Chip Scoggins column: Replacing Smith not a cheap proposition

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Chip:

Expensive buyouts make university bigwigs nervous in this economic climate, but losing also becomes costly because interest and donations wane in tough times.

Smith deserves the criticism because his team has crumbled yet again in February. It has become routine for fans and message-board posters to speculate about who should replace Smith, but the decision athletic director Norwood Teague faces involves more than just writing a check to cover Smith's $2.5 million buyout. A coaching change would cost the athletic department $6 million at a minimum. The school would owe Smith his buyout and any severance to his assistant coaches. The Gophers also would have to pay the buyout of any existing head coach they hired and give him at least $2 million annually.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/191760851.html

Go Gophers!!
 

BleedGopher said:
per Chip:

Expensive buyouts make university bigwigs nervous in this economic climate, but losing also becomes costly because interest and donations wane in tough times.

Smith deserves the criticism because his team has crumbled yet again in February. It has become routine for fans and message-board posters to speculate about who should replace Smith, but the decision athletic director Norwood Teague faces involves more than just writing a check to cover Smith's $2.5 million buyout. A coaching change would cost the athletic department $6 million at a minimum. The school would owe Smith his buyout and any severance to his assistant coaches. The Gophers also would have to pay the buyout of any existing head coach they hired and give him at least $2 million annually.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/191760851.html

Go Gophers!!
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I don't see where Chip is coming up with the move costing 6 million.

1. He assumes we are paying for a buyout to another school. Maybe maybe not and who knows how much.
2. He counts the salary of the new coach. But that's double counting because we already pay Smith the $2 million.
 


"They're not novices who don't know what they're watching. They see the same bad body language and discombobulated half-court offense everyone else sees"
 

station19 said:
"They're not novices who don't know what they're watching. They see the same bad body language and discombobulated half-court offense everyone else sees"
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That line jumped out at me, too. On the other hand, Joel wasn't a novice either - he coached HS BB.
 


Bad Gopher said:
That line jumped out at me, too. On the other hand, Joel wasn't a novice either - he coached HS BB.
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Eh, that's a tad different of perspective lol. Plus, we all know he was basically hired to get the budget right and oversee the whole assimilation of the department as a whole. Well done, but now the focus has changed a lot. Teague was hired specifically to get our big revenue sports on track. If he feels like Tubby is not the guy to get that done, he will not be here after this season without an impressive tourney showing. And even with that, I'm pretty sure there will be some immense pressure to shuffle some assistants, which I think is the real problem here.

You hire the right offensive assistant, and then Tubby suddenly looks like a good coach again cause you mix a good offense with his defensive aptitude (most of the time), and that's a great mix. But right now, this team is just so bad offensively and inconsistent on that end, it affects everything they do. They can't press as much cause they can't score enough. They're losing confidence cause they can't put the ball in the basket. The other team can zone because they know we aren't creative or confident enough to work around it.
 

Monty519 said:
You hire the right offensive assistant, and then Tubby suddenly looks like a good coach again cause you mix a good offense with his defensive aptitude (most of the time), and that's a great mix.
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I don't know any more than what we hear on the grapevine in this forum. But if what we hear is true - that Smith is an autocrat - it would be different to realize what you're talking about. If it's all true, I don't think he would hire someone to come in and run that person's system. He would be more likely to bring someone in to run HIS system - the side screen, high-low deal. But that's already the arrangement over there, and I'm not sure just switching out one individual for another would address the larger-picture dysfunctions.
 

You bring up a good point. If he's unwilling to budge from "his" offensive system and philosophy, when it's clearly been struggling over the past few years, then you just wonder if it's time to move on. The thing is, we could be in a very odd spot if we do win a few games in the NCAAs (we've been known to find offense in tourney situations sometimes), but you have a coach who hasn't even gone over .500 in any of his conference seasons. It's almost the worst place to be, cause if you fire him then, you look absolutely crazy, but if you don't, chances are we'll be in the same situation next season.

This is gonna be a very interesting month.
 

Bottom line - you're put in the position because you have to make difficult choices, and sometimes those choices are expensive. If a change needs to be made, the buyout cannot be a factor in the decision-making process. If you want to make a move (independent of the financial implications), then do it. Don't compound what is (in your mind) a bad financial decision with a bad retention decision. Keeping a coach that you want to fire just because of the cost is a bad move and the type of decision you were hired to make.
 



Monty519 said:
You bring up a good point. If he's unwilling to budge from "his" offensive system and philosophy, when it's clearly been struggling over the past few years, then you just wonder if it's time to move on. The thing is, we could be in a very odd spot if we do win a few games in the NCAAs (we've been known to find offense in tourney situations sometimes), but you have a coach who hasn't even gone over .500 in any of his conference seasons. It's almost the worst place to be, cause if you fire him then, you look absolutely crazy, but if you don't, chances are we'll be in the same situation next season.

