose one historic rivalry to preserve each year.
 You've no doubt noticed that the big-boy club is totally self-contained. The proposed schedule allows only for these teams to play other members of the Elite 72. No FCS warm-up games against Sam Houston State and no playing San Jose State and claiming that they are a Division 1 team and that your strength of schedule shouldn't suffer as a result of playing them. In order to maximize the value to television audiences this practice would have to end. The country will tune in to watch LSU play Kentucky in their opener. That game has some appeal and value. Is it a marquee matchup? No. Kentucky and LSU are miles apart as programs. However, Kentucky has enough cache, enough following and enough talent as a member of the Elite 72 that this is a real game with real risk to a major contender like LSU and a serious opportunity for Kentucky to show that it can rise up and beat one of the marquee names in the Elite 72. Conversely, no one cares about LSU opening against Troy. The fans will pack Tiger Stadium simply because they've been football starved since the previous February and are hungry to see their Bayou Bengals play.....against anyone. But can you really expect ESPN or anyone else to pay out big money to televise a game that will be over before the end of the first quarter? No. Remember, the possible $1 billion price tag we talk about earlier is just for the seven games that comprise the playoff. Additional money would be on the line to televise the games of the regular season.
 Is this a completely fair method? Of course not. There is no way to have every team play an equal schedule each year. There will be years when one of the teams in your conference that you skip is the odds-on favorite to win the conference title. That may ease your path one year and cloud it the next. Additionally, there are years when schools are just better than they are in others. Would it stink to have played a historically poor Kansas team four years ago when they were very, very good? Sure. Those things will happen regardless of what anyone tries to do.
 However, if your team doesn't win one of the six spots in the playoff that go to each regional conference champion you still might have the chance to win one of the two at-large spots that brings the field to eight.
 Here's how staggering the money could possibly get. Although it's highly unlikely that any one network could or would be able to bid on televising all of the regular season like they could the playoffs, the money spent would would still be enormous. As it stands now, college football broadcasts rake in about $1.1 billion in television revenues right now. That number could easily jump to $2 billion just to televise the much more appealing games from the Elite 72.

Regular Season Payout   ( $2 Billion)

NCAA or Governing Entity      $200,000,000
Each Elite 72 Team                   $25,000,000


Eight Team College Football Playoff


NCAA or Governing Entity      $100,000,000
Each Elite 72 Team                   $9,000,000
Teams Finishing 3-8                  $25,000,000
Runner Up                                 $40,000,000
National Champion                   $60,000,000


The eventual national champion could receive $94 million. Even the team that theoretically finishes dead last in the Elite 72 would still receive $34 million. That is roughly equal to what the highest conferences such as the Big 10 and SEC now payout.
I've listed my Elite 72 teams below along with suggested regional affiliations. I do not pretend that they are perfectly balanced.

1.California

2.Stanford

3.Arizona

4.Arizona State

5.Washington

6.Washington State

7.Oregon

8.Baylor

9.Colorado

10.Utah

11.Nebraska

12.Illinois

13.Purdue

14.Indiana

15.West Virginia

16.Oklahoma

17.Texas Tech

18.TCU

19.Oklahoma State

20.Minnesota

21.Oregon State

22.Northwestern

23.Iowa State

24.Kansas

25.Kansas State

26.UCLA

27.USC

28.Texas

29.Wisconsin

30.Michigan State

31.Michigan

32.Penn State

33.Ohio State

34.Louisville

35.Boise 

36.Cincinnati

37.Notre Dame

38.BYU

39.Connecticut

40.Boston College

41.Iowa

42.Rutgers

43.Maryland

44.LSU

45.Alabama

46.Ole Miss

47.Mississippi State

48.Auburn

49.Georgia

50.Florida

51.Arkansas

52.Missouri

53.Texas A&M

54.South Carolina

55.Tennessee

56.Vanderbilt

57.Kentucky

58.Virginia Tech

59.Virginia

60.FSU

61.Clemson

62.Duke

63.Wake Forest

64.North Carolina

65.North Carolina State

66.Pitt

67.Syracuse

68.Georgia Tech

69.Miami

70.South Florida

71.Nevada

72.Houston

Below are twelve additional teams that I believe have merit and should receive consideration. There could be a few schools that decide that they want to bow out of the Elite 72 and return to a more academic standing. Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest and Stanford all could potentially fall into this category.

