So Texas Tech puts some poison pills in Leach's contract offer, he doesn't bite, and now they're thinking of firing him? Am I the only person out there that thinks this makes the TT administration certifiably insane?
[No, I know I'm not, cause I listen to sports talk radio...]
Apparently they're not far apart on the money. By "not far" I mean they're separated by $0.00. What separates them is four clauses.
1) If fired without cause, they would only pay him about 10% of his contract's value. Most clauses like these are 40% or more, some 100%.
2) If Leach accepts another job, his buy-out goes from $0.5MM to $1.5MM.
3) If Leach interviews anywhere else, he'd immediately be fired and fined $1.5MM.
4) Anything he'd do in the future related to Texas Tech (books, speeches, etc) would result in the money going to Texas Tech, not to Leach.
So let me get this straight. You're Texas Tech's AD. Your school is in Lubbock, TX; population < 225,000. You're in the middle of nowhere, sandwiched between the Longhorns and Sooners. Your coach in this decade has taken you to nine bowl games in nine years, when in the previous two decades prior to his coming on board you'd gone to a total of seven bowl games. Last year you were competing for a shot to play in the National Championship game. This is a guy you wanna knife into a deal that very clearly isn't fair market value, and you'll fire him if he doesn't take it? This guy, who will be employed no later than 10 seconds after the end of the '09 season by one of the bigger programs in the nation (oh, say Notre Dame for example)? You don't really need him, right?
If anyone ever needed an example of the stupidity of emotions causing an organization serious harm, this is it.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Insanity at Texas Tech
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Is the TT AD new?
ReplyDeleteI think not unless I seriously missed something. This has just been a build of events.
ReplyDelete- Leach wanted an extension after the end of the '07 season.
- The school wouldn't even consider it.
- Leach got pissed they wouldn't extend him, and interviewed for the Washington job after this season.
- The school got pissed he interviewed and put the poison pills in their offer.
- Leach got pissed and turned down the deal (he should have...he'll get $12MM easy somewhere else and won't have any of those terms).
- The school got pissed and said they're now considering other options at HC.
It's pretty much been a snowball. I think I read that his current contract gets him 40% of the remaining value if he gets fired without cause. He'll sit on that money for a year and be almost without doubt the most in-demand coach for any school with an opening. This is a guy who could almost pick where he wants to go next year. Why would he care if he's fired or not?
TT looks incredibly moronic in this whole thing. The worst part for them is, other prospective coaches could see this and shy away from the school. Not that they'll be incapable of filling the role. But will the most attractive candidates want to come work for TT, or somewhere else that doesn't have this mess?