Resume? We Don't Need No Steenking Resume

Michael Morgan, Administration Secretary in the Doyle administration, just landed himself a plum job with the UW System: he’ll be the Chief Operating Officer, and will be paid 245-grand a year. No application; no search; no resume – oops, wait a minute – after he was offered the job, he e-mailed his resume to UW System boss Kevin Reilly’s office.

Nice work if you can get it; and if you’re a loyal Doyle-ite, apparently you can. There was some hue and cry from the watchdogs and a handful of politicians, like UW-hater Steve Nass, but it’s pretty much a done deal. Morgan starts his new job Tuesday morning.

The latest dodge coming from UW-land is that it’s an “interim appointment”, so it doesn’t have to go through the standard procedure of posting, application, search and screen, interview, and so on. Anybody want to try and define “interim?” Didn’t think so.

I don’t begrudge Morgan one bit. Hell, if they offered the job to me, I’d take it. That quarter-million-dollar-a-year salary is really going to stand Morgan in good stead when it comes time to compute his state retirement benefits, a date not that far in the future. I’m sure the “interim” appointment can stretch out until it’s time for Mr. Morgan to take the gold watch and pension.

There’s precedent for this sort of thing over there on the big campus on the lake. Anybody remember a few years ago, when Barry Alvarez decided it was time to give up the coaching job and become Athletic Director?

How many coaches did they interview for the job of filling Alvarez’ big shoes? As Dean Wormer (Animal House) said, “Zero point zero”. Barry just made sure his hand-picked successor, Bret Bielema, got the job.

No posting, no application, no search and screen. And Bielema is paid four or five times what Morgan will be.

Later on, after Bielema was anointed – ah, I mean appointed – there was about as much hue and cry about the way it was done as there’s been over the Morgan appointment, and some fairly high-level functionary in the athletic apparatus over on Monroe Street took the fall for Barry, saying, in effect, “oh yeah – we shoulda posted that job. I forgot. My bad”.

As I said…nice work if you can get it. But you gotta know somebody.