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You know how, whenever a Madoff-style Ponzi thing hits the news….

… there’s always some little old lady who rises to iconic sucker status? There’s always some little old lady who explains in a tremulous voice how this nice man called her up on the telephone and was so sweet and patient with her and now he has the $150,000 she’d put away for her dotage…

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looks like that old lady. Now that its latest disastrous football coach has retired, UNC is the sucker du jour.

Although the news came out yesterday that new Bucs coach Greg Schiano has hired his old friend and colleague Butch Davis, there have been conflicting reports about precisely what role Davis will have in Tampa Bay. And the reason for the conflicting reports appears to be an issue regarding Davis wanting to collect paychecks from the Bucs while also collecting all the severance pay he can from the University of North Carolina.

North Carolina fired Davis in July amid an NCAA investigation into academic misconduct and accusations that players received impermissible benefits from agents. According to the Tampa Bay Times, when Davis was fired the school agreed to give him up to $2.7 million in severance. (Because giving $2.7 million to a football coach who was fired amid a scandal is a great way for a public university to use its resources.)

Davis has already received $933,000 of that severance, but the rest of it comes in increments of $590,000 a year in 2013, 2014 and 2015 — but only if Davis is unable to find a coaching job. If Davis has resumed his coaching career, North Carolina can deduct his coaching salary from that $590,000, and if his coaching salary is more than $590,000 North Carolina doesn’t have to pay him anything.

So Davis is apparently hoping to work out a title with the Buccaneers in which he will “serve the Bucs in an advisory capacity” rather than become a coach, and therefore he’d be able to get paid by the Bucs while still collecting his full severance from North Carolina.

Haha Butch boy put ‘er there! Gotta hand it to you!

Margaret Soltan, February 12, 2012 9:57AM
Posted in: sport

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
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Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
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Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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