Ball State University could take a hit to the budget after a series of bad decisions in 2006 that resulted in former men's basketball coach Tim Buckley leaving the university. Now, Buckley is seeking $75,000 in an arbitration with the university because of conflicting opinions about his contract.
Before Buckley left, university officials decided he would no longer coach the men's basketball team and reassigned him to a position in University Advancement. It isn't a far stretch to assume the reassignment was the university's discrete way of firing Buckley - and negating the terms of his contract at the same time.
University officials should have fired Buckley outright if they wanted him to leave the university instead of dancing around the issue with a reassignment.
Ball State's athletic department is no stranger to shuffling coaches in and out of various departments and sports. Aside from the Buckley and Ronny Thompson swap, former women's volleyball coach Randy Litchfield was fired and replaced with David Boos last year. The difference in the two situations, however, is that the university clearly cut ties with Litchfield instead of reassigning him and hoping for his departure.
If the university handled Buckley the same way as it did Litchfield, the current problems wouldn't exist. In deciding, for whatever reason, to reassign Buckley instead of simply firing him, the university virtually guaranteed legal action where money would be at stake.
Coaches will, inevitably, continue to come and go at Ball State. For future decisions, officials need to learn the importance of making sound decisions from the Buckley situation. When it's time for coaches to go, firing them and absorbing whatever financial burden that comes as a result will cause less problems than playing with positions and hoping things work out.
If Ball State had made the right decisions in the first place, it wouldn't have to face the possibility of paying for past mistakes now.
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