73.East Carolina

74.Fresno

75.Wyoming

76.New Mexico

77.Utah State

78.Colorado State

79.Memphis

80.Marshall

81.UNLV

82.Rice

83.SMU

84.UTEP

PACIFIC

Washington
Washington State
Oregon
Oregon State
Cal
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Nevada
Arizona
Arizona State
Boise

DEEP SOUTH

Miami
Florida
Florida State
South Florida
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Alabama
Auburn
South Carolina
Clemson
Mississippi
Mississippi State

MID-ATLANTIC

Penn State
West Virginia
Syracuse
Pitt
Boston College
Maryland
Rutgers
Virginia Tech
Virginia
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Connecticut

MIDWEST

Ohio State
Michigan
Michigan State
Tennessee
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Louisville
Duke
Wake Forest
Notre Dame
Cincinnati
Northwestern

PLAINS

Colorado
Nebraska
Utah
BYU
Missouri
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Purdue
Indiana
Illinois
Iowa
Iowa State

SOUTHWESTERN

Texas
Texas Tech
TCU
Baylor
Texas A&M
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Houston
LSU
Arkansas
Kansas
Kansas State

WorkSpeak & Corporate Buzzwords

 Quite a few years back I heard someone give a presentation where they proffered that a particular course of action wasn't advisable because "major demographic sub-groupings would be negatively impacted." I sat back in my chair and tried to fight my way through the sheer stench of silliness that had just been stated. Someone got a Roget's Thesaurus as a gift recently, I remember thinking. The speaker's intent was to let the group know that a lot of people would be affected if the plans under discussion went forward. But that wasn't all he was trying to say. He also wanted everyone in the room to know that he knew big words and wasn't afraid to use them.
 If you've been in a group meeting at your place of employment in the last handful of years you've no doubt encountered the phenomenon of "WorkSpeak". WorkSpeak is the fairly recent addition to the American corporate landscape whereby corporate climbers accomplish a duality of purpose when addressing a group. The group can be a group of subordinates, peers or high-level executives. The first purpose remains unchanged from presentations of fifty or seventy-five years ago in boardrooms and hotel ballrooms around this country. Information that is relevant to some common topic to all workers needs to be imparted and someone has to impart it. A presentation has to be given to enlighten all present as to the new policy, the new procedure or the latest quarterly results. The secondary purpose is where we'll focus and where the change has occurred.
 Gone are the days when a presentation would be given and the CEO of the company would exclaim, "You know, Gibson did a great job presenting the quarterly results. He seems to be a smart one. Let's keep an eye on him for the future." In today's economic climate a climber can't wait for his or her turn to shine in a group environment. He or she has to carpe diem and do it fast. This has given rise to a new language -WorkSpeak. Since WorkSpeak serves a purpose all the way up the company ladder it can't be stopped. It's meant to convey a secondary message to your audience while you are simultaneously conveying the first. The message changes slightly depending on who is doing the talking but the purpose is still the same.
 If you're a "C" level executive and you're speaking to a room full of well, anyone that works for your company, you need to convey your unspoken message to them. You can't simply tell them that you're an extremely important personage in the world of business, a man to be reckoned with, that in the hours that your mind is still while sleeping the world is worse off because of it. You can't come out and say that you're a big hitter that goes to meetings in India and Japan, that you're a global juggernaut whose opinion is courted by thousands. You want to tell them that you fly fist class to Mumbai and stay in hotel suites that have three bedrooms even though you're traveling alone. So you write pensive posts to the company blog or global e-mail distribution list from 37,000 feet to keep the little people informed of the important work you're doing and hope they get the message. But you need more. WorkSpeak provides the self-important executive with selected buzzwords that will convey his lofty status to his audience without him having to come right out and declare it. The thought process goes something like this; "Wow, our CEO uses words and phrases that I and my peer group don't understand and are not part of our daily vernacular. He must have learned those whilst cavorting with other captains of industry. We are truly in the presence of a brilliant and important man." Message received.
 But WorkSpeak can't be the sole province of high-level executives. Climbers climb and WorkSpeak is far too valuable a tool to be wasted on those who've already arrived. If you're a junior executive or a mid-level manager who is gunning to be the youngest VP or SVP or C in company history you too can utilize the magic of WorkSpeak. Although the message from a Regional VP to the masses sounds similar to that of a C level executive, the message is altered slightly. What the hearer should get from the presentation is this; "I'm going places. This position is a stepping stone on my way to the top. I'm already being invited to participate in meeting with the big bosses and I regularly rub shoulders with them. As a result of my close association and grooming for greatness I have learned these buzzwords that all important people know and use. You should respect me and probably try to hitch your wagon to me while it's still sitting still."
 The message is a little bit different when a junior person is presenting to a group of more senior people but obviously the words remain the same. "I'm a climber. I've been watching you. I have a laptop computer and I've Googled the buzzwords that you use in order to discern their meaning. Now I'm going to use them in my presentation to you so that you'll understand that I'm dialed in. Using these buzzwords instead of other, possibly monosyllabic words is my way of giving you the wink and nod that I'm your guy. I'm willing to be your minion and make doing your bidding my life's work. I am malleable and impressionable and will do nearly anything to get to the top."
 With that backdrop in mind let's take a look at some of the most commonly used WorkSpeak words and phrases. I probably don't need to tell you that more are being added all the time.

