O'Donnell: Bradley University hoping nation forgets coach's bullying
BRADLEY UNIVERSITY MANUFACTURED the impossible last spring.
The Braves got a rare bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament and then had their head coach turn the modest central Illinois school into a national embarrassment.
That was when Brian "Baby Man" Wardle had veteran Peoria Journal-Star writer Dave Reynolds - one of the most respected college basketball beat men in the land - bounced from a media session for purportedly not helping to promote the Bradley "brand."
After a quick and righteous national wave of indignation over Wardle's vapid bullying, Reynolds was given back access to the team and far too graciously accepted apologies from the doltish Wardle and bluff-orbiting university President Gary Roberts.
At most colleges with appropriate standards of institutional integrity, Wardle would have been ashcanned quicker than a trailer for Harrison Ford's "The Call of the Wild."
Instead, he lingers as Bradley begins Missouri Valley Conference tournament play in St. Louis this weekend.
Most coherent alumni don't know whether to cringe or cheer - for his removal.
Asked this week to explain his thinking in the retention of Wardle, Roberts stayed hidden behind Bradley's media relations apparatus.
He and his cohorts on Peoria's West Bluff apparently thinks Basketball America forgets.
It doesn't.
And if there is a shred of karma hovering over the Gateway Arch on Friday, it will be one-and-done and then done-and-gone for "The Baby Man" of Bradley University.
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• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.