{"id":23999,"date":"2011-10-25T21:33:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T02:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23999"},"modified":"2011-10-25T21:33:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T02:33:03","slug":"killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23999","title":{"rendered":"Killed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Whew, image what they'd have paid me if I won at USC<\/p><\/div>\n

The Gophers mortgage what’s left of their long-since tarnished Golden status.<\/p>\n

If you’re possibly the worst team in 1-AA college football and your newly installed head coach (who has a limited history at coaching at this level) has won one game while being humiliated in several others, what would you do when finalizing a contract?\u00a0 Probably not add two years and an extremely expensive buyout clause<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The University of Minnesota formalized the hiring of Jerry Kill as its football coach, announcing Tuesday that the two have agreed on a seven-year contract that pays $1.2 million a year in base salary and compensation for media appearances and endorsements…<\/p>\n

There are also numerous performance-based incentives including winning the Big Ten ($150,000) [that’s just cruel to include – Ed], reaching five conference victories ($50,000) and additional bonuses of $25,000 for the sixth and subsequent victories in a season [not a problem for the foreseeable future – Ed].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Kill’s biggest critic points out<\/a>, beyond the obvious idiocy of extending a contract from 5 years to 7 despite the program seemingly going backwards, the cost of ending Jerry’s contract virtually assures Kill will be the Gophers’ head coach well into this decade no matter how bad the team performs:<\/p>\n

My first reaction upon hearing this was to assume that the additional 2 years were an exchange for a more favorable buyout structure, but according to the Star Tribune the University is on the hook for $600K\/year for any years they <\/a>buyout.\u00a0 Odds are the University wouldn\u2019t seriously consider Kill\u2019s dismissal until at least the end of his third year meaning the cheapest buyout available to them will be a $2.4M buyout.\u00a0 That\u2019s one expensive fumigation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The University’s policy seems to be to create expensive buyouts.\u00a0 Tim Brewster’s buyout cost the U $775,000<\/a>.\u00a0 That was chicken feed by comparison to the Glen Mason buyout that cost $3.6 million<\/a> – and likely forced the U’s hand in hiring the cheapest coach they could find at the time.<\/p>\n

All this would be understandable if Kill had a major conference resume.\u00a0 Instead, a coach who compiled a middling record<\/a> in the Gateway Football Conference and the MAC has become the 51st highest paid coach in the NCAA<\/a>.\u00a0 Not impressive sounding?\u00a0 It’s the same amount of money that Paterno earns at Penn State.\u00a0 It’s more than Rick Neuheisel takes at UCLA.\u00a0 And it’s considerably more than Danny Hope at Purdue pockets, and Purdue just thumped Minnesota 45-17 weeks ago.<\/p>\n

One day, the Golden Gophers will hire an accomplished head coach.\u00a0 Unfortunately with this contract, that day doesn’t look to arrive until 2018 at the earliest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gophers mortgage what’s left of their long-since tarnished Golden status. If you’re possibly the worst team in 1-AA college football and your newly installed head coach (who has a limited history at coaching at this level) has won one game while being humiliated in several others, what would you do when finalizing a contract?\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,44,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-stupid","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23999"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24002,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23999\/revisions\/24002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}