COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

Several members of Coaches Hot Seat recently gathered before the Emerald Bowl at one of San Francisco’s oldest bars, the Balboa Cafe’ to toast some of our favorite souls that left the Earth in 2007, and as usual it was a good time for all.  There really is only one way to honor people that have lived the good life, and that is to find a good bar and drink some good Kentucky bourbon whiskey, which was Maker’s Mark for this gathering.  2007 was a tough year for some of our best people, and one has to start and end a tribute to the fine men and women that are laying it on the line for us around the world, which is of course the members of our US military.  In 2007 we have lost 899 people in Iraq, and we want to wish Godspeed to each and every one of them, and we hope that God is taking care of their families, especially the one’s that left young children behind.  Overall, we have lost 3902 men and women in Iraq, and each one of them are precious to us, and their sacrifice should never be far from our minds.  Thanks to all of you that pull on that US uniform everyday, because your sacrifice allows us to live in peace at home.  Let’s all pray for an end to this conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008, but no one anywhere should doubt our resolve to fight and die for this country of ours and this grand experiment we call the United States of America.

On to the fine people that we toasted on a foggy night in San Francisco:

Art Buchwald - You made us laugh for years and there is a lot to said for that!

Molly Ivins - Another person that we could not help but laugh with and at, and someone that could give as good as she got.

Arthur Schlesinger - A chronicler of the Kennedy White House years, and a true man of the world.  To be in Arthur’s presence was to be around a mind on fire, and what magnificent vigor he lived his life with.

Eddie Robinson – A giant in the game of football and life, and a man that was not going to allow the color of his skin determine how he lived his life.  A true American hero, that was also one of the classiest gentlemen you would ever want to meet.  We are all much richer from your time on this earth Mr. Robinson. 

Terry Hoeppner- A true joy to be around, and a hell of a football coach to boot.  Was anyone having more fun than Terry Hoeppner on this Earth?  We don’t think so, and don’t think for a second that Terry is somewhere with a huge smile on his face from the play of his beloved Hoosiers this year.  Coach Hoeppner made life fun, and he is terribly missed by a lot of people.

David Halberstam- We lost David to a car wreck here in the Bay area and that news story crossing our computer screens is still a shot to the gut.  Always open, always willing to talk and to and learn from anyone, David is irreplaceable and his absence from the grand stage that is America has been palpable.  Here’s to you David for a life well lived!

Boris N. Yeltsin - A man of incredible courage and guts just when his country needed courage and guts.  Let’s just hope that Yeltsin’s actions don’t go for naught in his country that is increasingly looking more like the Soviet Union than the Russia that Yeltsin built.  Thanks Boris!

Tom Snyder – To people old enough to remember Tom, they remember a great interviewer who also had a wicked sense of humor.  Tom lived the last years of his life in the Bay area, and if you happened to run into him at a store he would be mad if you didn’t say hello.  Here’s to you Tom!

Bill Walsh – An incredible football coach, and an even better man.  Bill Walsh had time for everyone, and that included any average Joe that ran into Coach Walsh in public that might have a question or two about his offense or what was wrong with the 49ers.  To say Bill Walsh was unique is to not do justice to what he accomplished and how he lived his life on this Earth.  If we know Bill Walsh he is having great fun talking over football with the dozens of great coaches that he studied in his career, and from our point of view you can put him right at the top of any list when you are talking about the all time greatest.

Merv Griffin - Merv is another guy that only people of a certain age will know about, but when Merv was on top of his game he was the tops.  When we think of Merv, images of lots of laughs and great guests on the daytime Merv Griffin show fill our minds, and truly Merv was a man that loved life completely.  What a great American life you lived Mr. Griffin.

Norman Mailer - Lots of people believe The Naked and the Dead, Armies of the Night, or the Executioner’s Song were his best work, but for our money Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, and Harlot’s Ghost were works of art that will live forever.  Norman also participated in one of the most bizarre moments in TV history when he appeared on the Dick Cavett show in 1971 with Gore Vidal.  Mr. Cavett recently described the scene in his blog on the New York Times, and it is as funny to read about as it is strange!  To be in the same room with Norman Mailer, especially in his younger days was to be with a wild animal who could do or say anything, because this was a man that lived a large and outrageous life.  Norman certainly had the Steve Spurrier disease, in that there was not filter between his brain and mouth, and we were all richer for his brutal honesty.  If you want to understand American life from World War II to the end of the 20th century, then Mailer’s books are a must read.  Here’s to you Norman for a great life lived!

