Tom Ross: UNC or MLB?

Old friend D.G. Martin mentions Davidson College President Tom Ross in this morning's Observer as one potential successor to Erskine Bowles as president of the University of North Carolina system. Martin should be a good judge of academic administrators -- his father was once president of Davidson, where Martin took his undergraduate degree, and Martin himself was a vice president of the UNC system as well as a ranking official at what is now UNC Pembroke.

But would Ross leave his beloved Davidson, even for Chapel Hill where he has pulled for the Tar Heels as long as they weren't playing the Wildcats? I don't know. That job would have a mighty strong pull. But I remember Ross once saying, a good many years ago, that the only two jobs he wanted in life were either president of Davidson College, or Commissioner of Major League Baseball. As a lawyer, former judge, former foundation head and college administrator, he'd be good at the helm of baseball, and gosh knows the sport needs someone good at the job for a change.

Me? I'm still angling for Commissioner of Barbecue, but I think Jerry Bledsoe has first dibs if the job is ever created.