Quoted without permission.
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Boston Globe, Friday June 3rd, 1994
 
"It's a mad world at the Heights", by Bob Ryan
 
  Mike and the Madchuk won't be making it to the golden anniversary
party.
  As far as wedded bliss goes, this duo lasted longer than Ernest
Borgnine and Ethel Merman, but shorter than Ashley Hamilton and
Shannen Doherty.
  And we know what chilled this two-month union: the ever-popular
"irreconcilable differences."  Or, as Mike Milbury put it,
"philosophical differences."
  Or course, that's just Mike Milbury's version of the events leading
up to his surprise resignation as head hockey coach at Boston College.
That wasn't quite the way athletic director Chet Gladchuk saw it.
  I will, in fact, attempt to summarize Mr. Gladchuk's reaction to the
Milbury morning press conference:
  "Huh?"
  The AD say he never saw this coming, that the first time he
discovered his latest athletic department hiring was unhappy came
Wednesday afternoon.  Even then, he said, he was not prepared for the
Milbury decision.
  "I am disappointed, shocked and upset," Gladchuk claimed.
  Apparently, he is not good at reading tea leaves.  "Milburyhas been
bitching and moaning around here for at least the last three weeks,"
contends one source.
  This was a strange day indeed.  The Milbury press conference at the
downtown office of Maselan & Jones was a bit, how you say, tense.
Milbury looked weary and agitated.  Attorney James Maselan acted as if
he were defending a Mafia don about to enter the Federal Witness
Protection Program.  The most revealing thing the barristerr offered
was "no comment."  About 10 times.
  Milbury alluded to the aforementioned "philosophical differences"
over how to run the BC program.  The differences were, presumably,
with Gladchuk.  It's interesting to note that he never once mentioned
his two-month boss by name.  Questioners did.  He didn't.  He did
thank outgoing school president Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J., but he
didn't so much as say hello or goodbye to Mr. Gladchuk.
  Milbury said money had nothing to do with it.  He made reference to
some "serious differences" that had come up between the time he
accepted the job on or about April 1 and the present.  He made it
clear that, in his mind, some promises were made or implied that have
not been forthcoming.  He says his original hiring come about via a
"premature announcement" and that "clearly, I didn't think this out
well enough."
  What's interesting in all this is the fact that he never signed a
contract.  But why should he be any different than anyone else over
there?  Two months after sending Dean Smith and Bob Knight on early
vacations, Jim O'Brien has yet to sign his ballyhooed extension.
  And despite what Chet Madchuk said yesterday afternoon at his little
gathering, new footbal mentor Dan Henning hasn't got a signed contract
in his filing cabinet, either.
  You should have seen Madchuk switch gears when WBZ's Alan Segal
brought up the O'Brien and Henning unsigned contracts.  The suddently
ruffled AD gritted his teeth, bulled his neck and gripped the podium
hard.  "That's innacurate," he hissed.
  Uh-uh.  Both the basketball coach and the football coach have found
that in dealing with Madchuk, it helps to bring a tape recorder and
perhaps a fax machine to the meeting.  He has a habit of agreeing to
something and then presenting something else on paper a few weeks
later.  As a result, neither coach has yes signed a binding document.
  If Madchuk did the same thing with Milbury, the AD certainly picked
the wrong boy to mess with.  Milbury just got through negotiating
professional contracts, for God's sake.  Meanwhile, when will Madchuk
recognize that bait-and-switch isn't a very fruitful negotiating
tactic?
  "When you give your word in negotiation," points out a very
interested professional bystander, "you always do more than you said,
not less.  You never do less.  You allways want to show the man you
really want him."
  Lovers of poetic justice might argue that Madchuk is now getting
what he deserved after the way he treated Milbury's predecessor.  It's
not so much the fact that Madchuk made a hard business decision to
change hockey coaches; it's the way he did it.  You don't take a loyal
alum and 17-year, 24-hour-a-day assistant and say, "The way you coach
makes me sick.  The players hate you.  I want you to clean out your
desk and get out of here immediately."  But that's what Chet Gladchuk
said to Steve Cedorchuk.  Literally.
  The flip side of all this is that Milbury might not have realized
what he was getting into when he joined the college coaching world.
Gladchuk speculated that "perhaps Mike didn't think he could conduct
his business the way he wanted to in an integrated setting," alluding
to what he called the "bureaucracy of a university."  Then there was
the NCAA and it's myriad of rules and regulations.  Perhaps Milbury
realized he just couldn't deal with all that.  Or perhaps they're both
being disingenuous.  There could very well have been a flashpoint
issue which, if revealed, would embarass both of them.
  One way or the other, sooner or later, Mike and the Madchuk were
bound to clash.  Had to.  Inevitable.  It was an improbable and
completely combustible pairing.  Madchuk is dictatorial.  Milbury is
intelligent, proud and direct.  To him, self-doubt is an abstract
concept.
  So you take a guy making a hasty career decision, thow him in with a
new boss whose business M.O. is based on arrogance and deception and
then introduce an outside forece - like, say, a tantalizing NHL
opening.  What you get is a weird day at the Heights and a sudden
coaching vacancy in what appears to be a perpetually trouble atheltic
department.
  If I were Steve Cedorchuk, I'd submit my resume.  Just for a yuk.
 
Bob Ryan is a Globe Columnist.
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There are some other articles in the Globe, I'll type them in as well.
:)  [Okay, so I find college hockey much more interesting than work.]
 
adam
--
Adam Bryant
BU '89