MORGANTOWN - Cleaning out a crowded notebook and a cluttered mind while trying to understand what is so difficult about getting a job that pays in excess of $1 million a year, signing a contract for that job and then going to work:
MORGANTOWN - Cleaning out a crowded notebook and a cluttered mind while trying to understand what is so difficult about getting a job that pays in excess of $1 million a year, signing a contract for that job and then going to work:
Me? I'd sign that sucker in a heartbeat, although to date no one has come offering.
Remember when the whole Dan Dakich saga seemed so incredibly unbelievable? West Virginia hired him as the school's basketball coach back in 2002 and he left eight days later. He was free to do so because he'd never signed his contract.
WVU was ridiculed by some for allowing that to happen, but since then it has become apparent that actually signing contracts is almost rare in the world of big time college basketball and football. The latest example comes from Kentucky, where Billy Gillispie worked for two years as the school's basketball coach without signing anything other than a memo. Now Gillispie is suing the school for the $6 million the memo said he would be paid ($1.5 million for the next four years) had UK not kicked him to the curb back in late March.
Don't you have to wonder, though, if Kentucky really wants its new coach, John Calipari, to sign on the dotted line? It was, after all, Calipari who left UMass and almost immediately that school's 1996 Final Four appearance was vacated by the NCAA because Marcus Camby was found to have had an agent. Then a month or so after Calipari left Memphis for UK, the Tigers might be looking at having their 2008 Final Four appearance vacated, too, if it can be proven that Derrick Rose didn't actually take his own SAT.
Who knows? Maybe Calipari gets Kentucky to next year's Final Four and when whatever indiscretion led to that is uncovered, Kentucky can point to the absence of a signed contract and say, "Hey, he never worked here.''
nn
By the way, the NCAA is in the process of establishing within its Academic Progress Rate program a sort of lifetime batting average for coaches. The idea is that before a school hires a coach it can easily research the academic record of his players while working for former employers.
Might an easily researched lifetime batting average for NCAA sanctions be a good idea, too?
MORGANTOWN - Cleaning out a crowded notebook and a cluttered mind while trying to understand what is so difficult about getting a job that pays in excess of $1 million a year, signing a contract for that job and then going to work:
Me? I'd sign that sucker in a heartbeat, although to date no one has come offering.
Remember when the whole Dan Dakich saga seemed so incredibly unbelievable? West Virginia hired him as the school's basketball coach back in 2002 and he left eight days later. He was free to do so because he'd never signed his contract.
WVU was ridiculed by some for allowing that to happen, but since then it has become apparent that actually signing contracts is almost rare in the world of big time college basketball and football. The latest example comes from Kentucky, where Billy Gillispie worked for two years as the school's basketball coach without signing anything other than a memo. Now Gillispie is suing the school for the $6 million the memo said he would be paid ($1.5 million for the next four years) had UK not kicked him to the curb back in late March.
Don't you have to wonder, though, if Kentucky really wants its new coach, John Calipari, to sign on the dotted line? It was, after all, Calipari who left UMass and almost immediately that school's 1996 Final Four appearance was vacated by the NCAA because Marcus Camby was found to have had an agent. Then a month or so after Calipari left Memphis for UK, the Tigers might be looking at having their 2008 Final Four appearance vacated, too, if it can be proven that Derrick Rose didn't actually take his own SAT.
Who knows? Maybe Calipari gets Kentucky to next year's Final Four and when whatever indiscretion led to that is uncovered, Kentucky can point to the absence of a signed contract and say, "Hey, he never worked here.''
nn
By the way, the NCAA is in the process of establishing within its Academic Progress Rate program a sort of lifetime batting average for coaches. The idea is that before a school hires a coach it can easily research the academic record of his players while working for former employers.
Might an easily researched lifetime batting average for NCAA sanctions be a good idea, too?
nn
It is and will likely remain astonishing to me the angst that the West Virginia-Marshall football series produces among fans. Not a week goes by that my e-mail in box isn't polluted with something regarding it. That the current deal has four full years remaining and already the debate rages over what - if anything - happens in 2013 is just maddening.
To West Virginia fans: Your school plays two mid-majors every year and if Marshall is one of them then you get either a sell-out crowd at home or an easy road trip and - at least to date - a lopsided win you can brag about for the next 364 days. And the down side to that is what?
To Marshall fans: Your school plays a couple of BCS schools every year, almost always on the road. Here's a chance to get a home game with one of those BCS teams and actually sell out your stadium once every three or four years (which none of the other rare BCS home games has managed to do), the trade-off being a short trip the other years and a chance to get tickets for it. And you're going to get a better deal where?
What really infuriates WVU fans is having to play at Marshall knowing that the tickets they buy will provide MU with a full house and added revenue. Get over it. You help boost crowds at stadiums and arenas all over the place, not so much because people are clamoring to see West Virginia play, but because you travel well. I realize you have no choice in the matter, but you've never complained about helping sell out football games at attendance-challenged Pitt, so why Marshall?
What seems to have put a bug in the rear of Marshall fans now is West Virginia agreeing to play East Carolina home-and-home for six years starting in 2013. If the Mountaineers can do that with one Conference USA team, why not with MU, too? Well, because WVU-ECU is almost always a national telecast on ESPN and WVU has a huge alumni base in the area, not to mention the exposure to Southeastern recruits. None of those criteria apply to playing Marshall, no matter where the game is played. The game has almost no TV appeal outside West Virginia and any alumni or the occasional recruit in the Huntington area is already saturated with exposure to WVU. Deal with it.
And keep those (electronic) cards and letters coming.
Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.
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WVU has it own reasons for scheduling ECU in the manner in which they did. They generally don't schedule in this fashion and usually only play one for ones with BCS schools, but they have a long term and positive relationship with ECU which helped them out with scheduling difficulties involving the conference shakeups and on other occasions.
There are just as many taxpayers who don't want this series as who do. It is not a "right", Marshall fans. Each school must decide for itself.
Marshall made an offer of a one for one, which WVU rejected. They didn't have to do it, but they made a counter offer of a 2 for 1. Marshall can either accept or reject. That's how it is done. End of story