Influencer - an influencer is someone who works at an organization that is currently either a customer or a prospect for your organization. They don't have any money and they don't have any authority to buy anything but they seem to like you and you enjoy taking him or her to lunch. In order to keep from having your expense reports rejected for spending money on people who can't say yes and can't say no, a new term is needed to make these people seem more important than they really are. Influencer.


Stakeholder - you desperately want to believe that the people that you're trying to sell your products to need you just as badly as you need them. They don't. There are other companies that offer pretty much the same products and services that you do despite collateral and white papers written by your Marketing and Product Management people to the contrary. It's called competition. In order to convince yourself and others in your company that they need you as much as you need them a new term is created that implies that everyone involved in the process has an equal share invested in the process and that no one is in the catbird's seat. Stakeholder.

Glide Path - this aviation term is most often used by higher level executives. It's supposed to convey the slow, sure, smooth descent of a project to completion much like the highly controlled landing of a large aircraft. The pilot calculates the path of descent and knows when to bring the plane down in altitude at specific increments to touch down with the runway at the the best possible time to insure a smooth landing. The implication here is that the C level is portraying himself in the role of the confident, sure-handed pilot bringing the big project in just as he'd envisioned. If you imagine that the executive picked up this metaphor during his frequent trips jetting here and there that's perfectly okay with him. It's important to note that terms like wind shear, water landing, May-day and controlled crash have never been adopted into WorkSpeak.


Circle Back - it's just not good enough to tell someone that you'll follow up at a later time or call them back with an answer when you get one. Clearly another phrase was needed to convey this.

Reach Out - same as above. Saying that you called or emailed someone simply isn't good enough. You actually extended your arms and attempted to bring this person into your bosom for a loving embrace. They haven't called you back yet.

Metrics - because statistics just isn;t good enough.


Optics - so the CEO got caught canoodling with the seventeen year old babysitter that's eight years younger than his daughter. Poor optics just sounds less troublesome than "our leader is a nasty old pervert who's most likely going to jail and divorce court, not necessarily in that order. The stock price has dropped by a third in less than a week and Geraldo Rivera has built a tent outside the building."


Disruptive - we fell asleep at the switch and got caught with our pants down. Our company was flat-footed and our competitor has launched an updated product that's better, faster and cheaper than ours. Product testers will extoll the wonderful new features of this product and customers will write reviews on Yelp saying how much better it is than the old one. We're going to buy a bunch of advertising saying that their product isn't any good and that our competitor rushed this new launch to market. Yep, we planned it this way all along.

Individual Contributor - you work here. You are at the very bottom of the food chain and no one takes orders from you.

Empower - we are open-minded and progressive. We are modern. We are decentralized. We give our entry level managers authority to make major decisions. We grant interviews to magazine reporters to discuss our forward-thinking, unconventional work culture. We don't have titles here. Everyone is equal. We have a day-care center and a gym. Our IT people ride their bicycles directly into the building and park them beside their desk. We don't demand a set work schedule. We hire the best and trust them to complete their assignments as professionals. We don't conduct performance reviews and we have a masseuse and a yoga instructor on campus. Oh yes, and we call our building a campus. We also serve vegan food in the cafeteria. The minute we have a bad quarter all of this secular humanist crap will go out the window and we'll re-org and fire a third of our workforce in a week. Including the masseuse and yoga instructor.


Early Adopter - we've reduced the number of programmers and code writers by a third in a re-org. Thankfully we have a few really stupid customers who will find all of the bugs and defects in our software for us.