There are so many other greats that we have missed, and millions of other terrific people that have passed on from this Earth in 2007.  In so many ways death gives meaning to life, because we all know that we have a finite time on this planet, and if that doesn’t focus your attention nothing will! 

We here at Coaches Hot Seat want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and Good Luck to you and yours in 2008!

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UCLA fired Karl Dorrell to hire who?  Please, don’t tell us that Dan Guerrero fired Karl Dorrell to hire Rick Neuheisel, but indeed that is what Rece Davis of ESPN has been saying all afternoon.  As several members of Coaches Hot Seat sat around CHS Central tonight and watched the Patriots go 16-0, we were all still stunned that Neuheisel to UCLA is not some kind of crazy dream.  A few of us here had the opportunity to interact with Neuheisel when he was the head coach at Colorado and Washington and our experiences with Neuheisel were consistent, and troubling.  If you have ever met Bill Clinton in person, then you know exactly what it is like to meet and interact with Rick Neuheisel, and we always wonder with both men if they would not do or say anything to achieve their goals in life.  In the press release announcing Neuheisel’s hiring Neuheisel says, “I made some mistakes earlier in my career and I take responsibility for those mistakes. I have learned from that experience and I would never do anything that would reflect negatively on UCLA.”  Really?  Since Neuheisel is a graduate and former football player at UCLA, he has already embarrassed his school dozens of times with his actions in his career, and now all of the sudden he has seen the light?  Please, that is an absolutely outrageous statement to make when everyone knows that the only school around that would dare hire Neuheisel as a head football coach is UCLA.  An even stranger thing from this hire is just who in the hell is now occupying Dan Guerrero’s body, because the Dan Guerrero we know would not tolerate someone in his organization that had committed the transgressions that Neuheisel has in his career.  Of course, if one paid attention to the trial where the new UCLA head coach sued the University of Washington and the NCAA, one would find all kinds of troubling comments by Neuheisel and his former bosses over Neuheisel’s actions while at UW.  Why in the world Dan Guerrero would want to hire someone at UCLA that has such a troubling past is absoultely stunning, but what may be even more incredible is that UCLA had few options but Rick Neuheisel.  It is time to face facts:  UCLA football is now nothing more than a marginal Pac-10 team that cannot draw more than scant attention from actual qualified candidates, and when UCLA got right down to it, the head coaching job was going to be offered to a current assistant coach who had 1 game of head coaching experience, a secondary coach for a NFL team, and Rick Neuheisel.  That my friend is what a former resident of Beverly Hills, a Mr. Jed Clampett would call, “Pitiful, just pitiful.”

Why is UCLA such an unattractive job to people that would interest UCLA.  You can start with the salary that UCLA is offering.  Brian Dohn, the UCLA beat reporter for the LA Daily Breeze reports that Neuheisel will make $1.25 million per year.  What?  That is practically poverty wages in Los Angeles, and BankRate.com’s cost of living calculator tells us that if Nick Saban wanted to maintain the same standard of living that he has in Tuscaloosa, Alabama making $4 million, he would have to have a bump in pay to $7.1 million per year.  Likewise Neuheisel’s $1.25 million salary at UCLA is worth around $700 K in most of America, and you cannot hire a first-rate coach for $700 K.  To see just what a fantasy Mike Bellotti was for UCLA, the reported salary that Bellotti will be making in 2008 at Oregon is around $1.75 million, which would have to be around $2.4 million in order for him to keep the same standard of living in LA that he has in Eugene.  There was not a chance in the world that Bellotti was going to move to LA, or that UCLA was ever going to pay a decent wage for this job.  On top of all of this Tom Dienhart of the Sporting News reports that two things that are a must for UCLA to compete in the Pac-10:  1. Loosened admission standards; and 2. Increased pay for assistants are not going to happen.  Who in the hell does UCLA think they are?  Stanford?  Cal has a number of players right now on their team that we have been told could not have gotten into UCLA, and if that is true then those loons in the UCLA admissions department need to join the rest of us on planet Earth.  Yes, they are high and mighty when they are spouting their politically-correct crap on creating a more “diverse campus,” but when a football player shows up from a disadvantaged background who happens to not have grades that are equal to the rest of the student body, the PC people cannot be found.  They believe that UCLA is too good to allow these marginal students into their precious school, but then we turn around and find out that those same kids are getting admitted at Cal?  Please, the actions of the admissions department at UCLA are beyond hypocrisy and border on outright discrimination against kids that have a talent that is not playing a violin, dancing on a stage, or kissing everyone’s butt through high school to pad their college applications.  No, these kids are not member of the glee club, but they happen to have the ability to play football, and if a kid can get cleared by the NCAA through their academic clearinghouse, then they should have the opportunity to attend a publicly supported state university.  This has nothing to do with lowering standards, but rather the admissions people at UCLA coming to the realization that a kid that can throw a football is as valuable to an university as someone that can play the cello or has done nothing but stick his nose in books for four years of high school.  Dozens of public universities prove every year that there is a place for athletes at their schools and just because a kid happens to play football, shouldn’t mean the admissions department dismisses them out of hand.

