Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Street & Smith's Must Not Have Followed the Atlantic 10 Men's Hoops Season Too Closely Since

it named Linda Bruno, the A-10 Commissioner who thoroughly botched the John Chaney affair, to its list of the top 20 most influential women in sports.

Click here to see the list. Click here for the Atlantic 10's press release (this is a lead story on the A-10 website).

Click here for one of my posts (that links to others) regarding how Commissioner Bruno failed markedly in handling John Chaney's transgression of sending Nehemiah Ingram into a close game to commit hard fouls on St. Joseph's players (causing a serious injury to starting St. Joe's forward John Bryant). She let Chaney and then the Temple administration take the lead on this problem, when she should have sent a quick and clear message that conduct like this by any coach, even a Hall of Famer, must not be tolerated. Chaney should have been suspended for the entire season (regular and post-season) and banned from practice. Instead, the situation became a debacle, almost comic in its poor handling.

Except for the fact that what happened was so serious.

Linda Bruno, influential?

How?

The A-10 needed serious leadership from its commissioner in the midst of a major crisis, and Linda Bruno failed miserably. While her business accomplishments seem solid, it's hard to fathom that given the Chaney Affair Street & Smith's couldn't find someone with a better overall record to replace Linda Bruno on its list.

It appears that this magazine looked more at the business of college sports in making its evaluation than the games the league's teams played themselves. Because if they had watched the Temple-St. Joe's game and how the A-10 handled the matter, Linda Bruno wouldn't have made the list.

3 comments:

SportsProf said...

It does make you wonder what criteria were used and how good the other people are. The handling of the Chaney incident was so bad that while it might not disqualify Bruno from consideration, it casts a shadow on the entire process given that Bruno made the list. Because of the Chaney incident, I wouldn't have included Bruno on the list.

Anonymous said...

I don't think influential means "skillful" as much as it means "wielding power."

SportsProf said...

I get the point. :). That said, given her handling of the Chaney affair, she shouldn't be in a position to have the influence she has (which Street & Smith's apparently thinks she has). Bruno's and the A-10's handling of that incident was appalling.