Tony Benford contract details from Vito

Harry · December 4, 2012

I put an Freedom of Information Act request in for Tony Benford’s contract right after he signed on with UNT. After a longer wait than anticipated, I got a hold of it late last week.

I will have a story on the deal in tomorrow’s paper, but here are the basics:

Benford signed a five-year contract with UNT that will pay in excess of $350,000 in base salary and guaranteed incentives annually.

read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2012/12/tony-benford-contract-details-full-story-in-tomorrows-paper.html/

filmerj · December 4, 2012

guess the radio stipend doesnt include post game shows, Thats a pretty good check for doing a 20 min radio show once a week,

FirefightnRick · December 4, 2012

Five years to OTJ train as a first-time HC?

"sigh"

Rick

Edited December 4, 2012 by FirefightnRick

Dr. Seuss · December 4, 2012

5 Years is pretty long for a first time head coach, 350k is that big but the length is

MeanMag · December 4, 2012

Five years to OTJ train as a first-time HC?

"sigh"

Rick

5 years is pretty standard for any coach these days I'm told. Want to give them every opportunity to have success on the recruiting trail.

MeanMag · December 4, 2012

5 Years is pretty long for a first time head coach, 350k is that big but the length is

Again, it's right in line with most everyone else.

greenminer · December 4, 2012

Again, it's right in line with most everyone else.

FWIW, Bobby Petrino was offered a 4 year contract.

There has to be some balance here. On one hand, you want to tell future hires and recruits that you want stability. On the other, you need to tell the hire we are not here to lose.

Bobby freakin' Petrino! 4 years, yet we sign (another!) no-HC experience guy to this Tony-led roster for 5 years.

Edited December 4, 2012 by greenminer

outoftown · December 4, 2012

so in essence we still owe him about 1.4 million? is there a way to negotiate this down if we were to fire him during this season?

Edited December 4, 2012 by outoftown

UNTMike81 · December 4, 2012

Seems to me Benford was give a lot more money than JJ when he arrived here. Benford rode JJ success because UNT is much more attractive place to coach than when JJ arrived. RV thought per Benford's resume that he was ready to make the jump from assistant coach to head coach. That hasn't turned out to be the case....LOL!!!! Now UNT is screwed unless RV takes immediate action by firing Benford and hiring another coach. See my long post on page 10 of: Fire him (Benford). Benford is destroying with lighting speed what it took JJ 10 Years to build at UNT!!! This is a tragic situation for the Mean Green Nation!!!! This makes me sick at my stomach every time I thing about it. It's like the Todd Dodge era all over again, but 100 worse. Much better UNT team with right coach in place, and all of us and the Mean Green Nation have seen this before referring to Todd Dodge hire. RV, do something, or just shoot us all in the Mean Green Nation. If you leave Benford as coach you'll just be killing all of UNT's fan base with a 1,000 paper cuts and letting us bleed out slowly to our death's. Do we really deserve a slow death. Just shoot us with a 44 Mag. and let us die a quick death!!!!

Harry · December 4, 2012

For once and for all can we please understand that the industry standard contract term for new coaching hires is 5 years!!!

That is what 99.9999 percent of every new coaching contract stipulates.

If Petrino ends up signing for 4 it's due to his background and past or that USM plans to make him whole after a successful year 1.

Recruiting is a dirty game for some and they will use every trick in the book. If we gave a coach a 3-year deal he could not tell his first class that he would be here... In fact coaches who go into the last two years of their contract without a renewal are at a distinct disadvantage in recruiting.

Instead of focusing on contracts, lets discuss the hires themselves and our ability to buy-out mistakes. UNT unfortunately has not been in a position financially to erase mistakes and it's cost us dearly (Dodge 4th year). At UNT we have to make solid hires and that has not always been the case. Southern Miss made a terrible hire and was able to erase it by coming up with a couple million to buy the guy out. Benford has proven he can recruit well, let's give him a season to evaluate. He's self admittedly off to a rough start but let's stop kidding ourselves, we don't have the money to buy him out this early like say a Kentucky or Kansas.

Mean Green 93-98 · December 4, 2012

FWIW, Bobby Petrino was offered a 4 year contract.

There has to be some balance here. On one hand, you want to tell future hires and recruits that you want stability. On the other, you need to tell the hire we are not here to lose.

Bobby freakin' Petrino! 4 years, yet we sign (another!) no-HC experience guy to this Tony-led roster for 5 years.

That's a message board rumor, and probably inaccurate.

