I Hereby Endorse Michael Adams's Candidacy for the NCAA Presidency

Personally, I think it's more than a bit unseemly to be talking about Myles Brand's replacement so soon after the sad news of his passing, but we live in the era of the 24-hour news cycle and the conversation already is taking place, irrespective of whether we like it.

Quinton McDawg is pushing Il Duce's candidacy for the post of NCAA president, and he's not the only one. Michael Adams's non-denial denial has to raise an eyebrow or two, seeing as how the man holds two graduate degrees in political communication, and therefore ought to know how to answer a question definitively. "Dr. Adams, are you interested in succeeding Myles Brand as the president of the NCAA?" "No." That's easy, right? Instead, what he said was this:

I'd never talk publicly about two things, jobs or money. I love the University of Georgia. My plan is to be here until retirement. My plan is to help facilitate the NCAA getting a search started and getting somebody in place to succeed Myles.

Note the conspicuous use of "my plan is," which is quite different from "I will." If my wife asks me, "Are you going to take the trash out to the curb?", she knows there's a whole heck of a lot of distinction between "I'm going to do that" and "I'm planning to do that." Deeds are definitive, but plans can change.

Also note the use of Brand's first name. The men were friends, so it's natural that they would be on a first-name basis, but, again, this was a response to a reporter's question Adams knew was coming, not a eulogy or a personal conversation. Had Adams called him "Dr. Brand," that would have been a respectful reference by a dispassionate functionary determined to lend his aid and comfort to the Association; by calling him "Myles," Adams reminds everyone that he was close to the guy whose job he covets. Should the offer come his way, well, hey, Myles would have wanted it that way, right?

Now that Adams is on the short list to succeed Brand, though, some in Bulldog Nation are feeling a bit of seller's remorse. Dawgnoxious wonders whether we would be worse off putting an outspoken playoff advocate in charge of the NCAA. I am as staunch a playoff opponent as anyone, and I'm not worried one whit about that possibility. If you put Matt Hinton in charge of the NCAA, I'd know a playoff was forthcoming, because Dr. Saturday is a principled playoff advocate. There was not even a whiff of principle to be found in Adams's cheap and opportunistic advocacy of a Division I-A playoff.

He flipped when it suited him; he'll flop as it suits him. Having reversed his field on this issue once or twice already, Adams will have no trouble turning back the other way to serve his own purposes. Heck, he'll even make it sound good when he does it; there is where those two advanced degrees in political communication (with a cognate emphasis in educational administration, don't you know) come in mighty handy.

Henry of Navarre, the French king who twice abandoned Protestantism for Roman Catholicism as a political ploy, defended his posturing by saying, "Paris is well worth a mass." Michael Adams no doubt believes the NCAA presidency is well worth the BCS. Dawgnoxious need not fear; Michael Adams shares something in common with John Gotti: between them, they have one conviction.

While Dawgnoxious's mild misgivings caused C&F to note that Georgia fans are torn upon this issue, I believe we are singleminded upon this point. If Il Duce is in the running for another job, Bulldog Nation will help him load the U-Haul. Go, Adams! Go, Adams! No, seriously, go, already!

(If he gets the job, by the way, we're going to hold a cocktail party . . . and we're going to call it a cocktail party! We won't even ask the University of Georgia Foundation to pay for it. We will, however, clean up after ourselves.)

Go 'Dawgs!