So where does all of this leave UCLA?  They fired a mediocre football coach who was paid a below average salary, and they hired a guy that has a checkered past and they are paying him a below average wage.  How nice for UCLA, because it now has the distinction of being one of the few major universities that continues to field a 2nd rate football program, and they have hired a man that no one here at Coaches Hot Seat would hire to coach our kids pee-wee teams.  You see, we feel that people that coach our children should have some integrity and stand for something, and in our opinion Rick Neuheisel doesn’t meet that requirement.  To be frank, we don’t trust the guy, and we cannot understand why UCLA believes he is going to act any different than he has in the past.  No one else would have dared hire Rick Neuheisel for very real reasons, and one of the main reasons they did end up hiring Neuheisel was because UCLA is, let’s just go ahead and say it, INCREDIBLY CHEAP.  Yes, UCLA is Costanza-type cheap, and is the kind of guy that always dodges paying the tab, and when it comes right down to it, they are rather proud about being cheap.  How sad for both UCLA and it’s fans, because there is just no excuse for a school that has such a wealthy donor base to be paying their most public face such disgraceful wage, but we will let you in on a little secret…..There are a lot of people at UCLA that don’t want the football team to win big, and those people tonight have two things to crow about.  The first is the fact that UCLA sacrificed its integrity to hire Neuheisel, and second that Neuheisel and his assistants will not be making a respectful wage.  How pitiful that there are people jumping for joy at UCLA imagining the possibilities of disaster that might happen under Neuheisel at UCLA, and that those football bastards will not be making more than the pointed-head blowhards that don’t generate one penny in real revenue for the school.  Pitiful, just pitiful.

UCLA Motto:  “We hire 2nd rates coaches and pay them 2nd rate salaries so you don’t have to, and we are proud of it!”

Here is the UCLA 2008 Schedule:

Fresno St Bulldogs	Aug 30
Tennessee Volunteers	Sep 6
at BYU Cougars	Sep 13
Arizona Wildcats	Sep 27
Washington State Cougars	Oct 4
at Oregon Ducks	Oct 11
Stanford Cardinal	Oct 18
at California Bears	Oct 25
Oregon State Beavers	Nov 8
at Washington Huskies	Nov 15
at Arizona State Sun Devils	Nov 22
USC Trojans	Dec 6

 We wonder what the over/under on how many wins for Neuheisel in 2008?  We don’t see a “for sure” win on that schedule, so this might get very ugly in Westwood next year, and if it does you know exactly who to blame.  That being the people that hired a guy in the head coaching position that if we drew up a list of 100 potential coaches for the UCLA job, he would not be on that list.  To us that is just unexplainable.

We will have more on Neuheisel’s hiring in our Coaching Changes Analysis in the coming days.

Happy New Year to everyone! 

