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A Defense of Mike Holder

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Athletic directors are like audio/visual employees at concerts and shows. The less they’re talked about the better. When all is going well, nobody talks about athletic directors. They praise coaches and lionize players, but never the man or woman who set those beings into motion to begin with.

Then when all hell breaks loose, suddenly the athletic director (and by extension, department) is tarred and feathered. He or she is the one responsible for every loss, every misstep and every action (or inaction). It’s a lose-lose job that doesn’t pay you to the level of value you create.

In recent days Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder has been eviscerated by a whole host of folks who have never met Mike Holder. He has been reviled, slandered and (humorously) asked to resign from his job by men and women with oversized social media muscles following the carnage Brad Underwood left in his wake en route to Illinois.

I understand the emotional lashing out, but it feels a bit misplaced. Did Holder make a gaffe or two in the way all of this went down? Of course. Is there a bit of discord and potentially a lack of continuity within the athletic department on a variety of levels? From what multiple people have told me, yes. Is it greater or less than any other athletic department discord? I have no idea.

But consider the following defense of the man who has presided over the greatest era of Oklahoma State athletics in its 100+ year history. The two-pronged argument in defense of Holder for what just went down goes something like this.

First, Mike Holder doesn’t believe Oklahoma State is a top-shelf basketball program. Yeah, that’s a defense of him. Because he’s right. I wrote that he was right the other day and wrote about how that sort of felt like a problem as an OSU fan.

After thinking about it a little further, I think I might have been a little off in my logic. Do you have to invest in the future to win? Yes. $1 million a year for a head coach of a great school like Oklahoma State was silly. But you also don’t want to overpay your ceiling.

This was Year 1, and Underwood asked for Lon Kruger/Shaka Smart money after winning 20 games. What would he ask for after winning 28 and going to the regional finals two years from now? Bill Self money?

There is a ceiling in Stillwater, and everybody knows it. Oklahoma State is not UCLA, Duke or Indiana.

“The ceiling is probably where we were when Coach Sutton had it in ’04 you’re in the Final Four and the following year they lost in the Sweet 16,” Doug Gottlieb told me on Monday.

“I think you should be competitive for a NCAA Tournament spot every year. I think once every three or four years you should feel like you’d be disappointed if you weren’t at least a second weekend. You should be competing for league championships every couple of years.”

That’s correct. It’s also a far cry from what the expectations at Kansas or North Carolina are. So in not paying Underwood the alleged $2.9-$3 million he allegedly wanted, Holder was essentially saying, “We’re not at that level as a program, even potentially as a program, and I refuse to get out over my skis once again.”

As someone who runs an athletic department budget, why do we act like this was such an abominable sin? Does it send a bad message that you’re not willing to build for the future? Maybe … and I said that. But you’re kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t here. That’s on Underwood … not Holder.

You can’t pay more than you think your program is worth, especially not 30 games into a Power 5 career. Some people will be upset that Holder doesn’t think OSU is worth it, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t change the reality of your ceiling.

So that’s one defense.

The other is that we need to just look around.

Baseball just went to Omaha. Football is a top 15 program year in and year out. OSU has two tennis teams in the top 10. Wrestling just finished third at the NCAAs (I know this is a sin punishable by solitary confinement to John Smith, but it’s not terrible). Track and field is good. Stadiums and facilities are being built.

Mike Holder has taken what should be an average to above average athletic program nationally based on location and turned it into a real threat across the board nationally.

Is basketball an issue? Yeah, basketball is an issue. And that Travis Ford contract is going to go to the grave with Holder. Like, he’s going to be 92 and in an old folks home and an attendant will say, “Sir, I’m sorry your lunch was not delivered on time … it appears as if one of our chefs had to finish his graduate-level dissertation on how bad the Travis Ford contract was.”

But the reality here is that, at least externally, Holder has made one misstep. Granted, it was a big one that has reverberated for over a decade. But I’m hesitant to bury a guy who let a coach that just went .500 in conference play walk because he asked for too much money until we see how it plays out over the next few years.

Because now Holder has money to play with, a (recent) history of making terrific hires and a future that is salvageable if he makes the right call. I get the anger. I understand the ire. But I also see the nuance in what just went down. So instead of being irate that Holder let a great coach walk, pay attention to why he let him walk.

And then let’s go from there.

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