Monthly Archives: December 2009

The Mike Leach Train Wreck

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After what happened earlier this year, no one should really be surprised that Texas Tech University elected to fire Mike Leach yesterday.

But we still are. Just how does someone as successful and intelligent as Leach lose one of the 20 or so highest-paying jobs in big-time college football?

Absent a financial settlement between Tech and Leach, this mess will make for a particularly nasty lawsuit.

From the beginning of their relationship, Tech has never been entirely comfortable with Leach, while Leach has been without success trying to find a better job than the Tech gig almost from the day he set foot in Lubbock.

So, both parties have incentive to get this settled without exposing all that dirty laundry in court, notwithstanding Leach’s somewhat provocative public statement about his termination.

Frankly, I don’t have a clue from reading media reports whether Leach’s handling of Adam James justified a termination for cause (i.e., no further compensation) under his contract.

Football is a tough sport and coaches are often rough on players to make a point. Leach has also alleged publicly that James was a slacker and that his prominent father lobbied him and the other Tech coaches on behalf of his son.

For what it’s worth, Leach has supporters and detractors among the folks close to the program who have personal knowledge about the situation.

Although Leach’s alleged conduct toward James was clearly odd and certainly meant to embarrass the young man, it’s reasonably clear that James was never physically endangered or abused.

Thus, this does not appear to be a situation that rises to the level of risking what happened to Ereck Plancher at at Central Florida last year or the alleged physical and verbal abuse that supposedly led to the recent resignation of Mark Mangino at Kansas.

On the other hand, this is another example of a situation that — for whatever reason — Leach just didn’t handle well.

Beyond his shabby treatment of James, Leach was apparently given the opportunity by Tech to resolve the matter privately with an apology to James. Leach balked at that, so Tech suspended him from coaching the upcoming Alamo Bowl game.

When Leach sued Tech seeking to be “unsuspended,” Tech fired him (in my experience, employers often have that reaction when sued by their employees). That’s not the advice I would have given Leach, but his lawyer (Ted A. Liggett) purports to be on the aggressive side.

Furthermore, stories about Leach’s eccentric behavior have circulated for years.

For example, Leach’s tardiness for meetings is legendary (sometimes very tardy) and has caused much misery for his staff and players.

When one of his players called Leach out on Twitter about that habit earlier this year, Leach reacted by banning Tech’s players from using Twitter. Leach has also used poor judgment in making public remarks about assistant coaches on his staff.

Finally, although Leach did a good job at Tech, his public relations were better than his overall record.

But still, even with all that, how did it come to this?

Given Leach’s eccentricities, there is certainly no assurance that any other big-time college football program will take a flyer on him — it’s telling that none came calling during his successful tenure at Tech.

Leach has now blown a contract that would have paid he and his family around $11 million over the next four years and may well be the best contract that he ever has.

And what does he have left to show for it? A lawsuit.

As complicated as we tend to make such issues, my sense is that the answer to what would have prevented this imbroglio is really quite simple.

Mike Leach needs to grow up.

The risks of health care finance

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health_insurance A ran across a couple of particularly good articles yesterday regarding the current national debate over reform of the American health care finance system.

First, Canadian Mark Steyn does not believe that Obamacare’s drift toward universal coverage will even be as effective as the underachieving Canadian model:

.  .  . Government health care turns out to be all government and no health care. Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

That’s why I believe America’s belated embrace of government health care will be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one’s philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you are a Cabinet minister or a big-time hockey player, you’ll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does.

But, even before it’s up and running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs and arbitrary shakedowns.  .  .  .

Meanwhile, the WSJ’s Anna Wilde Mathews provides this distressing analysis of the difficulties that a self-employed Phoenix businessman named James Mannett faced in tapping into catastrophic insurance coverage after being diagnosed with a particularly aggressive cancer:

In September 2005, Mr. Mannett felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. At the emergency room of Phoenix’s St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, a scan revealed a five-centimeter tumor on his small intestine, and three tennis-ball-size tumors in his liver. The doctor told him he likely had only two years to live.   .  .  .

Doctors removed the tumor on his small intestine and a third of his colon. He went home a week later, accompanied by his mother and a cousin, a nurse, who had come to care for him.

As Mr. Mannett recovered, the bills stacked up. Assurant (his health insurance company) wasn’t making any payments, he says. Instead, the insurer demanded from Mr. Mannett the names and addresses of every doctor he’d seen for the previous five years, so it could verify that he hadn’t concealed his cancer when he bought the policy. The investigation dragged on for months, until, according to Mr. Mannett, he called the insurer and warned that the next contact would be from his lawyer. Soon after, he says, Assurant paid the hospital more than $29,000, as well as several other bills.