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The most important, and possibly most troubling question relative to Rich Rodriguez leaving West Virginia for Ann Arbor is Michigan’s role in this whole process.  No doubt, Michigan AD Bill Martin knew about Rodriguez’s $4 million dollar buyout and the issue of the buyout had to have come up during their meeting in Toledo on December 14.  From all that has been reported, Bill Martin is a pretty straight shooter, and it is hard for us to imagine that he did not address the issue with Rodriguez and who was going to pay that $4 million buyout when they discussed the Michigan job.  Since we can assume very reliably that the buyout issue came up in that meeting, we are beginning to wonder if Rodriguez and his agent told Martin that no one was going to pay the buyout, because West Virginia did not live up to it’s end of the contract that Rodriguez had signed a year earlier.  That certainly is a very plausible assumption, because there was clearly a well-orchestrated campaign by supporters of Rodriguez almost immediately upon his departure to Michigan to lay the blame for Rodriguez’s departure at the feet of the West Virginia administration.  Two well-known West Virginia boosters were quoted in dozens of media outlets that the actions/non-action of the WVU administration was the reason for Rodriguez going to Michigan, and they had very specific reasons that Rodriguez and his supporters believed that the contract signed between Rodriguez and WVU was not honored by the school.

Bill Martin and Michigan’s role in this episode cannot be discounted, because our reading of Rodriguez’s contract is very clear, and Rodriguez certainly went into his meeting with Michigan knowing that he was liable legally and in fact morally, to pay the $4 million buyout if he ended up taking the Michigan job.  In fact, if Bill Martin and Michigan signed off on this strategy for Rodriguez to challenge the buyout with West Virginia, then that raises some very serious and ethical issues on Michigan’s side of this transaction, because already by all accounts Michigan did not even ask permission of WVU to speak with Rodriguez in the first place.  To complicate matters even more, it has been reported that University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman was at the meeting in Toledo with Rodriguez as well, and it is beyond belief that both Bill Martin and Mary Sue Coleman did not discuss the buyout issue before offering the head coaching job to Rodriguez.

Now let’s move from a hypothesis to a conclusion, and if this is a true conclusion the people at Michigan have as many questions to answer as Rodriguez.  If Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman and AD Bill Martin discussed the $4 million buyout with Rodriguez and he told them that the buyout was not going to be an issue, because WVU had not lived up to their side of the contract, then that puts Coleman and Martin in the very uncomfortable position of negotiating with a potential hire certainly knowing that making that hire would put at risk the reputation of the institution (Univ. of Michigan) that they are working for.  In business, and college football is certainly a business, you would expect a hiring company to act in a responsible way when it comes to hiring key employees away from competitors, and if there is a buyout involved in securing the services of an employee from a rival firm, one would certainly expect that Michigan would have been upfront in demanding that the buyout issue be resolved and worked-out before Rodriguez was hired by Michigan.  To do anything different certainly raises some troubling issues for Michigan and why they believe they can just wash their hands of the Rodriguez buyout issue, when it is quickly becoming a very large issue for their new head football coach.  This buyout issue is really important, because Michigan is a public university that is owned by the people of the state of Michigan, right down to the desks that Coleman and Martin sit at to conduct their business, and it is important that the people of Michigan know about the dealings of their public employees and how they acted in this case with Rodriguez.  Did Coleman and Martin put the University of Michigan at risk by hiring a guy that they knew was contractually committed to a $4 million buyout if he took another job?  If indeed Rodriguez’s buyout was discussed between Michigan and Rodriguez (and his agent) at their meeting on December 14 in Toledo, the scope of those conversations is certainly something that the people of Michigan have the right to know about.  Private meetings are the domain of private companies, but when you are running a public university that his supported by the taxpayers, then you have an obligation to act in a manner consistent with the trust that the public places with it’s leaders. 

With the filing of the suit against Rodriguez by the WVU Board of Governors to collect that $4 million buyout, we are assured that we are going to hear a lot more about this issue in the coming weeks, that is unless the case is settled out of court.  If Mary Sue Coleman and Bill Martin believe that they are not involved in the issues related to Rodriguez’s buyout, then they are sadly mistaken, because they very likely will be asked to testify under oath about what went on in that meeting in Toledo, and it is beyond comprehension that public officials would not testify and tell the whole truth about this entire incident.  If Coleman and Martin do testify that the $4 million buyout was discussed and that they took Rodriguez’s word that the buyout would not have to be paid because West Virginia had violated the terms of the contract with Rodriguez, then one would have to question the judgement of Coleman and Martin on this issue.  There is just no way that it is acceptable that Coleman and Martin should have allowed the $4 million buyout to be unresolved before Rodriguez was hired, and if they really wanted to act in an ethical and above board manner, they would have addressed the buyout issue directly with West Virginia before they hired Rich Rodriguez.  That is the way ethical and moral people behave in the marketplace, especially when the employee you are trying to hire is going to be so much in the public spotlight.

