Six people in a room for 90 minutes discussing a decision that was already made

The Committee Meeting That Changed Nothing: A Study in Institutional Futility

The meeting was scheduled for 2 PM. It started at 2:17. This is the athletic department’s way of saying “we’re serious about time management, but not that serious.”

Six people sat around a conference table. One person actually needed to be there. The other five were attending for “visibility” or “stakeholder engagement”—corporate phrases meaning “we’re pretending this involves more people than it actually does.”

The Agenda (That Didn’t Matter)

Item One: Coach performance review. This took 45 minutes. Nobody said anything new. Everyone repeated the same three observations they’d made in emails nobody read.

Item Two: Budget allocation. This took 30 minutes. The decision had already been made before the meeting. Everyone knew this. Nobody acknowledged it. Instead, they discussed it like it was still an open question.

Item Three: Action items. The committee identified seven action items. Four would be ignored. Two would be assigned to someone not in the room. One would require another meeting to discuss further.

The Real Meeting (That Happened After)

Five minutes after the official meeting ended, the athletic director met with the one person whose opinion actually mattered. Sixty seconds later, the decision was finalized. The committee meeting’s entire purpose had been theater.

Ron White once said: “I’ve been to bars that had better governance structures than most institutions.” He wasn’t wrong. At least bars know they’re winging it.

The genius of the committee meeting is its perfect functionality. It accomplishes nothing while appearing official. Everyone leaves feeling like they participated in something important. Nobody leaves having changed anything.

Universities mastered the art of busy work disguised as decision-making.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.