Mannett’s experience is the ugly side of the private health care insurance industry, which has a responsibility to shareholders to limit claims and maximize profits.

This dynamic is why I have always believed that a substantial governmental component — preferably as a re-insurer on catastrophic policies provided by the private sector — would be necessary in any well-structured health care finance system.

For all its virtues in terms of encouraging innovation and providing top-notch care, the current health care finance system simply does not deal well with the cost of catastrophic illness or injury, particularly where the cost exceeds private insurance limits.

Of course, resolving that issue necessarily involves tough choices, which is something that continues to be largely ignored in Congress during the current health care policy debate.

Thinking about security theater

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Homeland security Given the Homeland Security Department and Transportation Security Administration’s typically over-the-top reaction (see also here) to the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a jet flying into Detroit from Amsterdam, one wonders at what point the government’s elaborate "security theater" will finally make flying so miserable that it will choke the life out of the U.S. airline industry? Professor Bainbridge provides a good roundup of the blogosphere’s discussion of that and related issues.

The latest incident also reminded me of this prophetic Bruce Schneier post from about a month ago. Schneier does the best job that I’ve read of explaining why a balance between legitimate and symbolic is helpful in deterring terrorism, but that most of Homeland Security’s security theater is utterly misguided, as well as a waste of time and resources.

The entire post is excellent, but two points he makes are particularly important.

First, Schneier observes that the governmental impulse "to do something" in response to an attack is mostly misdirected:

Often, this ‘something’ is directly related to the details of a recent event: we confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on aeroplanes. But it’s not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning .   .   . Terrorists don’t care what they blow up and it shouldn’t be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets  .   .   .

Even more importantly, Schneier points out that the right kind of security theater — that is, the best way to counteract the damage that terrorism attempts to inflict upon all of us — is to act as if we are not scared of it:

The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we — and our leaders — need to react with indomitability.

By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant ‘bring ’em on’ ehetoric. There’s a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats .   .   .

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.

Schneier is spot on. Rather than making air travel increasingly distasteful, Homeland Security and the TSA ought to be encouraging Americans to spit in the terrorists’ collective eye by traveling even more by air under reasonably tolerable and legitimate security arrangements.

2009 Weekly local football review

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Arian Foster (Doug Benc/Getty Images photo; previous weekly reviews for this season are here).

Texans 27 Dolphins 20

The Texans (8-7) continue to have a remote chance of gaining an AFC playoff spot with their 27-20 victory over the Dolphins (7-8), but the way in which they won reflected why many folks are skeptical that Gary Kubiak has what it takes as a head coach to propel the club to success in the playoffs.

The Texans need to win next Sunday against the Patriots (10-5) at Reliant Stadium (a distinct possibility because the Patriots locked up the AFC East title on Sunday) and for two of the three other 8-7 teams — the Ravens, Jets or Broncos — have to lose for the Texans to achieve an AFC wild card playoff spot.

Nevertheless, the Texans playoff chances are not all that great. The Jets play the Bengals (10-5), who have clinched the AFC North, so that looks like a probable win for the Jets. The Ravens go on the road to play the Raiders (5-10), so who knows what will happen there. But the Broncos host the Chiefs (3-12), so that’s not looking good from the Texans standpoint. I don’t see two losses for the 8-7 teams coming out of those three games

After playing their best half of football all season, the Texans led 27-3 at the half. The first half was so lopsided that, at one point, the Texans had outgained the Dolphins 310-46 in total offense and 15-2 in first downs. A field goal immediately before the half was all that kept the Dolphins from being skunked.

But if the rest of the game was easy, this wouldn’t be the Texans.

As has inexplicably occurred on multiple occasions during Kubiak’s tenure as head coach, the opposition made routine adjustments at halftime and the Texans appeared to make none. The result? Not surprisingly, the Dolphins dominated the second half and probably would have at least tied the Texans in the fourth quarter but for a leg whip penalty that negated a long TD pass play.

Now, who knows what really is going on with the Texans? Perhaps Kubiak and his staff make adjustments and the players don’t execute them.

But whatever the reason, anyone could tell that something was wrong with the Texans during the third quarter of this game. They looked as unprepared to play that quarter as the Dolphins looked during the first two.

And that should worry Bob McNair about continuing to hitch the Texans’ future to Kubiak and his staff.

Oh well, a win is a win, right? The Texans did finally show the semblance of a rushing attack (126 yards) with previous practice squad RB Arian Foster and backup Ryan Moats showing the quickness at the point of attack that has been missing the entire season for the Texans.

Although their playoff hopes are slim, a win over the Patriots would give the Texans a winning record for the first time in the franchise’s eight seasons.

In the Texans’ mostly woebegone world, that’s decided progress.

Again, why bother with a trial?

