AAC Trend - Year 2 of 5 Firings

[UNTLifer]

5 minutes ago, Green with Envy said:

I don’t know what is standard, but Morris getting $300K for media appearances is baffling to me. 

What media appearances?  A Coach’s Show and the conference media days?  Maybe post game and mid week press conferences which are little more than him having a conversation from Vito and a student reporter from The Daily. That is a waste of money. 

[Green with Envy]

11 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

What media appearances?  A Coach’s Show and the conference media days?  Maybe post game and mid week press conferences which are little more than him having a conversation from Vito and a student reporter from The Daily. That is a waste of money. 

That is a fantastic question.  

————-

Morris will earn a base salary of $900,000 per year, plus guaranteed incentives, including a $300,000 annual radio/television stipend.

[Cr1028]

11 hours ago, Big E said:

I’ve read multiple comments on this board of how UNT can’t afford to fire a coach in year 2 of a 5-year contract.  However, the fact is that we have now just seen, in the AAC, Charlotte do it with Coach Poggi, FAU with Coach Herman and now Tulsa with Coach Wilson.  The trend is shifting.  Programs can’t afford to watch ticket revenue and overall support, financial and otherwise, fall off.  Our coaches and AD get paid a ton of money to produce a quality product.  This is like a sales job (career sales guy speaking here). If you don’t produce, leadership will find someone who will.

[Cr1028]

7 hours ago, NT80 said:

I agree, we should have Baseball, and be able to fire a FB coach.

Let’s drop non-revenue sports like golf and track and use those $$. 

I’m not sure if you are serious or being sarcastic.

[3_n_out]

7 hours ago, jtm0097 said:

If we can come up with 2 mil, we can fire Morris. We're a poor program, that's not going to happen. He will here next year and his coaching seat will be hotter than the Sahara in the summer.

I’m mentally getting prepared for more runs on 3rd and 10 and screen passes galore next season. 

[wardly]

2 hours ago, GMG_Dallas said:

Not going to disagree with any of this. I would have no issue with cutting football spending a bit, dumping extra in basketball, and starting baseball up. We seem to do well in about every sport except football, there's no reason to believe we can't be competitive in baseball. Make the football head coach salary heavy on incentives tied to winning only, not media appearances or anything else. Second contracts if earned can have higher base pay. If this needs to start after Morris' deal is up the fine. That just means the AD has 3 years to figure out the baseball situation and how basketball can be improved.

On the other side there is no reason to think we can compete in baseball. Its a financial drain that starts with the construction of a venue ,which I will ballpark [pun intended] the cost at at about $15 million which we don't have.  Then the cost of staffing, scholarships ,travel ,Title 9 additions, etc. , all for adding an expensive non revenue generating sport seems irresponsible.

[GMG_Dallas]

3 minutes ago, wardly said:

On the other side there is no reason to think we can compete in baseball. Its a financial drain that starts with the construction of a venue ,which I will ballpark [pun intended] the cost at at about $15 million which we don't have.  Then the cost of staffing, scholarships ,travel ,Title 9 additions, etc. , all for adding an expensive non revenue generating sport seems irresponsible.

Again, we have an athletic budget $10 to $16 million more than those other schools we've mentioned. Why can they afford baseball but we can't? Do we offer sports they don't? Something isn't adding up. For what it's worth regarding revenue vs non-revenue sport, ECU's stadium seats 6,000 and it's highest reported capacity was just over that against NC State this year. The stadium reportedly cost $11 million in 2005 so probably would be double today. I know ECU gets great support but that just shows the opportunity is there. Would a baseball stadium that seats 4k not yield a higher return on investment than say a new $50+ million basketball arena when we average around 4k in our current basketball arena?

[GMG_Dallas]

12 hours ago, Green with Envy said:

I don’t know what is standard, but Morris getting $300K for media appearances is baffling to me. 

Seems high to me as well... Littrell's media stipend was $45k. Most of his incentives were tied to winning. 

[rcade]

13 hours ago, Green with Envy said:

Morris will earn a base salary of $900,000 per year, plus guaranteed incentives, including a $300,000 annual radio/television stipend.

That sounds like a budgeting trick to get the money for his compensation from two buckets instead of one, not a desire to reward him handsomely for talking to Brett Vito.

[wardly]

13 hours ago, GMG_Dallas said:

Again, we have an athletic budget $10 to $16 million more than those other schools we've mentioned. Why can they afford baseball but we can't? Do we offer sports they don't? Something isn't adding up. For what it's worth regarding revenue vs non-revenue sport, ECU's stadium seats 6,000 and it's highest reported capacity was just over that against NC State this year. The stadium reportedly cost $11 million in 2005 so probably would be double today. I know ECU gets great support but that just shows the opportunity is there. Would a baseball stadium that seats 4k not yield a higher return on investment than say a new $50+ million basketball arena when we average around 4k in our current basketball arena?

Our baseball stadium would probably seat 1000 max and draw about 100 fans . We also don't, in my opinion, need a new basketball venue when we only draw 4,000. SMU dropped baseball decades ago because it is a money pit. If a school that has the money won't waste it on a baseball program why should UNT who doesn't have the money do it. Check the number of college that lost millions of dollars. Last I looked T.T. was in the hole a few years ago to the tune of about $6 million and they had a good season that year. [ I have slept since then and may be off a million or two but they did lose money.]

[Side.Show.Joe]

16 hours ago, Green with Envy said:

I don’t know what is standard, but Morris getting $300K for media appearances is baffling to me. 

How much of that $300K is from a bottled water endorsement? 

[wardly]

16 hours ago, Green with Envy said:

That is a fantastic question.  

————-

Morris will earn a base salary of $900,000 per year, plus guaranteed incentives, including a $300,000 annual radio/television stipend.

Texas State hired their football coach the same time we did. He just got a new contract worth $2 million per year with a record not that much better that Morris.

[GMG_Dallas]

2 hours ago, wardly said:

Our baseball stadium would probably seat 1000 max and draw about 100 fans . We also don't, in my opinion, need a new basketball venue when we only draw 4,000. SMU dropped baseball decades ago because it is a money pit. If a school that has the money won't waste it on a baseball program why should UNT who doesn't have the money do it. Check the number of college that lost millions of dollars. Last I looked T.T. was in the hole a few years ago to the tune of about $6 million and they had a good season that year. [ I have slept since then and may be off a million or two but they did lose money.]

This conversation was never about how much baseball could earn or lose or whatever else, the point still stands our athletic budget is significantly greater than other AAC schools who have fired their head football coach. Those schools can somehow afford to do other things we somehow can't. Baseball was just an example.