This is gonna be a very interesting month.
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I couldn't agree more.
 

Agree with Dpod, in the grand scheme of the athletics department, the money is not that much and using that as a cop out. The withering ticket sales brought on by the damage done to the excitement around football by Brewster shows the cost of keeping an underperforming coach around (for the record, I do not think Tubby is anywhere near as bad as Brewster, just pointing out that having the wrong guy in that chair can do a lot more than a few million dollar damages.

Also, as pointed out above, Chip's math is messed up because he double counted by including Tubby's buyout and including a new coach's salary.

Here's hoping that Tubby takes us on a post-season run good enough that no one is calling for his head.
 

Monty519 said:
You bring up a good point. If he's unwilling to budge from "his" offensive system and philosophy, when it's clearly been struggling over the past few years, then you just wonder if it's time to move on. The thing is, we could be in a very odd spot if we do win a few games in the NCAAs (we've been known to find offense in tourney situations sometimes), but you have a coach who hasn't even gone over .500 in any of his conference seasons. It's almost the worst place to be, cause if you fire him then, you look absolutely crazy, but if you don't, chances are we'll be in the same situation next season.

This is gonna be a very interesting month.
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If "the same situation" is subpar conference play with a run to at least the Sweet Sixteen (which is what winning a few in the NCAA's gets us), then I am ok if we are in the same situation next year.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
If "the same situation" is subpar conference play with a run to at least the Sweet Sixteen (which is what winning a few in the NCAA's gets us), then I am ok if we are in the same situation next year.
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that would make him the anti-Bo Ryan... I can live with that!
 



mnsports1 said:
that would make him the anti-Bo Ryan... I can live with that!
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Are we so haughty around here we sneeze at a program that in the last 6 seasons hasn't missed the NCAA Tournament, has 9 tournament wins (including no first-round knockouts), and 3 Sweet 16 appearances?

No Gopher fan enjoys pointing this out, but to infer the Grinch has been "all regular season" and "no postseason" simply isn't true.
 

SelectionSunday said:
Are we so haughty around here we sneeze at a program that in the last 6 seasons hasn't missed the NCAA Tournament, has 9 tournament wins (including no first-round knockouts), and 3 Sweet 16 appearances?

No Gopher fan enjoys pointing this out, but to infer the Grinch has been "all regular season" and "no postseason" simply isn't true.
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Chill SS!
I live in WI, I listen to the radio. If you don't think a lack of tourney success is brought up by the locals when the brackets are announced, and subsequently when they are bounced, you are mistaken.
Would I love to have their seasons?YES. The fact remains, Bo's rep here is great regular seasons followed by missed opportunities in the NCAA's. So yes...I would say that a lack of B1G success followed by S16's on MN's part would be the anti-Bo Ryan.
 

Fair enough.

Though, where we're at right now, I'd jump at the chance to have our program considered a "disappointment" for reaching three Sweet 16s in six seasons, not even mentioning finishing in the top four of the Big Ten every season. I hope that disappointment comes sooner rather than later.
 

SelectionSunday said:
Fair enough.

Though, where we're at right now, I'd jump at the chance to have our program considered a "disappointment" for reaching three Sweet 16s in six seasons, not even mentioning finishing in the top four of the Big Ten every season. I hope that disappointment comes sooner rather than later.
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As I said, I would too.
 

SelectionSunday said:
Are we so haughty around here we sneeze at a program that in the last 6 seasons hasn't missed the NCAA Tournament, has 9 tournament wins (including no first-round knockouts), and 3 Sweet 16 appearances?

No Gopher fan enjoys pointing this out, but to infer the Grinch has been "all regular season" and "no postseason" simply isn't true.
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I don't think haughty is the word. Maybe jaundiced. :rolleyes:
 

In looking at the future of MN Gopher basketball, I think AD Norwood Teague needs to make a change and that change needs to happen ASAP after the season is over.

Why? Because the new coach needs as much time as possible to pursue Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn, and Reid Travis. None of these 3 local stars are going to commit to play for Coach Tubby Smith when they don't even know if he will be the coach in September 2014 when the arrive on campus.
 