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Allen Stanford The popular view is that R. Allen Stanford is a crook and should spend the rest of his life in prison.

But doesn’t the U.S. Constitution — not to speak of simple human decency — provide him with the opportunity to contest the government’s charges against him fairly?

These earlier posts (here, too) touched on the indefensible prison conditions that the federal government has imposed on R. Allen Stanford as he awaits trial on criminal fraud charges arising from the demise of Stanford Financial Group.

Last week, Stanford’s lawyers filed the motion below requesting that U.S. District Judge David Hittner release Stanford on strict conditions pending his trial that would make it virtually impossible for him to go to the corner drug store without the U.S. Marshals being notified immediately.

Judge Hittner promptly denied the motion without comment, which is next to inexplicable given what is contained in the motion. Here is a mere sampling:

Mr. Stanford has been incarcerated since June 18, 2009 and was moved to the [Federal Detention Center] on September 29, 2009. Immediately upon his arrival at the FDC, he underwent general anesthesia surgery due to injuries that were inflicted upon him at the Joe Corley Detention Facility. He was then immediately taken from surgery and placed in the Maximum Security Section — known as the “Special Housing Unit” (SHU) — in a 7′ x 6 1/2′ solitary cell. He was kept there, 24 hours a day, unless visited by his lawyers. No other visitors were permitted, nor was he permitted to make or receive telephone calls. He had virtually no contact with other human beings, except for guards or his lawyers.

When he was taken from his cell, even for legal visits, he was forced to put his hands behind his back and place them through a small opening in the door. He then was handcuffed, with his arms behind his back, and removed from his cell. After being searched, he was escorted to the attorney visiting room down the hall from his cell; he was placed in the room and then the guards locked the heavy steel door. He was required, again, to back up to the door and place his shackled hands through the opening, so that the handcuffs could be removed. At the conclusion of his legal visits, he was handcuffed through the steel door, again, and then taken to a different cell where he was once again required to back up to the cell door to have his handcuffs removed and then forced to remove all of his clothing. Once he was nude, the guards then conducted a complete, external and internal search of his body, including his anus and genitalia. He was then shackled and returned to his cell. In his cell there was neither a television nor a radio and only minimal reading material  was made available to him. He remained there in complete solitude and isolation until the next time his lawyers returned for a visit.

In short, Mr. Stanford was confined under the same maximum security conditions as a convicted death row prisoner, even though the allegations against him are for white collar, non-violent offenses. He is certainly not viewed as someone who poses a threat to other persons or the community, nevertheless, he has been deprived of human contact, communication with family and friends, and was incarcerated under conditions reserved for the most violent of convicted criminals. Officials at the FDC informed counsel that this was for Mr. Stanford’s “own protection” and to minimize their liability.  .  .  .

The U.S. criminal justice system used to be an institution that distinguished a free society from those that endured under oppressive regimes.

But with cases such as Stanford’s, it’s sure getting hard to tell the difference between the U.S. system and the supposedly more oppressive ones.

Mtn for Reconsideration of Detention Order

The Light in the Darkness

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Every Christmas since 1949, The Wall Street Journal has published the following op-ed — In Hoc Anno Domini — from the late Vernon Royster.

Royster’s piece reminds us not only the the brutal nature of life in the Roman Empire, but the extraordinary impact that Judeo-Christian culture has had over the past two thousand years in improving the quality of life.

We take it for granted at our peril.

So the light came into the world.

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Merry Christmas from the Family

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It wouldn’t be Christmas in Texas without taking a moment to listen to Texas singer-songwriter and Houston native Robert Earl Keen‘s classic Texas Christmas carol and video, Merry Christmas from the Family Keen is playing the House of Blues at 8 p.m. on Monday.

Have a restful, joyous and safe holiday!

To Everything There is a Season

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Still sounding darn good in 2006, Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman and David Crosby sing Pete Seeger’s classic that The Byrds made famous in the 1960’s, Turn! Turn! Turn!

On the Tiger Myth

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Tiger-Woods- I really didn’t think that I would do more than one post on the Tiger Woods affair, but a couple of recent articles merit taking the topic up one last time.

First, in this weekend op-ed piece, the NY Times’ Frank Rich piously excoriates Woods and his handlers for promoting a myth about Woods that was as fictitious as the pre-collapse myths about Enron (among others).

Of course, Rich fails to comprehend that the mainstream media’s myths about Enron after its demise weren’t any closer to the truth.

Meanwhile, Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz — the golf writer who has known Woods the longest and best — provides this far more insightful article on Woods’ life, as well as the expectations and pressures that may have contributed to his secret life.

Morality plays are easy to embrace. The truth is usually more nuanced and difficult, but ultimately much more fulfilling to understand.