I most certainly do not think that he would have been given a real chance, and this is the real problem . . . unless of course I'm just plain wrong. BTW, I hope I'm just plain wrong.
I have absolutely no idea whether, given a real chance, Kiel would have or might have overtaken Golson. I'm so far away from the sort of insider information needed to answer that question, that I'd really sound stupid if I tried. I'm not sure who here could say differently. I can say two things: 1) I would have wanted the best (i.e., the one most likely to help us get to the top) to win, without any bias whatsoever; 2) I get a strong sense that Kelly would have stuck with Golson almost no matter what. I think Kiel knew that.
