Yes. But that was simply a Mack Rhoades narrative

Posted on: May 19, 2017 at 20:44:00 CT

To try and place blame on the Haith administration, and it somehow worked to a great extent. The media simply took it for granted that it was Haith's fault (or Fuller's fault thus Haith's fault) even though KA was our head coach. It was nobody's fault except for Rhoades' incompetent compliance department (it is true he was new to the job but this was under his watch.). Then we self-imposed all sorts of insane penalties on ourselves (which were meaningless since the post-season ban was laughable, the vacating of wins during Haith's last season was entirely irrelevant, and the scholarship reduction was basically meaningless since we were signing guys like CVL in the early signing period.).

Rhoades was our worst AD ever, even though he was only here briefly. He did manage to create a narrative that many people still believe because they wanted to place blame somewhere other than KA and explain away his deficiencies as a head coach. In the end, it didn't' work because those same deficiencies remained KA's final two seasons and perhaps grew worse.

I have little doubt that Sterk would not have caved in to the NCAA and instead would have fired our staff after year two, It all worked out in the end, but Rhoades divided our fan base, attempting to create hope in a disastrous product, and we suffered miserably as a result.