An Honest Question

In the Marquette-UWM saga, that has taken far too long and made both parties appear childish, there is only one thing left to finalize the deal: Marquette needs to sign the contract. My question today, though, is why this hasn’t been done yet. Marquette proposed the contract. UWM made it obnoxiously clear that it had signed the contract, doing so at a press conference shown on live TV. Marquette has received the contract. Head coach Tom Crean has openly recognized that it’s a reasonable contract from his perspective, having been quoted as saying about the UWM signing "We’re pleased they finally recognized the appropriateness of the contract."

So why, three days later, isn’t this thing signed? The picture in the Journal Sentinel indicates that it’s a pretty simple contract, so it’s not as if Marquette’s been reviewing the content again for the last three days. There may be a plausible reason why Marquette’s line still doesn’t have a signature on it, but I can’t think of what it would be. And given the number of times this agreement has gone from "done deal" to "no deal" and back, I refuse to believe that the Marquette-UWM game will happen until a second name is signed to the contract.

So step up and sign the paperwork already, Marquette. If you don’t sign a contract that you proposed, and that you’ve continually recognized as appropriate, you look pretty disingenuous. And in a process where both parties have mostly let me down so far, I’d like to avoid losing any more respect for anyone. Oh yeah, and that game would be nice to see, too.

(A final aside–I did not see the UWM press conference signing, as I was out of town on a basketball fact-finding mission, but doesn’t the act of calling a press conference to sign a contract in this situation smack of something that you’d see pro wrestlers do? Calling out another party by shoving a contract back in their face and agreeing to play on the other guy's terms seems less like something that UWM should be doing to Marquette, and more like something that Rowdy Roddy Piper would have done to Ric Flair.)