re: Pat Ivey out

There's a good thread about Ivey on the TB. LINK

It later devolved into a Michael Brown debate, but the first post seemed like a good guess as to what happened.

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I listened to his entire interview with Feldman. If the recent crap on campus bothers you, you should do likewise. I was previously an admirer of Ivey due in large part to his commitment and methods to develop young men in body, mind, and spirit. I still am. Ivey was disturbed when a young black player from St. Louis told Ivey he had no faith in some good advice because it came from a white person. Ivey knew the kid was poisoned by the Ferguson big lie but also jaded by legitimate concerns (the north St. Louis political/criminal justice system has problems). Ivey wanted to do something about it. He wanted his players to grow beyond limitations arising from prejudice. He tried to start with identification of root causes, knew to fix it he had to be able to see the world form the perspective of the jaded kids. He initiated dialogue. That is admirable. It got emotional - is there any other way? When the Ferguson-derived infection of the MU campus reached epidemic proportions and the emotionally-vulnerable MU athletes got played by the hunger strike hoaxer, Ivey found himself in over his head. He wasn't a strong enough swimmer to keep his players and himself from getting sucked down the toilet bowl of sleazy activism, liberal campus politics, race baiting, PC run amok, and corrupt-spineless-and/or inept MU power brokers. It is completely understandable that Ivey was swept away, it was a powerful and disgusting downward spiral. It wasn't his fault. Did he behave perfectly in the crisis? It was BS to salute the notion the hoaxer's life was in danger, but at that point, the "we support our players who had a heart-felt concern" spin was about the only way to keep the MU football program from a fatal crash. The crash was still bad. In the eyes of the boosters, Ivey was damaged goods; he had to go to facilitate the repair job.

Bad things sometimes happen to good people.

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The chancellor was on his way out for his own doing. Dave matter said that himself. The president was axed bc he didn't do his job. Was he to busy cleaning up the messes the chancellor had left him, probably but you still had the chance to stop this and he dropped the ball.

RockMNation.com by Bill C. on 12/19/15.

First, a word about Pat Ivey. We might never find out what happened over the last couple of weeks -- how he went from announcing he was staying a couple of weeks ago to apparently being let go on Thursday. Dr. Ivey was just about everything you would want from a strength coach and, per his title, Athletic Director for Athletic Performance.

Ivey seemed to be good at his job, first of all, and he seemed legitimately interested in developing young men and women, not just developing muscles. He was as much a part of "Mizzou Made" as Gary Pinkel -- he had a major role in the Total Person Program, which allowed us to feel good about the quality of person Mizzou was producing on average -- and he had the admiration of his student athletes. And he just seems like an awesome dude and perfect representative for your program.

He's also a strength coach. There are a lot of good ones. I'd have preferred he stay at Missouri, but until proven otherwise, I'm assuming that, if this was indeed Barry Odom's decision (and it appears that way), there was a reason behind it. Perhaps it was a philosophical difference regarding how football players should be training. Perhaps it had to do with Ivey's role in Missouri's brief boycott back in November. Perhaps they just didn't get along. If you know this isn't going to be a good working relationship, there's no reason to string it along. Odom's going to make plenty of decisions that make me nervous moving forward -- he already has -- but he has the benefit of the doubt until he loses it.

I occasionally have silly thoughts that pop into my head during a given football season; if they seem unreasonable even to me, and if I don't see anybody else espousing them, I just tuck them deep down inside and assume I'm wrong. But they still plant seeds sometimes.

This year's silly thought, which I had from September onward: Missouri's offensive players simply weren't strong enough. The receivers weren't holding blocks. The offensive line couldn't get a push all season, against either good defenses or bad. Between that and the fact that Missouri has been roughed up by injuries for two of the last four years, I started to wonder how good Ivey actually was at being a strength coach.

This is patently unfair. I know. He's won awards. He's clearly good at his job. But if nothing else, I'm using this dumb twinge as a reminder that other opponents were stronger than Missouri this year, and that other strength coaches might be as good or better than Pat Ivey. If Odom finds one of them, then all is fine. It will forever be disappointing to lose someone like Ivey for reasons of athletic culture if nothing else, but in terms of his primary job, he wasn't irreplaceable. He was a #MizzouMade catalyst, and losing him hurts, but there are lots of good ones, and Odom probably already has one in mind.