According to reports, he's lobbying to fire Holliday and bring Pruett back.

http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/doc-hollid... /

This is West Virginia politics. Unfortunately, the fight is probably not over. The governor's office in the Mountaineer State wields tremendous power. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

I agree Jeff that this should not happen, but I'm not surprised at this news either.

I like West Virginia. My two oldest children were born in Huntington. However, governors meddling in higher education in the state has a long and storied history. I saw some of this when I was at Marshall. We had a VP who had worked for former governor William Barron, who ended up in federal prison. This VP had a direct pipeline to the governor's office, which was then headed by Arch Moore, who later also served a prison term. The VP would often involve the governor's office (or threaten to) on relatively minor matters in order to get his way. I was always very uneasy about this type of meddling. It was about the only thing at Marshall that I really didn't like. I still love the place nonetheless.

To read more about William Baron, click here: http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/366

As is often the case with scoundrels, Governor Baron had a good side to him. Here's one quote from the article referenced above:

"The Barron administration’s legislative record included establishment of a personal income tax and creation of a Human Rights Commission. He issued an executive order declaring state employees would be hired 'regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.' At the Southern Governors Conference at the Greenbrier, he firmly told Gov. George Wallace of Alabama that he would oppose 'any and all statements . . . which would in any way promote or sanction discrimination.'"

In reality, the governor in WV is not a powerful position as the governors in say the Commonwealth of Virginia or even Ohio. If I remember my WV history class, the founders of state didn't like want too much power in the governorship like it was in VA.
The state wide power is shared by state wide elected officials and you can see the list of offices on the attached link.
http://www.sos.wv.gov/public-services/contacts/Pages/Stat...

That said, Justice is a Marshall graduate and extremely wealthy. He owns the Greebrier Resort and several large companies in the US and in other parts of the world. The last estimate of his net wealth in Forbes was listed at $1.6 billion.

Justice's daughter is also an MU grad. She played basketball while at MU. The story goes that her father wanted to drop about $1 million into the remodeling of the woman's basketball team locker room. The MU AD at the time got into a disagreement with Jim, and Jim pulled the donation.

Sometimes, you can't just make up this stuff.

The governor in WV does have a lot of power over the budget. The joke in VA is that you can't go to the water cooler without the governor's approval.

Let's keep the discussion of current politics in Siberia. But, I will say I wish all of us had the great wisdom and insight you have on every possible topic. You have a way of reducing every topic to such utter simplicity that only a fool would disagree with the general thrust of anything you say.

Well, at least ur "color commentary" prolly not on any subpoena'd tapes or documents....

I love these Marshall discussions. When they involve West Virginia politics it adds another layer of drama which I find compelling.
Add in the mining and possible OSHA violations discussion and I get totally absorbed. Stories about rich folk as puppet masters particularly when they are gossip make me think we need an entire board just for this juicy topic. Could we get some photos up of these half-witted toothless, inbred characters?