Mr. Titleist - Why did you call UW "cheap bastards"?

[PorkerPoke]

Wow - when I read that comment by you this morning it was disappointing. After reading about the contract in the Boomerang and Casper Tribune I think it sounds like a really good deal. The guy will easily double his pay from Missouri just by showing up in Laramie for the most part.

The Casper article says

Burman bumped both the base pay and incentives in a five-year deal to lure Christensen to Laramie, and he could earn more than $750,000 in total compensation per season with UW -- a possible upgrade of about $200,000 from Glenn's deal. Christensen's five-year contract includes a base pay of $180,000, but incentives for academic, competitive and revenue performance will make up the difference.

Cheap is when no one pays anything and expects high quality. It looks like this deal is one where when the quality is delivered the compensation comes with it. I remember McClain got some incentive deals and still ran a bad program with poor grades and poor results. It may work it may not but at least we will see what kind of pride the guy takes in getting his job done at the level he claims he can do it.

Actually isn't Missouri the Show Me state? Well Show Me you can get the job done and we will Show You the money by putting it in your paycheck. I think it is great. I work in a place so heavily controlled by unions that the same slugs who would lead a team to 0-12 get the same pay and bonuses as those who would go 12-0 and the bosses can't do anything about it. I say if the new guy puts a bad team together he won't get paid as much and we can afford to run his sorry behind out of town sooner. I wish some of those pro players had the same deal.

Guaranteed performance incentives or guaranteed pay regardless. I like performance incentives. I was just wondering if you really don't like the UW athletic department and the deal it made or do you think a deal like this means the program continues to be bad?

 

[MrTitleist]

I thought $180,000 a year was a little low.. we're ahead of the bottom of the conference.. but I was hoping we'd kick out a little more (god knows Wyoming has the money to do it), to show people out there that we're serious about paying a head coach and we'll pay what we need to in order to keep a coach around. I was hoping we'd be near the top of the MWC. A guy like Christensen will definitely benefit from this.. $180,000 is nothing to scoff at for your first job (as a HC, anyways). So that's where I was coming from. However, I hadn't seen the incentives until you posted them. Thanks.

 

[one-smooth-poke]

From what I understand, DC wanted a low base salary and a huge "back end" compensation. Why you may ask? Because the buy out clause for all coaches only goes to the base salary. If a bigger and better deal comes knocking and DC wants to leave, it is cheaper to buy his contract out. Very good business since. AND, if you look at the big 12 conference salaries, some of them are only making 220K or so on base. So we are pretty much in line.

 

[OrediggerPoke]

180k is basically a meaningless number (base salary should never be looked at as a measure of a coaches pay). A lot of the "bonuses" are for things like doing the required coaches show. We are giving DC a VERY competitive contract. When all is said and done, DC will be making about, if not more, than what Steve Fairchild at CSU is paid. DC will be in the top 3-4 in terms of coaches pay in the MWC. Considering the quality of some of the MWC coaches, he is going to be paid very well!

I havent looked at the contract itself, but I am hoping that we put in a fairly large buyout...because my gut feeling is that this program will be turned around and in 2-3 years our HC will be in line for some top BCS jobs.

Actually, the base salary doesnt necessarily need to be reflected in the buy-out clause. The buy-out can be set at any value...but if he bargained for the lower base salary to get the lower buy-out value, then that would make sense.

 

[Fullback41]

I think his starting contract is very reasonable, I just hope that if he performs like Patterson over time, we find a way to compensate him accordingly so we may keep him. I am not OK with submission that "we will never be able to pay what TCU does"

A fine commitment to winning has been made, I think we need to be just as commited to sustaining the staff if they are successful.