The University of Kansas's athletic department and, specifically, its Athletic Director Lew Perkins are catching all sorts of heat in the wake of its recent ticket scandal.
Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News sees an athletic department in crisis.
It's a crisis for the Kansas athletic department to allow this level of alleged fraud to contaminate its offices with no one catching on for nearly a decade. Not only was money apparently lost that could have been put to important uses, the misdirection of those tickets was an affront to every Kansas fan interested in attending a game but unable to secure admission.
Joe Posnanski notes on his blog that KU's Athletic Director Lew Perkins hasn't gone far enough in explaining the situation or truly taking responsibility for the mess the university is now facing.
Kansas held a sad-faced press conference on Wednesday about the mess, leading Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins to become the latest person in our great land to "accept responsibility" without explaining how exactly he will be accepting responsibility. He's not leaving, that much he made clear. Perkins as Kansas athletic director had either hired or promoted everyone involved in the ticket scandal, and he had more or less created the system that was so thoroughly abused, and he was in charge of the athletic department while this fun bit of malfeasance was going on. For this, well, let him explain:
"I accept responsibility, not for any criminal activity, but because I am the athletic director and it happened during my watch," Perkins said.
That statement doesn't exactly overflow with responsibility acceptance, does it?
The Kansas City Star's editorial board even weighed in, suggesting perhaps that KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins might have lost the confidence of university officials.
The duty to make substantial improvements falls to Athletic Director Lew Perkins - unless Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little has lost confidence in the person who was in charge during much of the troubles and she decides to bring in someone else.
Gray-Little is one of thousands of people, notably the many alumni in the Kansas City metropolitan area, who are extremely disappointed with recent events.