Actually, this is all very simple.  If the Michigan officials took Rodriguez and his agent at their word that the buyout was not going to be an issue, and then they hired Rodriguez with that issue still outstanding, then shame on Michigan.  Rich Rodriguez is an adult, and he knew exactly what he was signing last year with his new contract, and it very clearly calls for a $4 million buyout.  If Rich Rodriguez really gives a damn about his home state and alma mater, he will end this issue immediately and either pay the buyout himself (through his own funds or borrowing it from his rich buddies) or ask that Michigan pay the buyout.  If on the other hand Rodriguez doesn’t give a rip about his home state or his alma mater, he can allow this buyout issue to drag on, and we will all eventually find out just what was discussed in that meeting in Toledo, because when you put people under oath you tend to get the truth.  As for Michigan, if they just took Rodriguez at his word that the buyout was going to just go away, then shame on the Michigan officials to allow such an ambiguity to remain outstanding on such an important hire for their university.

Either Rich Rodriguez or Michigan, or a combination of the two, should write a check for $4 million to West Virginia University.  Not only is that the legal thing to do, it is the right thing to do, but if the parties involved in this transaction really want to drag both universities through the mud and drag out all of the dirty laundry that exists between Rodriguez and West Virginia, and what Michigan’s role was in the hiring of Rodriguez and what they knew about his buyout, then by all means proceed down this very treacherous path.  We will tell you from experience though, the only people that win in these types of deals are the attorneys, because at the end of the day a lot of people are going to look very foolish on both sides of this transaction and a few people may lose their jobs because of their actions in this matter.  Yes, there is a lot more at stake here than a measly $4 million dollars.  Someone needs to write that $4 million check made out to West Virginia University, and quick.       

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There is a lot that could be written about the odyssey that is the UCLA coaching search, but there is so much backstory to what is going on in Westwood, that it is appropriate to deal with that end of this debacle before anyone can understand how we got to this point.  Several people here at Coaches Hot Seat have lived on the westside of LA and we have attended dozens if not hundreds of UCLA football and basketball games and other sporting events on the UCLA campus.  We have had lunches, attended book festivals, political debates, and just tooled around the terrific UCLA campus.  Many of us think UCLA is a very special place, and that is why the current coaching search troubles us so.  We also have a dozen or so friends that attended UCLA for their undergraduate studies, and many others that were graduated from the UCLA law, business, and medicine schools.  Putting all of this together, our own personal experiences and talking to our UCLA friends over the past years, we have drawn the conclusion that UCLA is more disconnected from it’s alumni and fan base than any other major university in the US.  There are a lot reasons for this, but the main one is that the UCLA administration doesn’t engage it’s alumni in a way that would encourage them to become involved in campus events, both sporting and otherwise, and that lack of involvement by the Bruin alumni has led directly to the position that UCLA athletics now finds itself in.  Dan Guerrero, who is an UCLA alumnus and former baseball player at the school, has basically been tasked with the impossible.  Hiring a football coach that pays a salary that is at least $1.5 million less than the going rate for their main competition across town, and also a salary that is totally inappropriate to live in a place as expensive as Los Angeles.  Pete Carroll at USC is making somewhere between $2.75 and $3.0 million a year, and there is no reason in the world that an university as prestigious as UCLA, with such a large and connected alumni group cannot pay their head coach the current going rate in the markeplace.  Guerrero cannot pay the going rate because UCLA is fundamentally disconnected from it’s alumni, and that disconnection has led directly to the amount of money that they can raise for their athletic department, and thus pay their head coach.  That is a sad reality, but a very real one for Dan Guerrero.

