Maybe Mike DeCourcy was right.
Maybe Bo Ryan’s plan all along was to try and scare Jarrod Uthoff into talking with him, into telling face-to-face why he decided to transfer before ever allowing Ryan to try and find a way to fit him into the Wisconsin system. Uthoff has a chance to be a very good player, and Ryan dedicated quite a bit of time — and, potentially, cost himself a chance at recruiting a different player — convincing the 6-foot-8 forward to become a Badger.
Maybe this was simply a scare tactic to he was using to get answers before eventually giving Uthoff the freedom to transfer anywhere outside of the Big Ten.
But it’s just as likely that Ryan, in the face of a tidal wave of criticism hitting him from every angle over the course of the week, simply relented. He realized he was fighting a losing battle. He realized that by restricting Uthoff from transferring to 26 schools he was doing irreparable harm to his program’s public image. Maybe he even realized that what he was doing may have been acceptable by the rulebook but was a completely unfair abuse of power that looked like nothing more than a bitter, petty temper tantrum.
And, frankly, everything you read in that last paragraph is a good thing.
It means that we won. Twitter won. The internet won.
The one thing that is inarguable in the DeCourcy column linked above is that Bo Ryan is not a tyrant. He runs a very respectable program that wins with kids that a) generally do just as well in the classroom, b) aren’t typically elite recruits, and c) spend at least four years in a Wisconsin uniform. According to DeCourcy, Uthoff is only the second player to transfer out of Wisconsin in Ryan’s tenure, and that player wasn’t forced out.
In a moment of anger and frustration at losing a player he was going to be dependent on in the future, Ryan — a guy without much experience dealing with transfers — threw seemingly every school that Wisconsin could potentially play in the next few years on a restricted list.
The reaction had such venom and such power behind it that Ryan was forced to reverse course.
This proves that we have a voice, the same way that the outcry against expanding to a 96 team NCAA tournament proved that we have a voice. The push back against not playing players resulted in a proposal to give athletes an extra $2,000. The proposal was shot down, but it was a step in the right direction, the same way that the condemnation of the BCS slowly pushing college football closer to a playoff is a step in the right direction.
If anything, what these last three days proves is that our voice — writers, bloggers, columnists, fans, the twitterati — matters.
If we air our grievances, changes get made.
Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @robdauster.
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- jjpt4540 - Apr 20, 2012 at 11:45 AM
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You think too highly of yourself to think your article had anything to do with overruling.
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- pike573 - Apr 20, 2012 at 11:50 AM
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You had me til the end there. The NCAA never planned on going to 96. They just threw that out there to make 68 more palpable.
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- iowahbr - Apr 20, 2012 at 2:03 PM
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Thank heavens some common sense prevailed in this whole matter. This story show how badly college sports are screwed up. If Ryan would like to get the cost of last year’s scholarship from the kid fine, but what is all this worry about where else he plays? I thought colleges were worried about the future of their students and not about their future b-ball rivalries.
Ryan looks like the idiot he might be in all of this and if the folks in Madison haven’t got bigger issues to consider it certainly is a good school for “Cheese Heads.”
Don’t shoot it yet, there are 2 second left on the possession clock. In fairness to Ryan he hasn’t changed the dull style of ball that he coaches since the kid was recruited so either the young man isn’t that smart about b-ball or there is another issue at hand.
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- buckeyeluvn - Apr 20, 2012 at 4:38 PM
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mike and mike tore him up yesterday!
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- dalemite - Apr 20, 2012 at 4:47 PM
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LOL Funny that you think you actually had an impact in how Ryan and UW handled this situation….
Love how you state the facts, call them scare tactics, then say it was all your doing that he eventually caved in to the enormous pressure being felt from all of your readers at Ballin is a Habit. Why don’t you give yourself one more pat on the back big guy! You’ve saved another wayward hoopster from having to play at UT-Panhandle of the Southern Amarillo Juco league with your revolution. You should feel proud of yourself for all that you’ve done!Sounds like the real issue was Ryan didn’t want to badmouth the kid, a player he was really excited about, on national media for putting in a transfer request when Ryan was on vacation and Uthoff didn’t want to tell him face to face like a man and had every opportunity to do it after the season before Ryan left for his trip. Ryan used his administrative powers to call him out, refuse his transfer request initally so Uthoff would have to at least explain himself like a man, at which point they released him to anywhere outside the conference.
Ryan came across poorly on espn and didn’t state his case well, but no one’s perfect. Uthoff wasn’t in how he handled it. Ryan wasn’t in how he explained it or defended things that didn’t need defending. Uthoff gets his release, gets to play at Iowa State, which is all of 50 miles closer to his home than Madison, and everyone moves on. End of story. Non-event. Lessons learned. Even in being a hard ass, Ryan gets my respect because he taught or was trying to teach Uthoff how to deal with things like a responsible young adult. I think he should be given props instead of treated like he’s some greasy pimp waiting to jump to the next high paying job open to him (which he’s not going to do. Ryan is a lifer at UW until he retires and I’m glad it’s that way. Guy can coach) and doesn’t give a lick about his players.
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- stew48 - Apr 20, 2012 at 5:20 PM
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Thank you Dalemite. I didn’t know anything about this ” big story “; was just surfing. As I read it, I realized there are much bigger egos around not limited to athletes, coaches, etc. I am surprised both national political parties have not relied upon “Ballin” to solve our myriad of problems. Oh well, just another part of the day being amused by sports writers.
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- iowahbr - Apr 20, 2012 at 6:43 PM
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Listen Cheesehead: Ryan is way over 50 and the kid is 18 or 19. Who made the mistake in recruiting him or attending Wisconsin is beside the point. If you tried that trick in the real business world you get sued so fast your head would spin so why some idiot head basketball coach at a million or better per year gets away with it is beyond me. In the PR image world it made both the Ryan and the University look very shabby.
Somebody tell Bo that his March Madness is now really over.
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- creek0512 - Apr 20, 2012 at 8:16 PM
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The real question is why anyone would want to play for Bo Ryan in the first place. Watching Wisconsin play what they think is basketball is like getting repeatedly hit in the head with a hammer. Their entire offense is just standing around for 30 seconds and then shooting a 3 at the end of the shot clock. If their 3′s aren’t falling, they can’t win.
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- advantageschneider - Apr 21, 2012 at 12:04 AM
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Look 90 miles west of Madison and MU just ran a kid off who had signed a LOI to go to MU. Where is all the coverage of that?
What’s worse, putting some restrictions on where a guy will transfer so the 19 year old will talk to the school so they know why he’s transferring or running a guy out of your program 4 months before he’s going to go to your campus.
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- burrellfan1 - Apr 22, 2012 at 8:38 PM
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I don’t think it proved that we have a voice at all. The people who thought Ryan was right didn’t have a voice because those that believed Ryan was wrong silenced the voice of those that did not.
Ryan did not change course. Jarrod Uthoff had an appeal that was heard by members of the University that didn’t include Bo Ryan. Ryan had nothing to do with the reduction of the blocked schools nor did the University ever say that Ryan did anything wrong.
I also believe that there were a lot of fans that wanted the field expand to 96 teams. Actually, Ill bet that the majority of college basketball fans wanted the field expanded. The expansion of the field would have mainly helped mid-major schools. Although the super six conferences make up a small percentage of the 345 Division I schools, the power is in the hands of those schools, and that is why the field was not expanded. It had nothing to do with fan opinion.
