And some of you think our fans are too out of control
- Thread starter BleedsGreen33
- Start date
Shit. If our coach was paid $95 mil, our fanbase would have been performing a seance to bring back Robert Byrd from the grave.
Possibly. His isn't the only one. These contracts are putting schools in really bad places with no leverage. Buyouts should be performance based. The university needs to be able to cut ties with a head coach if it is warranted. Like if you drop below .500 or whatever the buyout is decreased.
I mean you have someone like Scott Frost getting 20 some million not to coach or Coach O getting 19 million to be unemployed. That's just insane.
I just looked up our yearly budget…like $319 million. By comparison, Texas A&M has a yearly $6.3 BILLION operating budget. Good lord, I’m in the wrong business.
Oh, I know he's not the only one. And you mention some good ideas to help decrease it. But, I think his, if he's fired, will start to open some eyes toward it. Hell, Nebraska has paid over 50 MILLION in buyouts dating back to 2005. And they still suck ;-) https://www.1011now.com/2022/09/13/analyzing-buyouts-unl/
It is so the schools deserve it. Institutions of higher education throwing around tens of millions to football coaches. Foolishness
But they can afford it. What these big programs pay to get a great coach is just a drop in the bucket compared to the money they earn.
I mean you're not wrong, but it's still insane. I realize they bring a ton of money to the school, but take Bama for instance. Each year more money is invested than the previous. Does 10m more make Bama better than they currently are? I think there is an amount where the ROI is no longer there. Instead of spending to improve your program it becomes trying to outspend everyone else in an effort to remain on top. That's really not sustainable. At some point the bubble will burst. As many have pointed out attendance around the country is dropping off.
Then you end up with a Jimbo or even a Holgorsen. I remember reading WVU fan comments about how the buyout that Luck gave Holgorsen really screwed them over.
The buyouts also kind of take the edge out of your coach. Unless you're a Saban type that is just driven to be better than everyone else a coach could look at that 15-20m buyout and just dare the team to fire them. There's a story that when Coach O found out just how much he'd get if he was fired from LSU he asked them which door they wanted him to leave through.
Well, the Presidents of the D1 institutions, primarily the then BCS schools, have let the genie out of the bottle and no way in Hades to put it back, short of blowing up the entire current system. NCAA had insipient to no leadership then, pretty much the same today, so those Big Schools and their leaders in reality set policy and called the shots for D1 football.
At the same time, ESPN became MORE involved in the game of D1 football, and also in policy and other major decision making, like scheduling games, dictating key OOC games, and breaking up Conferences, destroying traditional rivalries, etc. All this done with the tacit permission of these Presidents who saw the ESPN monies, fed by ever increasing advertising revenues, as a means to finance the spiraling coaches' salaries, as well as to fund each school's never-ending "keeping up with the Joneses" quest for new facilities, etc. Now there also the increasing NIL appetites that also have to be satisfied!! Marshall and almost all the other G5/mid-majors are in reality jjust on the very edge of this gluttony, just trying to hang on to whatever "relevancy" they think they have in this unending MADNESS!!!
At the same time, ESPN became MORE involved in the game of D1 football, and also in policy and other major decision making, like scheduling games, dictating key OOC games, and breaking up Conferences, destroying traditional rivalries, etc. All this done with the tacit permission of these Presidents who saw the ESPN monies, fed by ever increasing advertising revenues, as a means to finance the spiraling coaches' salaries, as well as to fund each school's never-ending "keeping up with the Joneses" quest for new facilities, etc. Now there also the increasing NIL appetites that also have to be satisfied!! Marshall and almost all the other G5/mid-majors are in reality jjust on the very edge of this gluttony, just trying to hang on to whatever "relevancy" they think they have in this unending MADNESS!!!
That’s the problem! People complain about a CEO making half of what the coaches earn. The double standards are insane!
A former president of Ole Miss said “football is the front porch of a university”.
A former president of Marshall said “most people, particularly those who never attended any college, believe the quality of an institution is proportional to that of its football team”.
