Bruce Pearl, the former basketball coach, received a $950,000 buyout, just one of many the school was paying. [Jimmy] Hyams reports “two football coaches, three basketball coaches, two athletic directors and two baseball coaches” were on the books last year because of a series of personnel changes.
Also:
[T]he school amassed $200 million in debt for construction costs to build multiple athletic facilities and is spending on average $21 million a year.
A little background on why UT athletics has a four million dollar deficit.
UT: UTmost dipshits.
Meanwhile Gov. Robert Bentley announced that general funding to the Department of Public Safety and other state agencies would be cut by 10 percent because of revenue shortages. Public Safety director Hugh McCall said he hopes to avoid layoffs of state troopers and other employees.
They don’t need public safety. They’re safe in The Divine Huddle.
Dietel can take no pleasure in what has ensued over the last few years, though I’m sure he’s not surprised. He told the idiots at WKU what would happen. They didn’t listen. The school is now a money-hemorrhaging laughingstock.
Here’s our most recent information on WKU:
There will be a lot of empty seats at LP Field in Nashville tonight when the University of Kentucky and Western Kentucky open the 2011 football season at 9:15 p.m.
At 3 p.m. Wednesday, 40,262 tickets were available at Ticketmaster.com, including nearly 10,000 in the lower level. The stadium, where the NFL’s Tennessee Titans play their home games, holds 68,798 fans.
They’re desperately handing out free tickets so the stadium won’t look like a funeral home.
[UT football player Austin] Johnson, who was charged for public intoxication and disorderly conduct [Sunday], apparently was trying to pick a fight and was also “hitting parked cars.” Johnson told Knoxville police that he was drunk.
There’s something sad about the futility there – Johnson couldn’t find a person to fight, so he started hitting huge pieces of metal instead.
VERY.
[Athletic Director Mike Hamilton’s] resignation is effective on June 30, [just days before the NCAA’s infractions committee comes to pay a visit] but he will be on administrative leave beginning Monday. According to reports, he will receive a buyout of $1.335 million over the next 36 months or $445,000 per year ($37,083.33 monthly)…
Hamilton fired football coach Phil Fulmer in 2008, Bruce Pearl in March and most recently baseball coach Todd Raleigh. He hired Lane Kiffin to replace Fulmer, but Kiffin resigned after one season to take over the University of Southern California program, which was sanctioned by the NCAA.
According to the News Sentinel, Pearl is being paid $948,728, and Raleigh is owed $331,657.53 for a total of $1,280,385.53.
According to The Tennessean, Fulmer received $6 million when he was fired.
The football violations being heard by the NCAA this weekend are under Kiffin’s regime.
He also fired baseball coach Rod Delmonico and basketball coach Buzz Peterson, who received $1.39 million in 2005 when he was fired, according to the News Sentinel.
According to The Tennessean, the total cost of all of Hamilton’s firings is $9,070,385.53.
Ed Greif, a local sportswriter, does the numbers.
Tennessee: Hire guys you have to fire because they get caught breaking rules, then pay them millions and millions of buyout dollars for years. Genius.
… perhaps from an overdose, and instantly a sports writer starts talking on-field replacements.
His death coincides with the release of the book Basketball Junkie.
But then the New York Post is a mean old tabloid… It headlines a story about the latest woman puncher at the University of Tennessee
TENNESSEE FOOTBALL CESSPOOL
YIELDS ANOTHER SHOCKING ARREST
But if the University of Tennessee and what its scholar/athletes do amounts to a cesspool – and it does; we’ve followed UT for years on this blog – how can the latest thing, which isn’t even all that violent by UT standards, be, as the Post goes on to say, “shocking”?
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Peyton Manning shoving his anus and testicles in a woman’s face – now that’s shocking. That’s UT-grade shock. This latest thing is just a lil ol hiccup. By UT standards.
