BLS: Somebody Else’s Monopoly Money
,
I snuck into Chapel Hill last week thru a secret tunnel known only to a select few as I do several times/month. I had lunch with a group of good fellas who for reasons, largely professional, live over there.
They don’t fit the notorious Franklin Street stereotype. They do have decidedly partisan sports affiliations, to be expected.
The question of the day – other than do I have new pics of “the twins” Twinkle & Scooter (I always do) – concerned the future of Larry Fedora.
My lunch mates all have “real lives” and relatively secure self-images not dependent upon the outcome of “games”. Of course, living “over there” insulates them from daily direct contact with rival partisans.
My on-going study of Why Sports Fans Are… finds proximity to rival fans to be a major factor in how emotionally one responds to the success or failure of groups of semi-literate 18-20 year olds. Having a rival fan in your cul-de-sac or in an adjoining cubicle is Threat Level – Really High.
Re: Larry Fedora… their consensus is it is not a matter of IF but WHEN his tenure as UNCCH HFBC is concluded…. sigh, alas. The issue is HOW MUCH it will cost.
That friends and neighbors is our topic of today.
WHY do rank/file fans care if a coach’s “buy-out” is $12 or $14,000,000.
All of my lunch buddies are Rams Clubbers above the basic $500/yr – “a keychain and car window decal” level; but NOT in the rarified air of Deep Pocket Fat Cat level.
##
NOTE: Has there EVER been a major college football program – NOT named Alabama and currently Clemson – that has NOT regretted giving a coach a long-term mega- $$$ contract with a mega-“if-we-fire-you” $$ buy-out ??
They ALL do it… because they all HAVE to do it. Which is, coincidentally, how most meth-addicts become meth-addicts.
##
Fortunately there are always enough bragging-rights-obsessed deep-pocket boosters around to ante-up whatever it takes to rectify all those very expensive “we had to’s”. …. In the end who cares? It’s all just Someone Else’s Monopoly Money.
.
UNCCH Football fans, ever how endangered that species may be, do NOT have to go to Expedia looking for hotel rooms in Shreveport / Bossier City around Christmas this year.
Whatever adjectives apply to UNC Football… “bowl eligible” ain’t one of’em again this season. UNLESS they can get Swoffy The Commish to count that upcoming game with Western Carolina five times. As my buddy “Little Ricky” says, there’s no harm in asking…
I have no clue what Larry Fedora’s Future / Fate may be. I think he is a MUCH finer human being than the equally-beleaguered Bobby Petrino at Louisville, but what do I know. Neither man is going to suffer financially in the foreseeable future regardless.
##
NOTE: Neither Larry nor Bobby can touch Megyn Kelly.
NBC News is going to pay Megyn $65,000,000 NOT to
work for them anymore. Megyn said something about “blackface” but NBC suits never liked her anyway. Hell, even the NBC pages and interns never liked her. NBC only hired her because they thought she would bring gazillions of FoxNews viewers with her… not realizing Megyn had pissed off all her FoxNews viewers. FN viewers dislike Megyn as much as NBC’s suits, pages and interns do. You Go Girl!
I don’t care what your politics is – THAT’S FUNNY!
##
Worrying about a coach’s “buy-out” is as silly as “how many trillions in the national debt” or “has the ground temperature of the Yellowstone Caldera increased by a degree?” They are all in that first category of The Serenity Prayer – … accept those things I cannot change.
If a coach’s W/L record fails to reach a fanbase’s desired expectations HE WILL BE SENT PACKING regardless of his “buy-out”. There has never been a “buy-out” that exceeds the where-with-all of the deepest pockets of Fat Cats of a Power 5 institution.
- Speed-dial the dozen Fattest Fat Cats to decide who antes up how much “this time”.
- Wire the $$$ to the off-shore account of the coach’s agent… and
- Five years from now Lather-Rinse-Repeat all over again.
