Ronny Thompson resigns at BSU

Most of you who are reading this post probably don't even know who Ronny Thompson is. I'm going to keep this short, so I'm just going to tell you that he is the son of the most overrated college basketball coach of all time (John Thompson), and Ronny is also the guy who completely destroyed Ball State's basketball program in less than a year.

Ronny announced his resignation as head basketball coach at Ball State University on Thursday. There has been speculation for several weeks that Ronny might not be back next season. In his first and only year at BSU, Ronny had several players transfer, set a school record for most losses in a season (22), and got caught violating NCAA rules twice. Supposedly the final straw came a few weeks ago when someone broke into the athletic offices at BSU and left some nasty notes about Coach Thompson in the basketball coach's offices. These messages reportedly contained the words, "liar," "cheater," and the "n word." Of course, Ball State launched an investigation immediately after the notes were found. Ronny Thompson virtually disappeared from that point forward. Ronny disappearing wasn't that unusual. That's been one of the complaints about Ronny since he has been at Ball State.

Well, now Ronny has resigned presumably because of the "racist atmosphere" that exists at Ball State. The BSU Athletic Director (Tom Collins) refused to go into any detail about why Thompson was leaving during his news conference yesterday. I have no idea why Thompson is really leaving, but I can tell you that the rumor floating around campus is that Ronny Thompson may have written the notes himself. There are some people who feel that Thompson couldn't take the criticism after posting such a horrible record in his first season. There are also some people who think Thompson's job was already in jeopardy after getting caught breaking the same NCAA rule twice in one year. Perhaps Ronny did write the notes so that he had an excuse to resign before he was fired. I am sure that Ronny is so distraught over the "racist environment" that exists at Ball State that he is probably threatening BSU with a lawsuit if they don't give him some kind of monetary settlement. And, I'm sure Ball State will probably give Ronny whatever he wants just to avoid having Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton show up on campus running their mouths and posing for pictures.

When you think about it, I suppose that it does make sense that Ronny Thompson could have written those notes himself. Resigning and getting a nice severance package sure beats the hell out of getting fired because you are horrible at your job. The important thing to remember here is that Ronny Thompson is no longer the head basketball coach at Ball State. I suppose that is reason to celebrate.

I think the first person that AD Collins should contact about the open coaching position is Ray McCallum, who is currently employed as an assistant coach at Indiana University. Ray grew up in Muncie and played basketball at Ball State. Ray also used to be the head coach at Ball State where he compiled a 126-76 record from 1993 - 2000. Ray left Ball State in 2000 to become the head coach at Houston, and he stayed there until 2004. He has been an assistant for Kelvin Sampson at Oklahoma and Indiana ever since. Ray is familiar with recruiting in Indiana and he was very popular when he previously coached at Ball State. I know he is the guy I am hoping takes the job.