This is an issue of economics. The question to be asked is: How much revenue will be lost if Tubby Smith is kept as the coach? Scoggins only briefly makes a nod in this direction. If it cost 2 million to fire Smith and perhaps another 2 million to pay off his assistants, will the 4 million lost be worth it compared to the loss of revenue caused by an ambivalent fan base that does not buy tickets or support Gophers athletics? By not firing Smith do you actually hurt the overall budget of the athletic department? This is an economics issue, not a personal issue.
 

tinyarch said:
This is an issue of economics. The question to be asked is: How much revenue will be lost if Tubby Smith is kept as the coach? Scoggins only briefly makes a nod in this direction. If it cost 2 million to fire Smith and perhaps another 2 million to pay off his assistants, will the 4 million lost be worth it compared to the loss of revenue caused by an ambivalent fan base that does not buy tickets or support Gophers athletics? By not firing Smith do you actually hurt the overall budget of the athletic department? This is an economics issue, not a personal issue.
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If it costs anywhere near 2 million to pay off the assistants then someone in the AD office made a huge, huge error. Anything north of a few hundred thousand would be mismanagement in my view.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
If "the same situation" is subpar conference play with a run to at least the Sweet Sixteen (which is what winning a few in the NCAA's gets us), then I am ok if we are in the same situation next year.
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+1 The Barn has already become The Big Green Money Machine.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Bottom line - you're put in the position because you have to make difficult choices, and sometimes those choices are expensive. If a change needs to be made, the buyout cannot be a factor in the decision-making process. If you want to make a move (independent of the financial implications), then do it. Don't compound what is (in your mind) a bad financial decision with a bad retention decision. Keeping a coach that you want to fire just because of the cost is a bad move and the type of decision you were hired to make.
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When you put it that way.......

I want a new coach too, but the financial implication is a huge concern.... This is a publicly funded university and you're throwing money around like its monopoly.... The base of tax payers in Minnesota who don't give a damn about the gophers bball (ill remind you is an overwhelming majority) will need a little more reasoning than a simple "sunk" costs explanation...
 

bga1 said:
If it costs anywhere near 2 million to pay off the assistants then someone in the AD office made a huge, huge error. Anything north of a few hundred thousand would be mismanagement in my view.
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+1 on this and the double-counting of the salary. This '$6 million' # is garbage. I heard someone on 1500 throw it out yesterday too. Unless we get Shaka Smart, the new coach will probably be paid less than Tubby makes now. The buyout of the assistants should not be much more than that difference. The cost to fire Tubby will be approximately the cost of the actual buyout, $2.5 million, or about 3 football series' with UNC. Not $6 million. This decision should be based on basketball and not $$.
 

Winasota Gopher said:
When you put it that way.......

I want a new coach too, but the financial implication is a huge concern.... This is a publicly funded university and you're throwing money around like its monopoly.... The base of tax payers in Minnesota who don't give a damn about the gophers bball (ill remind you is an overwhelming majority) will need a little more reasoning than a simple "sunk" costs explanation...
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The MN athletic department does not receive any money from the state (funding for TCF aside.) Any legislator who's going to hold up funding for any other U project to grandstand about $$ wasted on athletics will do it whether we fire Tubby or not. They already have plenty of ammo (UNC buyout, etc.)
 


Thank goodness for the Big Ten Network

The Big Ten Network might provide something to fall back on.

Quote from June 2012:

Commissioner Jim Delany confirmed on a conference call with reporters Monday that the league would distribute a record $284 million to its 12 teams at the end of this fiscal year. That money comes from TV contracts and NCAA tournament revenue.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/51064/big-ten-to-distribute-284-million-to-teams

Nebraska gets less as a new member. All other teams get 24.6 Million for the year. That should help a little.
 

bga1 said:
If it costs anywhere near 2 million to pay off the assistants then someone in the AD office made a huge, huge error. Anything north of a few hundred thousand would be mismanagement in my view.
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Are the assistants even under contract?
 

B1GSportsGuy said:
In looking at the future of MN Gopher basketball, I think AD Norwood Teague needs to make a change and that change needs to happen ASAP after the season is over.

Why? Because the new coach needs as much time as possible to pursue Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn, and Reid Travis. None of these 3 local stars are going to commit to play for Coach Tubby Smith when they don't even know if he will be the coach in September 2014 when the arrive on campus.
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Agreed. I would think if those 3 watched the Iowa debacle, they would not be jumping at the chance to sign up.

As far as the buyout, Teague mentioned in the last few days that the amount of the buyout would not be a factor on whether or not to keep a coach. Says you know the amount ahead of time.
 

rrjackIII said:
The Big Ten Network might provide something to fall back on.

Quote from June 2012:

Commissioner Jim Delany confirmed on a conference call with reporters Monday that the league would distribute a record $284 million to its 12 teams at the end of this fiscal year. That money comes from TV contracts and NCAA tournament revenue.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/51064/big-ten-to-distribute-284-million-to-teams

Nebraska gets less as a new member. All other teams get 24.6 Million for the year. That should help a little.
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That's enough for a practice facility!!!
 

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