Maybe Hathaway started putting his foot out the door and didn't really care enough (i.e. didn't matter).
Nope Hathaway was pushed out by President Herbst.
Burton was wrong about his childish rant in the public forum after Hathaway snubbed him over the matter of replacing RE. Hathaway wasn't required to follow any suggestions from Burton. He did have a responsibility to insure that one of UConn's biggest donors was appreciated. Jeff never called or wrote back to Burton after several attempts to contact Hathaway. This was a major failure by Hathaway. Of course Burton followed this up by writing an article in the paper. And the way he wrote the article, Burton came across as a power hungry sniveling fool.
IMO Burton was right about PP. He was right about earning an ear with Hathaway even if Hathaway had every right to ignore the suggestions. Part of the AD's function is to earn the respect of coaches and donors even as you make sure you don't get pushed around by donors and coaches.
And that was a major flaw with regards to Jeff Hathaway - he hated strong, aggressive male personalities, and he made sure to do things to get back at them. Jeff Hathaway had a horrible relationship with RE and JC. RE bolted, JC stuck it out. JC and RE got hurt in every public relations fiasco, including the wording Jeff Hathaway chose to make in the Nate Miles affair. Jeff deliberately refused to help RE and JC regarding academics. They weren't asking the AD to let them cheat like North Carolina. All they wanted was a level playing field with every other university about the approach to courses their kids could take.
If you can't get along with your most important coaches, if you alienate your biggest donors, if you reduce your compliance department to the point of irrelevancy, if you handle all matters and cannot delegate, if you steal monies from your department (I'm inferring this point because JH wanted his files kept from public disclosure in agreement to not contesting his departure) you deserve to be removed from your position. President Herbst did what was needed by removing Jeff Hathaway.
If I have to look at anyone at UConn who was responsible for the universities difficult position in conference realignment it would be Jeff. As much as I believe this person has single handily hurt the university in many ways, I would be foolish to think that UConn's not getting accepted to the ACC was exclusively his doing. There were a slew of other factors beyond the control of the university.