Colleges, particularly those with the name of a state in them, spend big on sports, particularly football, to convince the unwashed rubes and hicks of their state that they somehow have a connection to a school they have absolutely no connection to (other than paying too much taxes to fund it), to convince them them to not question how much money is wasted on higher education and that “state U” is really a lot better than some other school * , and to convince the legislators elected by those rubes and hicks that programs and spending that would benefit the society better elsewhere should always go to state U, go team, go.
There literally are states where, if there was no such thing as college sports, more people would know what town the state prison is in than the state university.
* While TAMU, the focus of this discussion is a very top rate university, in most states the schools with the big football team are not really the best school in the state.
A former president of Marshall said “most people, particularly those who never attended any college, believe the quality of an institution is proportional to that of its football team”.
Colleges, particularly those with the name of a state in them, spend big on sports, particularly football, to convince the unwashed rubes and hicks of their state that they somehow have a connection to a school they have absolutely no connection to (other than paying too much taxes to fund it), to convince them them to not question how much money is wasted on higher education and that “state U” is really a lot better than some other school * , and to convince the legislators elected by those rubes and hicks that programs and spending that would benefit the society better elsewhere should always go to state U, go team, go.
There literally are states where, if there was no such thing as college sports, more people would know what town the state prison is in than the state university.
* While TAMU, the focus of this discussion is a very top rate university, in most states the schools with the big football team are not really the best school in the state.
In this day and age, a larger proportion of fans are truly out of control. Go to a game and listen to the language screamed at the field in a supposedly family friendly environment. Watch The videos of fights in the stands at professional games and the harassment of high school coaches By parents. Our society is slowly devolving into a thugocracy.
Nobody forced A&M to do that contract. It was the only way to lure Jimbo away from FSU, a Brinks truck full of guaranteed money.
I’m not saying it was a smart decision. All I’m saying is A&M head-hunted Fisher so let’s not place the blame on the coach like the school is just getting exploited here.
I’m sure there were plenty of head coaches on the planet that would have taken the job with a performance based contract, so the university could back out without major financial penalty. But that’s not how you get a Jimbo Fisher.
These athletic departments can’t live in a world where they believe they can solve any problem just by throwing money at it, and not accept the risk that comes along with it.
I’m not saying it was a smart decision. All I’m saying is A&M head-hunted Fisher so let’s not place the blame on the coach like the school is just getting exploited here.
I’m sure there were plenty of head coaches on the planet that would have taken the job with a performance based contract, so the university could back out without major financial penalty. But that’s not how you get a Jimbo Fisher.
These athletic departments can’t live in a world where they believe they can solve any problem just by throwing money at it, and not accept the risk that comes along with it.
This just shows the sheer stupidity of spending more and more money on college football is both insane and unsustainable. Marshall should do what is reasonable and besides that let the others self destruct
The money in college football is ludicrous... The question is, what can be done to calm it down? And so far the answer is -- Nothing.
LSU is paying Ogeron $19 million to take this year off and then come back as a coordinator (or maybe even a head coach) at another university... A/M, if they decide to make a change, would be on the hook for at least double that if they let Jimbo go with some form of "negotiated' buyout after this season.
Either the buyouts have to come down to a point that is realistic -- something like one year of that coach's salary if he leaves for another job before his contract expires... Or, the universities have to "eat it" and just let the coach work out his contracted years. If you gamble on a guy with a 7-year deal, and it turns out he sucks, you live with it for 6 years.
LSU is paying Ogeron $19 million to take this year off and then come back as a coordinator (or maybe even a head coach) at another university... A/M, if they decide to make a change, would be on the hook for at least double that if they let Jimbo go with some form of "negotiated' buyout after this season.
Either the buyouts have to come down to a point that is realistic -- something like one year of that coach's salary if he leaves for another job before his contract expires... Or, the universities have to "eat it" and just let the coach work out his contracted years. If you gamble on a guy with a 7-year deal, and it turns out he sucks, you live with it for 6 years.
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