Timing isn’t anything in latest debacle

A few years back, when Eastern Washington was trying to shatter the glass ceiling keeping it out of the NCAA basketball tournament, the Eagles hit upon the gritted-teeth promotional slogan of “If not now, when?”

On Wednesday, Eastern fired coach Mike Burns, an unhappy event that had a gestation period longer than that of a blue whale. It, too, should have come with a slogan:

“Now? No? OK, now? No? Now?

“Now?”

After enough of those questions, of course, comes the kicker: Why now?

To which EWU’s interim athletic director, Michael Westfall, would answer, “It’s always the right time to do the right thing for Eastern.”

Like last May, when Burns got an extra year tacked on to his contract?

It’s not such a great time to be an Eagle. It’s a mystifying, ridiculous, embarrassing time of dubious judgment and comical obfuscation, a veritable Olympics of butt-covering. And the won-lost record isn’t very good, either.

Some 2 1/2 months ago, athletic director Darren Hamilton was axed after about 10 minutes on the job, an enormous relief to just about everybody in the athletic department as long as they conveniently forgot that the search committee which cleared him let the dog eat its homework. So now the school is paying a headhunter to do the diligence on a replacement – because, you know, Eastern has so much extra cash lying around.

Since Hamilton had Burns in the crosshairs after the Eagles failed to make the Big Sky tournament – despite having the most gifted player in school history in the lineup – it was left to Westfall to ascertain whether that was a reasonable course of action or just a charming quirk in Hamilton’s, uh, management style.

So he embarked on a review of the basketball program that he called “holistic” and “global.”

He forgot “glacial.”

It took 70 days. It could have been longer, but Westfall didn’t waste time actually talking to any of the players about the direction of the program.

In the meantime, an assistant resigned, Rodney Stuckey bolted for the NBA, another starter asked for his release, Burns signed four recruits to letters of intent (who will now be given the option of voiding them) and 52 other Division I coaching jobs were filled. But, really, nothing that should have affected Burns’ job status had changed from the day EWU’s season ended.

Oh, there were also some rules violations that Westfall mentioned on Wednesday. But it was only a coincidence that they were forwarded to NCAA investigators on the same day Burns was dismissed.

Right. And who would think a guy standing in a rainstorm would get wet?

But it allows EWU to stick to the story of the firing being for “convenience” rather than “cause,” and use the shield of “personnel matters” to deflect any discussions of the reasons behind it.

Westfall is taking the same approach with the violations themselves, saying that “the last thing I want is for the specifics to get out there and cloud the NCAA’s interpretation of our actions.”

But if the specifics have already been forwarded to the NCAA, what clouding could possibly occur?

“I don’t want to make the issue bigger than it is,” he said.

Well, sure, being purposely vague and allowing the public to imagine the worst for lack of any contrary information is bound to stanch the buzz.

Westfall did acknowledge that some of the basketball violations “potentially” could be considered major, in the NCAA’s eyes. But again, he insisted they weren’t directly tied to Burns’ firing.

“There is no smoking gun,” Westfall said. “There is no one thing we’re going to point to and say this is why.”

But on the radio later Wednesday, Westfall launched into a soliloquy on what he’s looking for in a replacement, stressing structure and discipline that, in a between-the-lines reading, he obviously felt was absent in Burns’ program. Inevitably, he invoked Gonzaga’s example – not so much in the wild ride of the last decade, but in prior work which laid a foundation for the recent success. A better example relative to EWU might have been what Burns’ predecessor, Ray Giacoletti, put in place at Eastern and which Burns, for whatever reason, couldn’t maintain.

Of course, now Westfall has a frantic deadline to get a coach in place before the crucial July recruiting period. He seems not at all concerned that the candidate pool will not be deep enough for diving, noting that the Eagles’ place in the basketball food chain will always attract the young and hungry (which, left unsaid, is all the school can afford).

In other words, Coach K won’t apply, but coaches X, Y and Z will.

Cruelly, there are precious few jobs for Mike Burns to apply for at this juncture on the calendar. So “convenience” is the ultimate misnomer, for both school and coach. If Burns didn’t do enough to keep his job – not a hard argument to buy – surely that could have been determined sooner.

“It can be a step forward if we get the right person in here,” Westfall said. “I can’t influence the timing, I can only do what I think is best for the institution.”

If he’s open to suggestions, here’s one: Don’t reconvene the search committee that hired the last A.D.