Thought Leader - in spite of the fact that we feel threatened by actual smart people and get rid of them whenever we can because we're afraid that they'll expose how inept we are and possibly take our job we still have a few who have managed to remain employed. If a customer asks a question we shove them out in the lion's den. This does not sound like something from 1984. This does not sound like something from 1984. This does not sound like something from 1984.



Stephen Walker writes blog articles on a wide range of topics. He is a novelist and short story fiction writer who writes for the Erudite Aardvark and other online concerns. He can be reached at stephen.walker@eruditeaardvark.com.

This article is the intellectual  property of The Erudite Aardvark, which reserves all rights to the content. It may not be copied or re-transmitted in any fashion without the express, written permission of the owner.

Is Mankind Reaching the Singularity of Warfare?

(In this blog article for the Erudite Aardvark, Stephen Walker discusses part of the premise and background for his upcoming thriller Rubicon.)

My parents grew up in a very different world than I did. My son and my daughter have grown up in a world much different and much more frightening than the one I grew up in. as well. The small towns in West Virginia where my parents lived had one telephone and it was located at the coal company general store. When you wanted to talk to someone you went to see them if they lived close by and you wrote them a letter if they didn’t. As a young man my father and his four brothers ate a breakfast every morning that was cooked on a stove heated with wood. His mother got up routinely at four AM to start a fire in the coal fireplace and to get a fire going in the stove so that coffee could be put on to percolate. The five brothers all went to school where first graders and twelfth graders were located in the same building, as was everyone in between. The bus stop was about three miles from their house, and while, no, it was not uphill both ways as the tired old adage goes, it was a long walk both to and from the spot to catch the bus for the thirty minute ride to the schoolhouse.

My father fought in World War II. His favorite shows to watch on television now are those that talk about the battles and the strategies and personalities that shaped the outcome of that war. His concept of warfare is that of large bodies of infantry and armor, seizing and defending against the seizure of important cities, bridges, crossroads or terrain features. War meant carpet bombing of cities, massive artillery bombardment of targeted areas, lots of casualties and lots of displaced civilians with no place to go to escape the carnage.

That was less than seventy years ago. My father has difficulty understanding the concept of a tank that can drive fifty miles an hour and shoot on the move with a better than ninety per cent hit probability with each shot, much less a stealth aircraft that can fly halfway around the world and deliver as much destructive power as two hundred B-17’s did in 1944 with almost one hundred per cent certainty of the target being hit at the precise spot that it’s supposed to be and without anyone ever knowing the aircraft was there until things on the ground started blowing up. He also has difficulty comprehending why anyone would send a text message to another person when you can just dial them on the phone. My folks have call waiting but refuse to use it and they have had cordless phones provided to them but refuse to walk further from the base than the six feet or so that a cord would stretch. There are some things that technology just can’t overcome.

 Since the end of World War II American strategic military doctrine has been to envision, fund, design, manufacture, deploy and utilize the most technologically sophisticated machines and weapons systems in the world. For more than fifty years that proved to be a sound strategy. The nations of the so-called Warsaw Pact may have had three times the number of fighter aircraft and five times the number of tanks as the NATO allies did, but when your aircraft and your tanks can destroy your enemy’s on a ration ten to one or twenty to one you don’t need massive numbers. 

In 1990-1991 I was at Fort Benning, GA as a young infantry officer during the buildup to the Gulf War. One day on a land navigation exercise my radioman and I came across three young Rangers in the middle of nowhere on the sprawling base. One was seated on the ground with a second one kneeling at his side. The first soldier had a map spread across his lap, a pencil in his hand and an opaque plastic square in his mouth that had the very outer edges trimmed off with scissors. The second man was looking over his shoulder with a pencil and pad of paper in one hand and the lanyard of his compass in the other. Anyone reading this who has ever served in an infantry unit will instantly recognize the little object I’m referring to with the useless artillery mils trimmed off. The third soldier was standing about five feet away from them with a small black device up to his eyes. It looked similar to a pair of opera glasses or miniature binoculars with a short antenna coming out of the top. We approached the three soldiers and inquired what they were doing. They explained that the Ranger battalion that they were a part of (the 3rd) was testing a new piece of equipment utilizing something called Global Positioning Satellites, or GPS. They put this device up to their eyes, clicked a button and it would give them a six digit grid coordinate generated from the triangulation calculations of multiple military satellites in orbit. Six digits only got you to within one hundred meters of accuracy but it was still mind blowing. We couldn’t believe what we had seen. That was only twenty years or so ago. In that short period of time I went from never knowing of this technology’s existence to not being able to get more than twenty miles from my home without employing it.

