I'm not making excuses for the guy, just trying to get the facts straight. These days they'd go to CIR and there would be no excuses either way.
And there's a bunch more above that's wrong. We (USA) have a long history of baton dropping. We can thank our old friend Brooks Johnson for a bunch of that. Jon Drummond jumped in and turned the thing around, but he's banned for 8 years for being Tyson Gay's drug pusher. Dennis Mitchell coached at World Relays last year and did a good job.
Now, if you don't want Dennis, who do you want? You could have Lance Brauman, who's an ex-con that has had only about 5 athletes test positive. How about Caryl Smith-Gilbert at USC, quite possibly the best sprint coach in the world now? She has the USC-UCLA dual meet this weekend and her teams are ranked #1 and #4, so she's fighting for possibly 2 NCAA championships. Pat Henry, Vince Anderson, Mike Holloway, Dennis Shaver? They're fighting for national championships, too. Bob Kersey, John Smith? They both had people drop batons in April and they've never done this kind of thing for the USA team as far as I know. Bev Kearney? Better keep her away from the girls.
And that's the deal. They've got Clyde Hart, but the 4X1 is a lot more technical than the 4X4. And anybody any good is already committed.