BigJim passes on word that David Cutcliffe has been fired as coach at Ole Miss after his first losing season in 6 years with the Rebels. I’m not at all convinced it was the right decision, and the statements from AD Pete Boone and Chancellor Robert Khayat don’t make a lot of sense, in particular this bit from Khayat:

I’ll give you an example. When we hired a new Dean of the School of Education, the provost and I talked about expectations. It’s up to the Dean of School of Education to figure out how to meet those expectations. For me to say who they should hire and what kinds of programs they should implement is wrong. What I can say to him, is “there is a teacher shortage in Mississippi and there is a shortage of well-trained administrators. We need to meet the needs of this state. As Dean of the School of Education, Dean Burrow, we are expecting you to develop a way to do that and we want to see how you are going to do that. It’s not that different than athletics. Organizational rules are transferable from teams to corporations to families. What Pete was asking for was entirely reasonable. David’s response felt right to him and we respect that.

Nor, mind you, does this account square well with accounts I’ve heard of Khayat’s leadership style in other arenas.

BigJim suggests that the Rebels should go for Ty Willingham or Mike Price, both of whom would be great choices. In particular, my inner feelings of karmic justice would be fulfilled by having 2/3 of the black coaches in Division I-A at schools in Mississippi, a point in favor of Willingham. (I’ve also mentioned Memphis coach Tommy West as a strong candidate for the job.)

More at the SEC Fanblog and from Ron Higgins in the CA.

Well, that was a fun semester. Let’s just hope that I get to do a few more of these before I have to move elsewhere.

The Economist has a good article on the American school system that makes a number of good points on its failings:

ONE reason that America’s public schools do badly in international rankings, despite getting more money, is that nobody is really accountable for them. The schools are certainly not run by Washington: the federal government pays only 8% of their costs. Most of their money comes from state and local government, but often responsibility for them lies with school boards. And within the schools themselves, head teachers usually have little power either to sack bad teachers or to expel rowdy pupils.

Until recently, the main villains of the piece had seemed to be the teachers’ unions, who have opposed any sort of reform or accountability. Now they face competition from an unexpectedly pernicious force: the courts. Fifty years ago, it was the judges who forced the schools to desegregate through Brown v Board of Education (1954). Now the courts have moved from broad principles to micromanagement, telling schools how much money to spend and where—right down to the correct computer or textbook