There is no doubt that we are living in a time of unprecedented change. It’s not just the change itself but the pace of change. Our lives have all sped up without us even realizing it. Technological advancement is now coming so fast that we can’t keep up with it. The pace of technological change with regard to military and intelligence matters is also moving so quickly that nations can no longer keep pace with the rate of change. That was the initial backdrop for writing this book.

I’ve read several articles about The Singularity but learned most of the little I know from the Raymond Kurzweil book The Singularity is Near. You may have read it as well. The singularity is the as yet undefined point in time when artificial intelligence will become so robust that it will surpass the ability of human beings to keep pace with it. Although Kurzweil doesn’t spend a great deal of time ruminating on the potential negative consequences of the Singularity many view it as a Faustian scenario where the servant becomes the master. It is not my intention to make a statement one way or another on this question. I firmly believe that technological capability is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. It simply is. When put to use for good, technological innovation is wonderful. When used to harm innocent people it can be and often is nightmarish. It’s really more a question of who possesses the capability in question and what is done with it rather than the capability itself.

I set out to pose the question of what would happen if the world were to reach what I call the sW, the Singularity of Warfare. To the best of my knowledge this is not a term that presently exists outside of my imagination. Although the characters in the book discuss the sW as if it’s a known quantity I do not believe that it exists. The sW would be the point at which the pace of technological change outstrips various nation’s military ability to adopt it. There is an inherent dilemma in this technological rush; nations that are large and wealthy enough to invest billions of dollars into weapons of war and espionage are usually too big to effectively implement that technology quickly enough to employ it in a meaningful way. For example, a few years ago the Army decided to replace its aging but effective self-propelled artillery piece, the Paladin, with a new all-weather, all-terrain model known as the Crusader. After spending several billion dollars on the project the Army realized that advances in artillery technology (not a field exactly known for high-tech advancement) would make the Crusader obsolete before it was ever fielded to the first unit. That project was then turned into the NLOS Cannon project. The NLOS took advantage of a better understanding of high-strength polymers to use a non-metallic but still very durable tread. It also utilizes advancements in alloy technology to provide a barrel that is steel alloy blend that strips hundreds of pounds from the weight of the overall platform. Advancements in the speed with which mathematical calculations can be made by the units’ CPU combined with laser precision-milled parts allow for a reliable automatic loading system which can fire projectiles into the air in rapid succession at varying angles so that they impact at precisely the same time on their targets. 

Between the active duty military and the National Guard there are somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred  Paladins in existence right now that would need to be replaced. By the time that the project moves from design to full implementation more than ten years will have passed. Just as it did with the Crusader system, this NLOS Cannon will be rendered obsolete by a lighter, faster, more fuel-efficient and more lethal model before it’s ever fielded. In this example I’ve used a relatively low-tech vehicle (literally, a vehicle) to illustrate the point. This scenario is magnified exponentially when you begin to discuss high-tech items such as fighter aircraft, drones, satellites and surveillance systems.

The flip side of the discussion is that a numerically small military force like that of South Africa, Denmark or New Zealand wouldn’t face the troubles associated with replacing large numbers of equipment. They don’t have large numbers of equipment. They would be able to field and use such advanced equipment in a relatively short period of time. However, they don’t possess the billions of dollars needed to research, test and develop super high-tech weaponry on their own. They can’t be players in that game. That dilemma really gave me the overall premise for the book. The only groups that could capitalize and stay abreast of this surge in technological advancement would be a very small but very highly trained and specialized group that was also very well funded. It wouldn’t matter to a great degree what nation they came from, only that they had the available funding and the desire to participate. That allowed me to create the fictional Doctrine of Oligarchical Warfare, whereby a small group like the one described above could possess the power and ability to project it like a nation-state. The Doctrine of Oligarchical Warfare gets its name from the fictional book by Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell’s 1984, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.  In fact, you’ll find many references to 1984 sprinkled throughout the book. In my opinion it’s one of the greatest works of literature ever written. In the book the group is a privately funded operation in some regards not unlike many contract security providers that exist today.

