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players parents believes mike anderson is gonzo
Player's parent believes Anderson is gone, but is he?
By Mike DeArmond - Posted on 20 March 2011
I can’t tell you that Mike Anderson will be the coach at Missouri or at Arkansas today, tomorrow or next season. And I suspect neither can anyone – no matter what you’re reading on the Internet – except Mike Anderson.
But shortly after 10 a.m. I spoke with a parent of one of the current Missouri players who told me he believes Anderson is leaving.
“I heard Friday that he was leaving,” that parent told me. “But I haven’t heard anything official.
“The last time (involving talks with Oregon) you heard he was leaving and then he didn’t. But this time seems a little different.”
Moments later, PowerMizzou.com – which is the Rivals.com site run by (in the interest of full disclosure) my son Gabe – posted that a member of the Arkansas media had just told him that MU recruit Otto Porter said Anderson assured him on Saturday that he would be returning to Mizzou.
The truth is, we do not know what the truth is at this point.
On Saturday night, two members of the Missouri basketball team gave me the same answer to my questions about Anderson’s status. As one e-mailed me:
“He said we would hear from him first if anything happens. I'll let u know if I hear anything. He's in Hutchinson, KS now with wat and tj.”
Wat is associate head coach Melvin Watkins and T.J. is T.J. Cleveland, an MU assistant coach and Mike Anderson’s nephew. And they and Anderson were in Hutchinson on Saturday NIGHT on a recruiting trip on Missouri’s dime, looking at Midland College sophomore Guy Landry, whose team lost the national junior college athletic association championship game.
That followed checking out Porter as Porter and Scott Country Central won a third straight Missouri state high school championship in Columbia earlier Saturday.
Speculation over will Anderson stay or will Anderson go to Arkansas, where he was for 17 years an assistant coach under Nolan Richardson, ignited into a twitter-fueled forest fire.
The spark was the tweet “Reports out of Arkansas say Mizzou coach Mike Anderson to be introduced tomorrow in Fayetteville as Razorbacks new head basketball coach” posted by Chris Lincoln of KTUL-TV in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Lincoln, by the way, was the former sports director of KFRU radio in Columbia long ago.
A member of the MU athletic administration told me Saturday night he had not heard any news of Anderson’s departure and that same person told me Sunday he would be “shocked if he left.”
A highly-placed booster, on the other hand, told me Sunday morning he expected Anderson to leave for Arkansas.
MU athletic director Mike Alden did not return telephone calls to me. And Anderson himself isn’t issuing any public statements.
Perhaps if it were only the Lincoln tweet – which he backed off of according to a tweet sent to be by a reporter for KMBC-TV in Kansas City (“Just talked with guy over the phone about Anderson. Says not set in stone, but “most likely happening”) – this latest round of speculation would not have caused much of a reaction.
But Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com – by dint of his reputation – changed the equation when he posted late Saturday night:
“Missouri coach Mike Anderson is close to reaching an agreement in principle to become Arkansas' men's basketball coach, but a deal has not been finalized and no formal introduction is planned for Sunday, a source close to the Arkansas program told CBSSports.com late Saturday.”
By Sunday morning, ESPN’s Doug Gottlieb was saying he and fellow analyst Andy Katz were being told nothing had been agreed to between Anderson and Arkansas and that there would be no announcement on Sunday.
An interesting nugget was provided by Steve Walentik, MU hoops beat writer for the Columbia Daily Tribune, on Sunday morning in his online blog.
That being that “Anderson is contractually obligated to request written permission of Missouri Athletic Director Mike Alden and Chancellor Brady Deaton before interviewing for another job opening.”
And from the contract that Anderson signed in April of 2009 that covered his employment at MU for a period of seven years, there is language that such contact without prior MU approval “will cause irreparable injury to the University.”
That would seem to be the basis for a breach of contract action, which if upheld in court, could bring a substantial financial penalty.
The only real truth just now is that you can find talk and chatter but no hard evidence to either confirm that Anderson is going to Arkansas or that he is staying at Missouri.
And that includes Anderson’s own statements of the past three weeks that he wants to “retire” at Missouri, and as late as Thursday night that: “I’m excited about what’s taking place at Missouri and I plan on being at Missouri. That’s the bottom line.”
I compare the current situation to staring into a pattern of tea leaves in a just-emptied cup and trying to divine from their pattern the true meaning of the universe.
That same parent of a current MU player, in fact, said he tended to take Anderson’s recent comments as further indication he would leave Missouri.
“That’s coach speak,” the parent said. “The bottom line is as soon as I heard him say that, I thought he was leaving.”
The next Facebook, Twitter, almost-news flash may come later this afternoon.
The MU players – many of whom went home after their NCAA Tournament elimination on Thursday – are due back in Columbia for a 3 p.m. study hall.
Will Anderson fill the players in during or after that session? Or will the players – like almost everyone else – have no more definitive an answer than they have at this moment?
Stay tuned.
Read more: http://campuscorner.kansascity.com/n...#ixzz1HAURYbZB
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