Gamecock Football is Stuck Again
For the second time in six years, South Carolina needs to fire a football coach… but poor programmatic decision-making has made it a tremendously costly decision.
For the second time in six years, South Carolina needs to fire a football coach… but poor programmatic decision-making has made it a tremendously costly decision.
8 comments
Gamecock football is forever trying to light the current pile of money on fire as fast as possible so you can get to the next pile of money to light on fire.
Certainly coaches and those who hire them get blamed for bad records and seasons. On the other hand, the coaching staff are NOT the ones on the field, playing the game and making the mistakes.It’s the players they’ve added to the team.
It fits the brand:USC is mediocre at best! just look at what walks in and out of Osborne on a day to day basis.
And Will: since when was football part of the mission of higher education?
Oh come on now, next thing you’re going to tell us is that shagging golf balls at a driving range isn’t a college level education.
Excellent point. I tell people that I graduated from the University of South Carolina, NOT the University of Football.
The University of South Carolina could save about $7 million dollars by purchasing a structured annuity.
As a certified mediator, I’ve seen insurance companies save money using this tool. For example, the current Beamer Buyout would cost the University about $22.8 million dollars if Coach Beamer was fired.
But that big number could be reduced by about $8.4 million dollars by offering Beamer a twenty year annuity contract that would pay him $95,000.00 monthly over twenty years. It would also benefit Coach Beamer by substantially reducing his state and federal income tax liability. That would be a win/win for both parties. Beamer is a honorable man but he just hasn’t been many football games winning lately.
“But that big number could be reduced by about $8.4 million dollars by offering Beamer a twenty year annuity contract that would pay him $95,000.00 monthly over twenty years.”
Am I reading this right?
$95K x 12 x 20 = $38,800,000.00 that is “about” $38.8 million + compound interest, which to my SubZeroIQ is “about” four to five times greater than “$8.4 million.”
But what really puzzles me is: what does a head football coach actually do to justify $38.8 million or $8.4 million or any million or any money for that matter?
He wears earphones and a movable microphones and paces the sidelines looking important, concerned, and often angry. But about what?
It’s not as if he were directing a rocket launch or monitoring a landing on the moons.
It’s not even as if the head coach invents or innovates a play unheard of.
It’s not even as if the combinations and permutations of football plays were as great as the number of moves in a chess match.
Am I wrong? There are only a limited number of moves in football and they have all been more or less known and played since football itself came into being.
It’s not as if, without a coach, the players left to their own devices will stand hopelessly lost in the field and would manage to only trash-talk each other.
I may have just blasphemed to GameCocks Nation and perhaps all football fans.
So, let me go all the way and say it: in a real democracy, there would be no football head coach at all. Instead, the players would be left to design their own plays and vote among themselves who plays what role, for how long, and how often.
Of course, others are needed: the physical trainers, the equipment providers, the academic advisors, the medics, etc. But all those, specially the team physician, do NOT take the directions or knowledge base from the head football coach.
So, let me propose to USC that it go without a head football coach for an experimental year of forever and see what happens.
After all, and yes, you should have seen that coming, I am the one who, thank God, did for myself WITHOUT A LAWYER what Alex Murdaugh’s whole defense team could not do for him: prevent a jury from returning a wrongful conviction.
And I am the one who often cites the valid statistical studies showing that self-represented criminal defendants achieve a higher acquittal rate than represented ones.
Perhaps experimentation will show that self-governing college football teams without a head coach will achieve more wins than ones headed by head coach. Or perhaps not. Only experimentation will answer. USC should offer itself for such experiment just as a terminal patient offers to enter a study of a last-hope new drug. What is there to be lost?
Why not just admit that the football program will never be more than mediocre at best. Maybe it’s the “Chicken Curse,” but it’s probably just poor leadership in the form of athletic directors Ray Tanner and his successor. That said, just use the football program as a money-maker to fund the other athletic programs. Women’s basketball, soccer, and softball and maybe even men’s basketball and baseball come to mind. You have a football fan base that is so dedicated that it averaged 75,000 fans à game when Lou Holtz went 0-11 that year and would today fill the stadium to see the inter-fraternity finals. That, and the generous SEC contributions compile a ton of money that could be put to a better use.