“Afford” is a relative term. In the case of UNCCH, they could “afford” $30,000,000 in legal flimflam fees to get out of The Greatest Eligibility Scheme in NCAA History.
UNCCH could “afford” a $32,000,000 Indoor Practice Facility.
DID YOU KNOW THAT: Larry Fedora’s contract had a provision that unless he got his IPF by August 2018, he could up and leave UNC with no $$ penalty to him.. Consider the hysterical irony of THAT for a few minutes.
If UNC does NOT build The IPF… Larry Fedora gets pissed and leaves… and UNCCH saves $32,000,000 Plus the $14,000,000 buy-out for a total savings of $46,000,000.
How many Not Silent Sam statues can you build for $46M … or maybe divide up as Apology Reparations to the 1,000 or so token AfAms among UNC 25,000 students ???
UNC can certainly “afford” $15,000,000 to send Larry Fedora packing so they can hire the next Flavor-of-the-Month Messiah… paying HIM as much / more than Fedora is making with an even larger buy-out. … Lather – Rinse – Repeat.
IT’S ALWAYS… SOMEBODY ELSE’S MONOPOLY MONEY!
Those “Somebody Elses” have Oodles and Oodles of $$$$. The ability of Fat Cats to ante up whatever it takes to pursue “bragging rights” far exceeds the ability of board monkeys to comprehend the $$$ value that very very wealthy men attach to their egos.
If your Booster Club has at least three guys with the term “hedge fund” in their bios, your AD has a blank check to hire/fire/hire again/fire again as often as needed to pursue the Brass Ring of Bragging Rights.
ADs’ contracts have expensive buy-outs too. Those don’t matter either.
.
##
Have you EVER heard an AD and/or Chancellor announce…
“We have completed our obligatory post-season evaluation of our Football program and determined that 2-10 and losing to our hated rivals AGAIN is about as good as we can “afford” for now. Hopefully we can improve to 4-8 next year, maybe even 6-6 and sneak into a Whozit Bowl, who knows…
Look folks, we’re stuck with this jamoke for the next few years. Deal with it…
By the way… season ticket renewals are going out next week so get your deposits in ASAP. GO TEAM!”
##
.
In the case of UNCCH fans… they have Ol’ Roy to make the hurt go away. Roy, like his fellow Hall-of-Famer micro-manager Coach K has no clue whatsoever about the Greatest Payola Scandal in NCAA History.
But, as Governor Jim Martin said: “Coach Williams is a busy guy… he can’t be expected to know everything.”
No one on the inside of Big Time College Sports (BTCS) is concerned with Shoe Company Payola. They all know how it works and how to deal with it. Their only concern is some Dudley-Do-Right will ride in and try to change it.
The Powers-That-Be in BTCS really don’t care for Dudley-Do-Right.
Rampant corruption in college FB / MBB, is like Term Limits – PACS – Lobbyists in politics. Both are extremely odious systems.
It’s like having an incontinent cat around the house…after awhile you hardly notice the smell.
There. I wrote this whole column just to use “… Somebody Else’s Monopoly Money” and that incredible analogy about “an incontinent cat”.
True Story: I had a fascinating twitter exchange with “a follower” recently. He acknowledged my entertaining twitter-style and awesome powers of persuasion… but he requested that I modify my tweets reflecting a more Non-Partisan point-of-view.
…and I should join him in… (1) electing Beto The Super Socialist in Texas… (2) getting rid of Justice Kavanaugh… (3) abolishing the 2nd Amendment… and, of course, (4) impeaching Donald Trump. All of which, to him, are quite Non-Partisan objectives
Because He – “has no political agenda”. …. 3-2-1 …YEE-HA!
I swear a True Story. NO, it was NOT Bre’r Kennel. Bre’r stopped trying that crap 4-5 years ago.
##
My work is done for now. I’m going for a walk and listen to a really good book about international assassins, rogue spec ops guys, or maybe one about finding extra-terrestrial vampires on the Lost Continent of Atlantis…
.
.