If UCLA is really interested in playing college football at the highest level, then it needs to get serious and actually conduct a search that includes men that are qualified for the head coaching job.  No one yet interviewed by UCLA (we are not counting Mike Bellotti, because anyone that knows Mike Bellotti knew that he was not moving his family to LA) is even remotely qualified for the current situation that faces UCLA football.  Of the coaches interviewed, DeWayne Walker is probably the most qualified, because he will get a shot at a head coaching job one day, but the other two coaches that have been brought to Westwood to interview with Chancellor Block, should have never been contacted in the first place.  Al Golden at Temple?  Please, the guy has won 5 games in two years, and is barely wet behind the ears, and UCLA is going to hire this guy and throw him into the cauldron that is the Los Angeles media?  Please!  It is beyond stupid to believe Golden is a credible candidate for any other school, especially UCLA, so thank goodness Golden ended that foolishness by withdrawing his name yesterday.  Rick Neuheisel?  Yes, Rick played QB at UCLA, but are the people running UCLA football, Chancellor Block and Dan Guerrero, really going to tell anyone that hiring Rick Neuheisel is the right move?  Please, this is beyond laughable.  A member of Coaches Hot Seat was living in Seattle during Neuheisel’s days at Washington, and the NCAA basketball pool that Neuheisel was involved in isn’t our main concern.  The problem with Neuheisel is that you never know what is true, and what is not.  Read this story (ESPN.com story on Neuheisal trial) and the other stories on that webpage about the trial where Neuheisel sued Washington over wrongful termination.  After reading those stories, and this summary of Neuheisel’s coaching career compiled by USA Today in 2003. does anyone really believe that Rick Neuheisel is who UCLA wants to hire as their head football coach?  If so, then Chancellor Block and Dan Guerrero need to go ahead and bring a lot of boxes to work and pack up everything, because the first-time something happens with Neuheisel, either recruiting related or something he tells his bosses at UCLA that is not true, that will be the day that Block and Guerrero will be hitting the road with those boxes, because they will be out of their jobs.

What is UCLA to do now?  Well, the years of disengagement with their alumni have put them in a hell of a situation, because they are offering a job in the marketplace for half of what it should be paying, and that is why their list of potential head coaches is so weak.  If UCLA is really serious about building a championship football program, then Block and Guerrero only have one choice, and that is to get on the phone to the thousands of very wealthy UCLA alumni (also don’t forget the other wealthy people on the westide that go to UCLA basketball and football games) that live with 5 miles of the campus and raise the money necessary to bring a big-time football coach to Westwood.  How much money are we talking about?  UCLA should be offering a minimum of $2.75 million dollars to their next head football coach, and they should be hiring from a pool of the best coaches in the game, college or pro.  UCLA should be offering a 5-year contract, that includes a large enough pool of money for their head coach to attract a very good staff of assistants to Westwood.  That is probably another $2.0 to $3.0 million annually also.  Beyond that UCLA needs to be providing a generous housing allowance to their head football coach and his assistants, so that they can live no further than 5 miles from campus.  And to take all of this one step further, UCLA needs to raise the necessary money that will allow the new head coach and his assistants to travel the country to sign talented high-school football players.  What does all of this add up to?  Somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million dollars, which a good set of fundraisers could raise in about 2 hours if they had access to the thousands of UCLA alumni that can easily write 6-figure checks and not have to check their bank balance to wonder if the check will clear or not. 

Of course, UCLA can go ahead and hire a 2nd rate coach at a 2nd rate salary, but they will be back here again in 5 years, if not sooner, looking for another head coach, and that search will surely not be led by Dan Guerrero.  If UCLA does recognize the situation that it finds itself in, and decides that they do indeed believe they can play football with the big boys, then they have no option but to find the money necessary to make UCLA football what it should be, which is a championship program witout equal in the country  If UCLA does make that commitment, then 5 years from now the money it spent today will seem meaningless when you are talking about an energized and enthused fan base that is filling up the Rose Bowl for football games and is buying UCLA merchandise by the boatload.  The old adage is that you must spend money to make money, but for UCLA it is that it must now make an investment to bring a big-time football coach to Westwood, or risk having the UCLA football program fall into oblivion.  It is UCLA’s choice, and it will be mighty interesting to see what direction they move in, because more than the future of the football program is on the on the line here, the future success of UCLA as a great university as well.  If you don’t take your biggest sport and largest public face seriously, then what else are they not taking seriously at UCLA?  That is a hell of a question, and one that must be answered at UCLA, and soon.

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On Wednesday Scott M. Reid of the Orange County Register delivered a blow to the midsection with his piece College Football’s Money Bowl that detailed the excesses of the bowls and lunacy of the people running them, and he is back on Thursday with a mighty shot right between the eyes to the bowls and the absurd BCS with Price of Success: A broken bowl system.  Here’s a little snippet from Mr. Reid’s article:

“Six-figure bowl expense deficits for universities have become increasingly common in the past four years, according to bowl expense documents for 62 schools obtained by The Orange County Register.