As is pointed out in the book, this doctrine is not something on the horizon of possibility. Although the written doctrine is a creation of my imagination it is quite real. From October 2001 until December 2001, less than one hundred members of the US Army Special Forces, supported from a relatively small number of aircraft from the Navy and the Air Force, were able to decimate the Taliban in Afghanistan militarily and destabilize them politically. Yes, they had help from the Northern Alliance, but those militias had fought each other with neither possessing the ability to completely destroy the other for decades. With a handful of men, they accomplished in two months what more than one hundred thousand Soviet soldiers couldn’t accomplish in ten years.

If a small group can project military power like a nation-state, what would happen if they were empowered with access to the greatest collection of electronic intelligence and data-mining in the world? They would then have the ability to use their strike prowess to act preemptively against any group or country that was perceived to be a threat, sort of an inter-national Minority Report. Many policy analysts feel that this is realistically the only way that terrorism can truly be defeated. The intelligence gathering is used to find and identify anyone and anything that might be involved in the proliferation of terrorism; training camps, universities, madrases, military facilities, mosques, charitable groups, banks, weapons dealers, scientists and even government heads of state and high ranking officials themselves. Once the players can be identified, direct action can be taken and people or groups who are believed to have even the ability to act contrary to another nation or groups interests or who are suspected of having ill motive toward that country are eliminated before they can develop into a full fledged threat. While the technological creations described in this book are figments of my imagination, the technology behind each of them is very, very real. For the most part, they could be employed without leaving any discernible  trace of who or what government had used them. Of course, in our scenario no government actually is involved. The Rubicon team, functioning much like a terrorist cell themselves would, isn’t beholden to any one nation for its operating base and doesn’t rely on any nation’s air force for transport. The Rubicon operatives move about within the framework of international corporate travel or they simply hide in plain sight by flying commercially like everyone else, including terrorists. As is the case with real-world espionage and with terrorists sometimes as well, they often hide behind front organizations or develop covers that can withstand fairly tight scrutiny. Is adopting the same tactics that terrorists use to defeat terrorists playing by the rules? If one side in a conflict refuses to limit itself to any rules of conduct, does the other side in that conflict have any obligation to restrain itself? By resorting to the tactics of your enemy do you then become your enemy? These are tough questions.

The premise of the book is to explore the perils of runaway technological advancement, and to explore what might happen if the desire to employ this technological advancement faster than your enemies can could allow a small group of highly trained and well-funded operators to become a de facto world power. The pace of technological change is now so swift that there are only a handful of major players in the game. None of these player nations involved can afford to hold back, or even to stop and examine what kind of Pandora’s Box they may be opening by forging ahead with unbridled military application of technology. This also allowed me to write about how the actions of a handful of pivotal men throughout the last several decades set the stage for a race to acquire this technological superiority that could instantly make any nation an elite power in the world.

Stephen Walker writes blog articles on a wide range of topics. He is a novelist and short story fiction writer who writes for the Erudite Aardvark and other online concerns. He can be reached at stephen.walker@eruditeaardvark.com.

This article is the intellectual  property of The Erudite Aardvark, which reserves all rights to the content. It may not be copied or re-transmitted in any fashion without the express, written permission of the owner.

