John Blanchette: Kramer, MSU end soap opera

On their way out the door for the weekend Friday, the athletic director and president of Montana State University fired their football coach, Mike Kramer, in the wake of another drug arrest of a former Bobcats player.

Just wondering:

Will they feel safer when they return to work Monday morning?

Will the momma in Plentywood be reassured about sending her boy off to Moo U in the fall?

Will the English professor feel secure that the student in the second row isn’t packing?

Will the rancher in Big Timber once again be able to wear his Bobcats sweatshirt in public – that is, not just to feed his cattle – without shame?

Let’s hope so. Let’s hope there are some tangible gains to be made here. You’d hate to think that Mike Kramer is out of work today only because his bosses needed to do some emergency public relations.

The convulsive marriage of Kramer and MSU football has been something to behold ever since he was lured away from Eastern Washington University seven years ago. So, alas, was the divorce.

From a winless first season to shares of three Big Sky Conference championships. From juggling job possibilities with both Montana and MSU to beating the Grizzlies three times in four years. From upsetting Colorado to losing to Chadron State in the space of a week. All of it to a soundtrack of Kramer’s enchanting mots and monologues.

And, yes, there was also the painful and troubling criminal activity that dogged his program – from an assistant coach convicted of dealing meth to current and former players arrested on charges of slinging dope to a 2006 murder purportedly committed by yet another ex-Bobcat that Kramer brought to campus.

When former wide receiver Rick Gatewood was charged last week for trafficking cocaine – during a span that included his last year of eligibility in 2005 – athletic director Peter Fields concluded he had no choice but to fire the coach, calling it a “crisis in leadership.” Though, naturally, that crisis didn’t extend into the AD’s office.

Or maybe leadership doesn’t extend there. Whatever.

Losing Kramer as a notebook filler tends to warp a sports writer’s judgment, but even so it’s understandable that Fields and MSU president Geoff Gamble decided they had to do more than continue to wring their hands. This was one of those “tipping point” firings, a cumulative event, and not altogether unjustifiable.

It’s just that it was far more justifiable, oh, five months ago.

Kramer at the time was trying once again to get hired by his alma mater, the University of Idaho. He was briefly the front-runner, too, until Bobcats cornerback Andre Fuller and two former Bobcats were pinched on charges of dealing coke. Though Idaho hadn’t even flinched at bringing Dennis Erickson’s checkered resume back to campus a year before, the school didn’t figure Kramer carried the same cachet – and he got the message that it would be best if he withdraw from consideration.

And he trundled back to Bozeman to set about repairing his program’s image – which was taking another hit, this one from the NCAA, in the loss of three scholarships due to indifferent academic performance. So Kramer began making changes in football’s approach to recruiting and retention even before Fields brought an independent panel on campus to review the entire department’s procedures.

The reaction from Kramer’s bosses was unequivocal.

“We’re on the right track,” Gamble said.

So how, then, does an arrest of a player long since out of the program – and part of the same ring involved in the previous arrests – undo the measures that Kramer had taken since the first of the year?

Well, of course, because of the morning headline of a drug bust. That’s as far as some folks’ reasoning goes, including college presidents.

“Perception is reality,” Gamble told the Bozeman Chronicle on Friday.

Don’t you love it when educated people say incredibly stupid things? Or don’t we expect our college presidents to be more than advertising execs?

No, the reality is, Gamble and Fields can’t take the heat for the perception – a condition not exclusive to them in the world of educational administration. And, to be fair, it isn’t as if they hadn’t stood up for Kramer during the earlier squalls of this dungstorm.

Just curious, however: When eight MSU students were snagged in a dormitory dope ring last year, did the admissions office get a house cleaning?

The court docket certainly shows that you can fault Kramer’s judgment in recruiting for character, though when you do you should note that Fuller – for one – was third in his high school class academically and the son of an educator. You could also question him about some of the mixed signals he sent – as he did the time the Bozeman paper did a background check on former assistant coach John Rushing, the old Washington State safety, and came up with eight arrests and at least five convictions, to which Kramer responded, “I wouldn’t call it a criminal record.”

So he’s not a complete victim, though he is a victim of timing.

That’s the perception, anyway. Your reality may vary.