… the scummy world of big-time Southern football keeps rolling along. For years and years she’s followed the beautiful, profoundly rooted culture of obscenely overpaid coaches cheating their way to championships that get rescinded when some filthy traitor on the staff spills the beans. Then there’s the old-timey defamation lawsuit the fired coach files, in which he demands a billion dollar settlement cuz of all the damage the school has done to his beautiful reputation. There’s the charming buzz that ensues among the faithful: Who among the equally scummy cheater-coaches out there will be the dumped cheater-coach’s replacement? And everybody cheats, so why were we singled out? There’s the sweet perennial controversy about whether tailgate parties which turn the campus into a urinic heap where drunk out of their minds pre-teens reel about should be subject to a few rules, and the equally perennial controversy about the advisability of a university holding courses during the same week important football game are played (answer: scheduled classes are inadvisable). There’s the inexhaustible thrill of watching this or that heavily-recruited player with a notoriously violent past assault people all over town, as well as the larger traditional spectacle of groups of bulked up football heroes making use of monster SUVs, monster rifles, and illicit drugs all at the same time. The fraternities make their own venerable contribution to the Southern football landscape, killing pledges during fan parties through the time-tested method of alcohol and neglect.
The University of Tennessee is the scummy football school du jour; but places like Ole Miss, which combine all aspects of this culture with campus white supremacy riots, are real – uh – historic.
And yet at the same time what could be more totally up to date than white supremacy rioting?
… nothing. University of Maryland football killed a guy.
Trending … On-field retirements in the NFL … Half the ticket-holders leave at halftime; why not players too? New staff specialization: Stay in the Game Coaches exhort wavering players to win one last one for the Gipper, while from just behind the sidelines phalanxes of Estate Planners rush the field…
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UPDATE: Interesting! Could this actually become a trend?
FAMU is a really interesting case right now. Like a lot of universities, it has for decades acted on the belief that a big noisy sports program is the front porch of the university. What do you do when the sports program at your school turns out to be the university’s front funeral parlor?
There’s no question that a program that beats people to death puts a damper on things. Fewer students apply. Very few students go to games. You’re losing so much sports revenue that you increase tuition big time, which turns off yet more applicants.
You remember. Its marching band beat a band member to death in a hazing ritual.
In 2015, there was no postseason play, because both football and basketball were under academic sanction.
Also at that time:
There have been four athletic directors and three head football coaches in the past 12 months.
For an approximately two-week overlapping period, the university had two entire football coaching staffs; this resulted in an additional $55,000.
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How are things now?
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Well, the marching band hasn’t killed anyone else. That’s the good news.
Otherwise, personnel turnover remains amazing, with a brand new prez and brand new athletic director and TONS of other departures.
And of course the perennial tendency of this jockshop as well as many other jockshops to use the athletic budget for … whatever… remains firmly in place. Let’s see…
[T]he university’s athletics department is facing $1 million in “unbudgeted expenses” for this fiscal year …
[These include:]
FAMU paying out $400,000 in annual leave money due to [its former AD], fired Head Football coach Alex Wood, eight assistant coaches, the budget coordinator/facility manager, compliance coordinator and others who left last year in athletics.
$300,000 in unexpected expenses incurred during last September’s FAMU Tampa Classic against Tennessee State.
$300,000 in added “miscellaneous” expenses.
… The department has de-activated purchasing cards, but it is not clear if that is effective across the board.
Read the whole article. You kinda have to piece things together, don’t you?
Bottom line: FAMU, a scandalously bad university, hands out purchasing cards to any random person they’ve just hired for an athletics department that’s tanking the school’s budget, and ignores whatever “miscellaneous” things they buy with it.
I’m not gonna do that thing where I say They started as monasteries and other religious-type entities and look how far they’ve fallen! I’m not gonna say universities – much less American universities – must continue to represent a higher, purer, realm of activity than, say, Myrtle Beach Bike Week.
