Ha! For a change I'm not posting in class. ;-P But this is interesting in the rugby community (small though we are) in the U.S. It turns out that Doug Arnot, the current CEO of USA Rugby has decided to step down. He's been the CEO of USA Rugby for about three-and-a-half years, but decided it was time to go. The announcement came last Friday afternoon, usually known in PR groups as a good time to announce bad news, because no one reads the Saturday papers and by the time Monday rolls around, it's old news.

Is this good or bad for rugby in the U.S.? I'm not really sure yet. The staff at the national office has grown in the three-plus years since Arnot took over, and it appears that incoming money has increased at the same time. Player registrations have gone up (but that's deceiving, because they were going up before Arnot took over as CEO), national team money has decreased (the basis for that was the B-Sky-B deal that the men's national team had worked out. According to rumors, that money was slowly siphoned away from the national team for the national office.. yeah yeah, boring I know.)

In a turn for the worse, the head coach of the national team decided he's had enough and also quit. The coach is probably one of the best, if not the best in the U.S. and I'm not sure why he decided to pack it in. One of the blogs I found out about this from (the one I linked too) left me with the feeling that part of it had to do with the above money situation, or lack thereof, for the national team. This is really too bad, since the guy is a really great coach, and it'll suck to see him go.

Now, why did I call this post "another blogger-led overthrow"? It sounds like, from what I've been able to ascertain, that the blogger at www.gainline.us hasn't been too much of a fan of the now soon-to-be former CEO. So was it because of this blogger that Mr. Arnot decided to step down? Did he start some kind of movement that led to Arnot's "ouster"? We wonders, don't we, precious...