Photo Courtesy of AP
I've always had a lot of respect for top-notch, future hall-of-fame coaches in collegiate athletics. John Calipari was one of them. After Calipari up and left Memphis, now one of the nation's elite men's basketball programs, last week for a struggling Kentucky program, I have a hard time believing that he took the job because it was his "dream job" he knew he wanted since 1992. This might be the case, but it has to be merely an afterthought following the millions of dollars, or the two free old model cars or the free golf club membership of his choice that were offered to him with his contract...and that was only part of the deal.
It seems as if any time a college basketball or football school that is a top-25 caliber, or is on the verge of being a top-25 caliber team and is in search of a new coach...some are willing to do just about anything to land the coach. Obviously schools are trying to lure some coaches away from teams which they repeatedly take to postseason play, and will need to offer something more then what they already have, but after Calipari's deal, it's gotten to the point where I feel it's getting out of control.
In a way coaching hires have become like recruiting blue chip athletes...except there is no such thing as "illegal recruiting" when it comes to coaches. For example, how about the crap Nick Saban pulled when he left LSU just a year after winning a national championship for the Miami Dolphins, only to leave there after just two seasons for an eight year, $32 million contract which includes: private use of a University airplane, two cars and a country club membership just to name a few. Of course Saban's Dolphins were not going to win the Super Bowl anytime soon but you wonder what the real reason for leaving after just two seasons in the NFL was? On a lighter...or maybe not so light note, when Iowa was in search of a men's basketball coach a couple years ago, Pancheros offered Rick Majerus free burritos if he took the Iowa coaching job. Seriously? Some are willing to offer about anything...or everything to attract some of today's elite coaches.
If the top high school athletes can't accept money, cars or any other benefits to go to different colleges, why can the coaches, who coach some of these top athletes do so? Of course as time goes on, the dollar amounts of contracts will keep steadily increasing, which I understand. But the offering of free cars, season tickets, country club memberships and private airplanes is nearly ludacris.
One must wonder what John Wooden, the legendary and perhaps greatest college basketball coach of all-time, thinks about the contracts surfacing today in collegiate athletics. Wooden never made more than $35,000 a year at UCLA where he won 10 national championships. Never asked for a raise following those national championships...and even turned down an offer to coach the Lakers which would have paid him at least ten times as much as he was making while coaching the Bruins. Where oh where did the John Woodens of the collegiate sports world go?
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