This time there was no net -- only rope

By HOWARD TROXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 25, 1999

We are the boys from old Florida, F-L-O-R-I-D-A,

Where the girls are the fairest, the boys are the squarest,

Of any old state down our way -- Hey!

But the boys from old Florida are gone.

There is no Buddy MacKay as lieutenant governor any more to impose a forced peace.

There is no canny governor's lawyer named Dexter Douglass to cut a deal. There is a new guy in the governor's office these days, who happens to be a Texas Longhorn.

And so John Lombardi's days are numbered as the president of the University of Florida.

He may rage, or pout, or claim that cruel fate is aligned against him, to no avail. There was no one left to save John Lombardi from himself.

In a typical Lombardi-esque drama, the world drummed its fingers Tuesday while the great man deliberated on the mountaintop. Asked to resign, he sought his terms as if he were a prized recruit with leverage, rather than the target of a sacking.

The title of president emeritus? The tenured professorship, at $225,000 a year? The directorship of a humanities center (as well as a hefty chunk of money for that center)? The date of his departure? Jobs for certain buddies?

May we all be fired thus. It is lucky for Lombardi that he does not work for George Steinbrenner.

It was time to go gracefully. He had 9 1/2 years, almost twice the national average tenure, and he did many good things. Most important, he made UF more respectable -- a top 50 university, no longer just another Deep South football factory.

By all accounts, he was brilliant.

By all accounts, he was capable of acting like a royal jerk.

After the famous episode in late 1997 in which Lombardi described the new black chancellor as an "Oreo," it took the help of powerful Gators like MacKay to save him.

He already had been in hot water for dealing directly with the Legislature instead of going through the chain of command. He already had been in trouble for calling regents policy "stupid" and "typical of this idiotic system."

After the Oreo incident, he apologized deeply and gracefully, as he was capable of doing. He went on probation.

But can a leopard change its spots? Lombardi embarrassed himself and the university again by exploding in a tirade at two visiting law school deans, hired by the regents to review legal education. They were from the universities of North Carolina and, hmm, let's see, what was the other one? Oh, yes, Texas. (See third paragraph.)

The last straw was that Lombardi decided to shower hefty raises on top administrators without telling anybody, such as, say, the chancellor. These raises ranged from $25,691 to $39,143 a year. Those were the raises, mind you.

Elizabeth Capaldi, the provost and apparently a Lombardi favorite, got a boost to a total pay package of $260,000 a year -- more than the chancellor himself. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when the chancellor found out!

In a good economy, the president of the United States can survive almost any scandal, as Bill Clinton proved. Likewise, Lombardi is lucky that Steve Spurrier was football coach during his presidency -- he would not have survived until now with a losing team on top of everything else. That's reality, sorry.

Some diehard Gator fans are telling each other, via the Internet, that Lombardi's ouster is part of a conspiracy to benefit rival Florida State University. But there is no need to look for a conspiracy. Lombardi's wounds were self-inflicted.

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