I'm surprised to see so many here give the administration the benefit of the doubt. They haven't done much of anything to merit such trust, IMO. If anything, their actions would make me expect the opposite.
That being said, the list of things we can be confident in is rather short:
- Rick George was far and away the top candidate
- No other candidates were going to receive any serious consideration until George declined the job (for real this time)
- The hope of George ended over a week ago
Everything beyond that list is somewhat conjecture with conflicting reports seemingly supporting both sides of every argument. Sean Frazier seems to think he's out. One would have to imagine that Whitman would jump at the chance to move up to D1, but obviously he hasn't been announced or even rumored for some time. Tiley is the message board hero, but the only rumors surrounding him seem to have been that he wasn't contacted, didn't interview, etc. Are they now courting Tiley a la George? Would a Tiley hire have the same donor and administrative support to be able to happen (read: $$)? Those were the top candidates by pretty much every account, and we really don't have much to go on. There's always the "stealth candidate" I suppose.
My personal take on the situation is that the lack of decisiveness after the George saga implies dysfunction. Seemingly everybody was reporting that he was the top candidate, but after that fell through we seem to have no direction at all. Expecting something to be done immediately after that domino fell is probably a bit much. However, right now we have nothing except a "probably by the end of the month maybe." Was there really no set back up plan after George predictably fell through? Or, maybe they've finally tightened up the flow of information after leaking like a sieve that they were interested in George? Past experience lends me to believe the former, but, hey, you never know.