Five Sure Signs that Your Sales Job is in Danger

 When things begin to go south at American corporations, many fingers get pointed in many directions. Usually the first and longest finger gets pointed toward the sales organization. This is a familiar refrain to anyone who has been in sales or has been employed in sales, sales management, sales support or sales operations. The CEO's phone blows up with calls from shareholders demanding to know why their dividend checks are smaller than are accustomed to. They insinuate that if this continues they may need to find a Chief Executive Officer who can deliver the elevated stock price to keep the dividend checks stable. He call his Chief Operations Officer.
 Things aren't looking good. The quarter just passed was dismal and the quarter just prior to that wasn't quite up to par either. You know that the fastest, sure-fire way to get the shareholders off your back is to increase sales. When you increase sales, you increase profits. Increased profits means happy shareholders. Happy shareholders means no one threatening your five year stock-option payout. Telling your shareholders that times are tough and that they may need to get used to getting by with less is not the path to continued access to the executive underground parking space and elevator you've become so fond of. Questions would be asked. Why didn't you see this coming? Why didn't you diversify? Why didn't you modernize? Why didn't you acquire other companies to quickly open up other revenue paths? Why haven't we globalized our business strategy?
 The COO picks up the phone and dials Senior Vice President of Sales, who in turn schedules a Thursday-Sunday retreat at The Greenbrier with all of the Regional Vice President's to discuss what the issues are that are keeping the company from performing as it once had. The Senior VP wants to know so he can report back to the CEO & COO that he's identified the problem and is on top of correcting it. He knows that the problem can't lie with the Regional VP's. He hired each one of them himself, even bringing a couple of them over from the firm he was with before. If they were the problem it would actually be an indictment of the Senior VP's ability to pick strong leaders to push the company along and lead the sales effort.
 The Regional VP's are unanimous in their analysis of the problem of falling sales numbers. The problem isn't with the Regional Directors that report to the Regional Vice Presidents. Those men and women were put into their positions by the Regional VP's themselves. They had been successful front line sales managers with long track records of success. It can't be them that are causing the problem. The real issue they say, is due to the fact that the people who the Regional Directors hired to replace them have made poor choices in hiring. In other words, the Regional Sales Managers that report to the Regional Directors lack the ability to hire top quality sales people. They've put people in front of the company's best customers who don't have the ability to sell them more of the company's products or to convince their competitors customers to do business with our company instead. In order to bolster their assertion that it's the company's front line sales people who are ultimately blame they solicit kindred spirits from elsewhere in the company. The Director of Human Resources affirms that the dropoff in sales isn't because the company doesn't offer a competitive salary and benefits package or that the compensation plan has been "tweaked" each year. Such a statement as that would mean that Human Resources shared in the culpability of the company's poor performance. Additionally, the Director of Training & Development adds that the poor performance certainly isn't attributable to deficiencies in the training program for its sales people. Despite the fact that the former six week comprehensive sales training course has now been reduced to a three day meet and greet, class photo, IT credentialing seminar, HR forms presentation and workshop on the new book on sales philosophy and process that the company's CEO wrote, the training and on boarding  for new hires has never been better. HR and Training both corroborate the Regional Director's assessment; it's the sales people's fault.
 And after all, don't they deserve the blame? They show up at the office when they want to, work from home when they want to, get to travel to other cities and stay in hotels and eat out and go on exotic trips to Aruba and Cabo San Lucas and St. Barts. They make way too much money and all they really do is go out and talk to people and ask them a few questions.
 So how do you recognize when this has happened at your company? Well, thankfully there are some telltale sign to look for.

1. Are the sales people in your organization treated as pariah's and outcasts?

This is a prime indicator. In a healthy organization, sales is recognized as the hunting arm of the company that goes out and brings in the dollars that fund everything else that goes on. If the sales representatives and front line sales managers in your company suddenly feel like second-class citizens, you probably are. All companies walk in the shadows of the leadership. If the executives in the company believe that their sales people are overpaid, coddled renegades and rogues the rest of the organization will follow suit. It doesn't take long for the poison to circulate through the veins of the organization and infect the whole company with an us vs. them mentality. Ask yourself this question; Who has the most clout in my company? The SVP of Finance? The SVP of Legal? The SVP of Human Resources? Or the SVP of Sales? If it's anyone but the SVP of Sales you have a problem.

2. Has the company microscope been taken off the shelf?

Metrics. That's the buzzword of the underperforming company. Not that all companies don't have benchmarks and use statistical data to measure their year over year success. They do. What I'm referring to here is the microscopic measurement of every aspect of the sales cycle. Does every phone call to every customer get logged in ACT or Gold Mine or SalesForce? Is there a recap required to every voicemail left? Do you have to log a four page debrief for every sales call you made? Do you have graphs and charts and dashboards that show how each sales rep measures up in number of voicemail messages left on Wednesdays as compared to the company mean and year over year data from 2010? It didn't use to be like this in the old days, you say? No, it probably didn't. But if it's like this where you work then chances are the scenario above, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof has occurred. The executive team wants tangible proof to show shareholders that they are doing something to remedy the situation, taking action and seizing the bull by the horns. What does he tell them? That he's had an All Hands On Deck conference call and asked everyone to bear down and try harder and that they all agreed? No. The CEO needs data. He or She needs charts, graphs and spreadsheets. He or she needs to show that he or she is man (or woman) of action, that a top to bottom investigation has been conducted, a scapegoat has been identified and that the scapegoats have been placed on a Performance Improvement Plan. They have signed a document attesting to their underperformance, promising to work harder and agreeing to a strict set of monitoring by management and HR, including regular conference calls and field ride-alongs.