University officials say ticket allocations and hotel contracts dictated by the bowl committees are the driving forces behind the deficits.

“Bowls can get expensive in a hurry,” Ohio State associate athletic director Ben Jay said. “Hotels, meals, transportation – it all adds up in a hurry.”

But longtime observers of college sport said the lack of control by university administrations has allowed bowl games to become the ultimate college party and, it seems, everyone is invited.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Murray Sperber, the former chairman of the Drake Group, a national faculty committee pushing for college sports reform. “It’s out of control. There’s no cost containment.

“The trustees, the administration are along for the ride. The same administrators that are supposed to be watching over this are right there on the charter planes to the bowl.”"

So the administrators are along for the ride?  That’s no surprise to us here at Coaches Hot Seat, because some of the biggest partiers you see at bowls these days aren’t players, but mid and upper-level college administrators who see a bowl game as a way to relive their old trips to Daytona Beach for Spring Break.  Of course, we have seen a few presidents at these bowl shindigs, but with all of this partying, and money-losing going on, one has to wonder if the presidents and chancellors aren’t starting to look around and say, “Maybe the bowl system is what is wrong with the game, and handing the administration of college football over to the NCAA is the only way to bring some sanity and integrity back to college football postseason.”  Hmmmm, that is sure what smart college presidents are saying, because this bowl system is turning into an orgy of excess that is making the Romans look like teetotalers.

Here’s some more from Mr. Reid’s article:

“Nearly half the schools competing in last year’s 32 bowl games lost money, according to the Register study that also reviewed conference financial documents, NCAA bowl records and athletic department financial reports filed with the U.S. Department of Education for all 120 universities in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-A.

The 64 teams playing in postseason games last season had combined bowl expenses of $69.7 million, a $16.8 million increase from just four years earlier.

Those figures don’t include bowl bonuses for coaches and staff and the cost of feeding and housing teams on campus between the end of fall classes and the bowl trip.”

So half the teams competing in bowls last season lost money?  Now that is something that should get college presidents attention, because it is becoming very obvious that not only is the BCS broken and putting at stake the very integrity of the game of college football by the fraudulent way it determines the National Champion, the rest of the bowl system is broken as well.  Now the bowls are nothing more than travel agents selling hotel rooms and forcing ticket sales down the throats of all to willing schools, that feel they have no option but take their teams to the bowl game, or become irrelevant.  Now that is just sad, but again the bowl system cares very little about the great schools and universities of our country, and the presidents and chancellors by continuing to shill for this bowl system are now putting at stake the integrity of their institutions.  Don’t believe it?  Read on:

“”Bowls used to be a celebration of success,” former NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey said. “Now you have 6-6 teams going to bowls. And they’re taking everybody under the sun that has ever had anything to do with the university.”

For last year’s Sun Bowl, Oregon State and Missouri paid for 1,186 people to make the trip to El Paso. Wisconsin took three Bucky Badger mascots to one recent bowl.

“I guess if the first two Buckys get too wasted on New Year’s Eve,” said Sperber, the former Drake Group chairman, “you’ve still got a third Bucky for the Rose Bowl.”

“In many ways, the educational elite consider themselves more privileged than the average individual, and what happens at many of these colleges is there’s far too heavy of an emphasis on the athletic program over the academic mission of the university,” said Colorado state Sen. Dave Schultheis, who has criticized the University of Colorado paying five baby sitters to attend the 2004 Houston Bowl and providing thousands of dollars in gifts for the spouses and children of university staff on earlier bowl trips.

“I think we’ve gone overboard,” Schultheis continued, “when we start allocating for friends and wives all sorts of amenities and hotel rooms and that sort of thing.”

Bowl payout figures can be deceiving. Not only are most payouts split with other conference schools after the participant’s expense allowance, but most bowl deals require schools to buy thousands of tickets to resell to their fans. Selling those tickets isn’t a problem if your team is in one of the five BCS games. But schools in other games usually end up eating thousands of dollars, often hundreds of thousands, worth of tickets.”

