The University of North Texas athletic department is paying $90,000 per month to buy out the contracts of three former athletic department employees…
The school hired [a new football coach] heading into the 2011 season and saw him provide the program an immediate boost…
[It] quickly signed [the coach] to a new five-year contract in March 2014.
[He] coached only 17 games under the terms of that contract. [The school] fired him after an embarrassing 66-7 loss to Portland State University left UNT at 0-5 last season…
UNT has been paying out [his] salary since…
And you know what’s interesting?
McCarney hasn’t taken a full-time job since leaving UNT. He recently spoke at a clinic at Iowa State and has spent time visiting his former assistant coaches who now are running their own programs.
Petersen has not returned to a full-time job in college coaching, while Villarreal said he would take time off after leaving UNT to evaluate the next step in his career.
None of the three guys getting full salary for doing nothing is looking for a new job! Weird, huh? They seem content to pull down all that money and not do anything.
Or, I mean, you know … It’s great to see Villarreal slowly chewing on that all-important next step…
It’s like university presidents on corporate boards. Nice work if you can get it.
June 22nd, 2016 at 11:06AM
Texas and Texas A&M can do this sort of silly shit because they have enough rich donors.
North Texas? Not so much.
Will we ever live to see the idiots who do these sorts of things held accountable?
June 22nd, 2016 at 11:13AM
JND: Good point. If you have lots of money, you can toddle along very nicely, subsidizing multiple coaches who left decades ago.
June 22nd, 2016 at 11:49AM
It isn’t university related, but same neck of the woods: Did you see that the Texas Rangers are going to be getting a new stadium using hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to replace their (beautiful, I might add) stadium that was built 22 years ago?
Big-time college football is scummy, but it’s often not delusional per se. But the idea that in college football the University of North Texas (or UNLV, or New Mexico State, or what have you) are ever going to be anything other than the University of North Texas (or UNLV, or New Mexico State, or what have you) is the perfect combination of delusion and grift. Indeed, if you act as if you’re under the spell of the former you’re probably better positioned to benefit from the latter.
June 22nd, 2016 at 3:03PM
JND: “Will we ever live to see the idiots who do these sorts of things held accountable?”
“No consequences.” That’s what a middling administrator told me when I asked how is our Podunk Tech’s leadership getting away with a whole mess of questionable (I’m being very nice) activity. State regents don’t want to get involved; trustees are, with rare exceptions, political hacks; profs and staffers are cowed salary-earners. Makes me think, somehow, of Robert Moses, in his capacity at the top of the heap of the politically insulated “public authorities”.