3. Has Your Communication With Your Supervisor Suddenly Become Email-centric?

It's not difficult to understand that sales people, and sales managers by extension, are verbal creatures. They like to talk. They are good at talking. They make their living by talking to people. So what is to be made of it when your normally gregarious sales manager starts communicating with you predominantly via email? You can probably figure that he or she has been told to. Email provides advantages over a phone or an in person conversation. You can always deny that you said something when the contents of a conversation are discussed. No one can deny that an email was written or that it contains what it contains. Chances are that if your sales manager has recently switched to an email-centric brand of communicating with you, it's not by his or her choice. Human Resources has most likely instructed the manager to carefully document all discussions with you in the even that they need to be reproduced. What are they doing this for? In all likelihood they are preparing to terminate you or a entire group including you, or they are at least planning on firing a sub-group of your peers. Most likely, if you're getting the email treatment you're in the mix somewhere. Human Resources doesn't exist to protect the employee from the company. It exists to protect the company from the employee. In other words, they want to be absolutely certain that they've put it in writing that you've had a certifiable history of underperformance and that you've been warned on multiple occasions about it and that they've made efforts to assist you in addressing the performance deficiency. That way when you take your notes and emails to a plaintiffs attorney and tell him or her that you suspect that you've been fired because of your race, sex or age, they can show that it was because of your performance. At least it appears that way.
 Another sure fire sign is if the phone calls that you do have with your supervisor become memorialized in an email to you soon after the call. If this is the case your Human Resources department has instructed your supervisor to write down the points of discussion on the call and then email it to you for "your review." Of course, the email is not for your review at all. It's to set the narrative for what took place on the call. If you don't write back and dispute that various things were or were not said during the call then the memorialization stands as a pretty strong testament to what took place. Most employees don't like to take an adversarial position with their supervisor, so this is a very effective tool.


4. Is HR Attending Your Meetings?

If your organization is like most, you will have probably have a quarterly or at least bi-annual meeting of your team. If the attendees at these gatherings have classically been just your supervisor and the team members you might find it odd when your boss announces that you have a "special guest" this quarter; Kate from HR. Should you find it odd that Kate has flown all the way from the company headquarters in Dallas to your little meeting in Atlanta? Yes, you should. Kate will probably give a five or six minute presentation on why you shouldn't use racial epithets or stereotypes in jokes or speech at work. Realizing that this isn't 1972, you become suspicious of why she's really there. You probably should be. Chances are that one or more of your team are being considered for termination and Kate is there to report back on what kind of corporate citizens she's found among your group.


5. Expenses

 Way back at the beginning of the article our CEO picked up his phone and put in a call to the Chief Operations Officer that set off the string of events that we've just discussed. That was a grave mistake. The first call he should have made was to the Chief Financial Officer, the CFO. (We are assuming that the CEO didn't have the hutzpah to tell his shareholders that the company was holding its own in a tough competitive and economic environment and if they really thought they could do better they should let him know ASAP because there are many other companies out there that need real leaders at the top who aren't afraid to be plain spoken and straight talking and that he could have his resignation written in less than fifteen minutes if needed. There are precious few of these CEO's out there any longer) The call to the CFO should have included the admonition to go to a corporate-wide moratorium on non-sales related travel and a top down review of how sales related travel could be reduced by 20-25% for the rest of the year.
 Let's say that the company has a profit margin of 10%. If they're really fortunate they might have a margin of 20%. If they're in an elite class they might have a margin of 30%. So by looking like a man of action and rattling the corporate cage to increase sales, our CEO really isn't doing much to improve the situation. If sales go up by $1 million dollars you've really only added $100,000-$300,000  to the top line. However, if he'd cut expenses like that retreat at The Greenbrier in favor a conference call or video conference he would realize 100% of the savings from the bottom line. Cutting expenses isn't a very sexy way to assert your leadership. It's better to be known as the guy who can move the sales needle rather than the guy who can make you profitable through cost-cutting.
 If your expenses reports are being nit-picked like never before you can bet that there is a good reason behind it. The company is probably is deep Kim-chi and cutbacks are being seriously considered. If you're seeing the effects, your department and your job is probably being considered for elimination. Let's face it. If it comes between canceling their own four day retreat at The Greenbrier or sacrificing you and four or five of your buddies, what do you really think they're going to do?


It's not all bad news, though. If you see some or all of these things happening at your company you always have the ultimate action in your own hands. You can update your resume, start interviewing and jump off of the sinking ship before any of the wharf rats even realize that you're gone.




Stephen Walker writes blog articles on a wide range of topics. He is a novelist and short story fiction writer who writes for the Erudite Aardvark and other online concerns. He can be reached at stephen.walker@eruditeaardvark.com.

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