Yes, the presidents and chancellors are right, the current bowl system is the best way to go!  Listen up, presidents and chancellors of our largest colleges:  You are being played as chumps by these bowl and BCS folks, and if you take a hard look at the bowl system and just who is running the college post-season, instead of mouthing and repeating the very words that the BCS “We own football and everyone else can go to hell” Boys have been putting into your mouths, you might actually find the truth at the bottom of this dung heap.  How naive by the presidents to allow the current bowl system and the absurd BCS to take control of the game of college football, but when you show up in a college president’s office with a Brooks Brothers suit on these days, you will be listened to.  That is sad, but it is a fact, and we could prove that on this very day if necessary by getting an appointment with any college president in this country if we promised academic integrity and a few gold coins.

Here are some more stunning revelations from Mr. Reid’s article on the absolute orgy the college football post-season has become:

“The high prices, however, haven’t stopped the party. University-financed New Year’s Eve parties, hospitality suites with 24-hour bar service, golf outings, tickets to concerts and sporting events and endless dinners and cocktail receptions have run up a combined $5.1 million tab in bowl-related entertainment over the past five seasons.

That total doesn’t include gifts schools give players, staff, administrators, boosters, sponsors and even university employee spouses and children.

Bowl committees are allowed by NCAA rules to give players up to $500 each in gifts. Apple iPods, a popular gift at recent games, are now passé.

“Who wants another iPod?” Mayfield asked.

At least four bowls this season are giving away Sony surround-sound systems. Each participant in the Sugar Bowl will receive a Sony MP4 camcorder, leather jacket, watch and rolling suitcase. Schools can also spend an additional $350 on each player, and most schools reach the limit, giving players apparel, gift cards and, of course, more electronics.

“There is a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses (factor),” Mayfield said. “The kids all talk so it has become a recruiting factor.”

Transporting everybody and their gifts also is costly. Many schools now fly charter planes to bowls because of the increased size of the traveling parties and limited availability of commercial tickets during the holidays.

Cal will spend $240,000 on charters to get the Golden Bears and Co. to Fort Worth’s Armed Forces Bowl and back home. The school has budgeted $550,000 for the bowl. When Cal deputy athletic director Steve Holton was asked if the Bears had any chance of breaking even, he laughed before answering.

“No.”"

Yes, that sounds like something that colleges should be involved in!  Let’s be very clear here, since the BCS “We own college football because we own the presidents and chancellors” Boys scream so loud about their absurd system.  The current bowl system and absurd BCS are about as far away from what supposed to be going on at college campuses and within college athletic departments as one can get, and we wonder how the presidents and chancellors every bought this load of manure in the first place.  Of course, it didn’t all land on the doorstep yesterday, and 20 years ago the bowls were actually about two teams getting together to be rewarded for a well played season.  Now, with 6-6 teams getting bowl invitations and college administrators boogieing down to Bee Gees at university sponsored parties, the bowl system is nothing more than a ugly debacle that is now embarrassing to the schools that participate in this wretched excess.  Football teams now routinely arrive a week before the bowl game is to be played, and then it is let the partying begin!  Yes, that is a system worth protecting, over handing the college football post-season over to people, the NCAA, that would actually run a legitimate and non-alcohol driven championship format (see NCAA Basketball Tournament).  What we have now is nothing more than 32 frat parties spread across the country, and those frat parties evidently include the very administrators that decry the excesses of college football.  That my friends is hypocrisy on steroids, and if the college presidents want to continue to sit on their high horses and praise this current bowl system, then do it at your own peril, because indeed it is YOU who are putting at risk not only the integrity of the game, but your institutions reputations as well.

Very simply, the BCS is one of the greatest frauds in the history of American sport, and it must be ended to insure the integrity of the game of college football.  Right now the supposed “champion” of college football is nothing more than 1 of 2 teams that was drawn out of hat by a group of buffoons that give carny barkers a bad name with their grand pronouncements from the hilltop.  College presidents can continue to prop up this fraudulent system, but they do it at the risk of their institutions reputations, and the real goals of a “place of learning” which those very presidents are supposed to be protecting.  Don’t try to sell any of us at Coaches Hot Seat on the current bowl system, because we are smart enough to see a fraud when one is presented, and the current college football post-season is a fraud on a massive scale.  The real question is, are the presidents and chancellors smart enough to realize the errors of their ways, and turn the college football post-season entirely over to the NCAA, or are they going to allow this indulgent orgy that is the bowls and BCS to continue?  History will record what these men and women leading our great universities choose, and if you choose the orgy, it will be so duly recorded.  Of that they can be sure.

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