The messenger was the politicos and portly was the hatchet man. If you think portly is a new talking point you havent been paying attention. LOL Not to mention there were other forces at work.
But as I said before---DB did this one himself. After he told the SBOHE what was going on he should have just told the public the same or shut up and ride it out. Because when the information came out it showed NDSU really wasnt the bad guy in this whole thing. They just stepped in it badly with their terrible explanation-presser. Then it went down hill from there. Whats bad is there was a simple fix and they just kept making it worse.