Excerpt from today's DOK:

Mike Holder was plugging right along as the nation's most successful golf coach until three years ago when his billionaire best friend threw him under the bus — or, as it were, into the OSU athletic director's chair.

"They were looking for a new AD and I said, ‘Well, you got the perfect guy for the job,' ” OSU alumnus and oil magnate T. Boone Pickens said. "They said, ‘Who?' I said, ‘Well, Holder.' It was so obvious to me that you had a guy who could do everything you want to have done.”

Pickens' word and wallet carried a lot of weight.
"(Former OSU President David) Schmidly said ‘We've got to go through a search process.' I said, ‘If you already know who the best man is, why waste money?' But that's what they wanted to do. As far as I was concerned, it was a sham. I was going to make a major gift, and I told them, ‘I'm not making a gift unless I have somebody I'm comfortable with as the AD.'”
Pickens made a record-breaking $165 million donation to the athletic department less than four months after Holder got the job.


I laughed out loud at Pickens' use of the phrase "it was a sham" referring to the strings attached to his gift. While I'm no dummy and understand that large donors do have influence at universities, give me a freakin' break.

At least don't say that in an interview