OH HELL NAW: “Lee Fowler to be honored as SE AD of the year”
What happens when you stick a bunch of self-serving ADs in a room to vote on which one of them gets to win an award they are the sole arbiters of?
You wind up awarding it to the king of self-serving jackass ADs, Lee Fowler (WRAL):
Fowler … will be recognized as the 2010 Under Armour Southeastern Athletic Director of the year.
The award is presented annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Fowler will be presented the award at the NACDA convention in Anaheim that runs from June 19th-25th.
Are. You. Kidding. Me?
Now, before everyone thinks Fowler won the award simply as a “lifetime achievement in the category of bilking your current employer out of large sums of cash while under-performing,” the voting was completed January 18th, presumably two months prior to Fowler being told he would not be retained after this fiscal year.
Still, it’s hard not to believe that ADs like Kevin White and Joe Alleva, who had some pointed remarks regarding State and its fans, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to lift up one of their embattled own. This, in the face of leading one of the most under-performing athletic departments in the country.
There are a lot of words that are coming to mind; most not good. I’ll leave it at that.
Riddick & Reynolds 
I couldn’t agree more about this being such a ridiculous award. More importantly the timing of this news coming out after Fowler was fired makes it priceless.
The best thing Fowler has going for him is that this story ranks about 50th in terms of college football story lines this June whereas sadly enough a story like this one might normally be in the top 5 when there’s normally not much to talk about on the college football front at the beginning of the Summer while the NBA Finals are still going on.