No, no, let it rip. Let sex-scandal-soaked University of Minnesota produce as a finalist for regent a football player with exposure issues. Let UMN’s current regents grumble about having been left out of the hiring and compensation decisions around their incoming multimillionaire football coach (background on him here). Let the probable upcoming scandal and massive buyout of this guy’s contract also weigh heavily on the pointless dithering trustees. Fine. Fine.
Go ahead and make universities places where highly paid employees routinely injure students so badly they have to be hospitalized. Where brainwork means concussions. Football players with exposure issues are part of the grand legacy of American universities, as are sadistic-training hospitalizations. As are – at some of our highest profile schools – child rape, gang rape, and woman battering.
But consider this:
I don’t want to scare you, but more and more people are talking about a fundamental change in the higher education of this country. More and more people are talking about a minor league for football.
And American universities had better watch out, or it’s ave atque vale Richie Incognito, Johnny Manziel, and Peyton Manning. These guys are not merely the heroes of schools like Nebraska and Tennessee – they’re the trustees of the future. Their ethos is the school ethos. All the money and the passion and the very identity of the university follow them. What happens when American teenagers are able to go directly into a minor league system and bypass the university?
UD‘s friend David Ridpath is all excited.
For anyone that loves football at all levels and wants college football in a more educational setting along with providing more talent for the NFL, it is simply a no brainer.
A lot of people are excited. But if you’re a university, ask yourself: What happens to the trillion dollars you’ve already invested in new stadiums and all that shit? You’re already looking at seriously declining attendance at the games, and serious resistance to paying vaster and vaster student athletic fees. Much more fundamentally, you are football. Nebraska, Penn State, a hundred others – What happens when a few grade-conscious pussies tiptoe out on the field for you? As Mrs Dalloway put it – the death of the soul…
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UD thanks Charlie.
[The University of] Tennessee hosts the mighty Appalachian State Mountaineers on Thursday, September 1st. Big things are expected of the Volunteers this year, and to ensure a raucous crowd the alleged university has cancelled classes on that day.
[Drae] Bowles, the oldest son of Madison County [Tennessee] Sheriff’s Office Captain Dexter Bowles, is polite and honest. He looks you directly in the eyes and says, “Yes, sir.” When he speaks about the full college experience — not just football — you believe him. He’s confident, but he isn’t cocky. He doesn’t think he knows everything…
“My dad has always taught me and my brother to carry yourself in a very (mannerly) way,” Bowles said that afternoon. “I’ve just learned that trait growing up.”
… [I asked his high school coach:] “Is Drae really that good of a kid?”
Most coaches, especially when you turn off your recorder, will at least be fairly honest with questions like that. They’ll tell you if a kid is disingenuous or a tad rough around the edges, or if he’s just a normal kid who means well but occasionally finds mischief.
[The coach] didn’t flinch.
“Absolutely,” the coach replied. “What you see is what you get. He’s always like that.”
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Bowles went on to play for the University of Tennessee Knoxville, where he was allegedly repeatedly beaten by teammates for assisting a woman who was allegedly raped by one of his teammates.
The “factual allegations” section of the lawsuit claims that Bowles had taken the alleged victim, a plaintiff in the lawsuit referred to as Jane Doe IV, to the hospital the night of her assault and supported her decision to report the incident to the authorities. It claims that the fifth plaintiff in the case, who is referred to as Jane Doe V and the only plaintiff who was not an alleged rape victim, witnessed several football players “jumping” Bowles on Nov. 17, 2014, the day after the alleged rape occurred.
The lawsuit says Jane Doe IV later understood that “athletic coaches were present” during that altercation. It also says Jane Doe IV learned that Bowles was assaulted a second time by the same players in a team facility.
Bowles transferred out of Knoxville after all this happened and, you know, you can’t blame him. Knoxville can’t keep its women from getting raped and its men from being beaten.
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By the way, this is one humongous whopper of a lawsuit. Watch closely.
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Y’all come on down, y’hear?