You’d Think Memphis Would Know a Thing or Two About Handling P.R. Disasters

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↵Amid the controversy over Memphis’ adventures in SAT falsification was the realiization that, uh, Memphis didn’t exactly handle the firestorm very well. Granted, they had no control over John Calipari or his daughter launching fusillades of outrage at “Pat Ford,” but they certainly didn’t seem to have their act together:↵↵⇥For Memphis, being forced to release the letter when the intention was↵⇥to keep it hidden resulted in a chaotic 72 hours in which new coach Josh Pastner↵⇥scrambled to reassure recruits that the allegations would not affect↵⇥the program moving forward. Meanwhile, top university officials were↵⇥either remaining silent such as school president Shirley Raines,↵⇥who was out of town and unavailable for comment per a university↵⇥spokesman, or making contradictory statements as was the case of↵⇥athletic director R.C. Johnson. ↵↵“Sure,” an astute reader might respond, “but organizing a message and getting everyone on the same page often takes days to get right.” Valid. “There’s no harm in being caught off-guard,” you might say.
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↵And that’s fine. Please, allow me to retort:

the NCAA’s notice of allegations was sent to Memphis in January. So sure, Memphis was surprised by the media attention, but that’s just because they were planning on keeping the allegations (which, we’ll just point out, are matters of public record) secret.
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↵If this seems a little strange, it should; a few years ago, Jeremy Hunt, an active player on the roster, was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend. In response, the university... wait for it... did absolutely nothing, not even keeping Hunt off the court or holding a presser until multiple weeks later.
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↵In the wake of that fiasco, Memphis hired a firm from New York for $25,000 to evaluate their response and propose changes for the future. Their (obvious) conclusions were that it was handled poorly and that they should have acted upon it ASAP, framing the message their way and being proactive instead of pretending bad things that are on the public record didn’t happen.
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↵Sound familiar?↵