Army of Dad · December 4, 2012

For once and for all can we please understand that the industry standard contract term for new coaching hires is 5 years!!!

That is what 99.9999 percent of every new coaching contract stipulates.

If Petrino ends up signing for 4 it's due to his background and past or that USM plans to make him whole after a successful year 1.

Recruiting is a dirty game for some and they will use every trick in the book. If we gave a coach a 3-year deal he could not tell his first class that he would be here... In fact coaches who go into the last two years of their contract without a renewal are at a distinct disadvantage in recruiting.

Instead of focusing on contracts, lets discuss the hires themselves and our ability to buy-out mistakes. UNT unfortunately has not been in a position financially to erase mistakes and it's cost us dearly (Dodge 4th year). At UNT we have to make solid hires and that has not always been the case. Southern Miss made a terrible hire and was able to erase it by coming up with a couple million to buy the guy out. Benford has proven he can recruit well, let's give him a season to evaluate. He's self admittedly off to a rough start but let's stop kidding ourselves, we don't have the money to buy him out this early like say a Kentucky or Kansas.

As bad of a coach he is proving to be I can't even say that he is recruiting well and we will likely never know unless he is replaced and "his" players get to play for someone who can coach. We may not have the money, but he hasn't shown a reason to be kept around at this point and if the lottery commission ever gets their numbers right I will be more than happy to get him out of town. I still think he should be fired for cause. Losing to a DII and watching his offense should be all we need to prove it. We might have to take it in the shorts Harry, but we don't have to like it and I think all we can hope for a Shanice-like ref chasing meltdown since that will at least provide some entertainment while we get beat by inferior talent night in and night out.

It's a miracle that some of the long time suffering supporters are still around. Miracles that shouldn't be counted on to continue. For all the talk of wanting alumni to reconnect, and locals to come out and support the team Benford appears to actively engaged in killing the best chance this athletic program has for successfully bringing in new fans, hooking them and keeping them for years to come. This year should have been our chance to finally take that next step. For that to have any hope now we would need to go through the rest of our schedule undefeated. A daunting task back when we all thought we were good, one that now looks impossible.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Army of Dad

KRAM1 · December 4, 2012

For once and for all can we please understand that the industry standard contract term for new coaching hires is 5 years!!!

That is what 99.9999 percent of every new coaching contract stipulates.

If Petrino ends up signing for 4 it's due to his background and past or that USM plans to make him whole after a successful year 1.

Recruiting is a dirty game for some and they will use every trick in the book. If we gave a coach a 3-year deal he could not tell his first class that he would be here... In fact coaches who go into the last two years of their contract without a renewal are at a distinct disadvantage in recruiting.

Instead of focusing on contracts, lets discuss the hires themselves and our ability to buy-out mistakes. UNT unfortunately has not been in a position financially to erase mistakes and it's cost us dearly (Dodge 4th year). At UNT we have to make solid hires and that has not always been the case. Southern Miss made a terrible hire and was able to erase it by coming up with a couple million to buy the guy out. Benford has proven he can recruit well, let's give him a season to evaluate. He's self admittedly off to a rough start but let's stop kidding ourselves, we don't have the money to buy him out this early like say a Kentucky or Kansas.

THANK YOU!

Cerebus · December 4, 2012

Southern Miss made a terrible hire and was able to erase it by coming up with a couple million to buy the guy out.

And that is why they are Southern Miss... and we aren't.

untjim1995 · December 4, 2012

5 years is a very normal contract for a head coach, just for recruiting purposes as previously mentioned. I have no problem with that contract, nor the pay. I just have a major problem with paying that out to an unproven assistant. I liked Fran Fraschilla a lot as a name coach. I would have gone hard after Shields at UALR or Marlin at ULL. I would've at least talked to Scott Cross. All of these guys have one thing in common--they have been successful head coaches. Benford and Trilli were nothing more than unproven assistants at big name schools that are easy to recruit to. Again, I go back to this reality. When you make a hire of this magnitude, in either football or basketball, you had better be right or it screws an athletic department like ours much worse than it does a big AQ school or a cash school like TCU or SMU. I think RV has done a great job as a cheerleader for our teams and for working to make gameday better. But his money sport hires have been mediocre (Coach Mac and Aston--only because she was here for 1 year) to downright awful (Stephens, Dodge, and Benford so far). And if this turns out to be awful, like it has started out, it should be enough to cause a change at the top of the AD. We are stuck with Benford, no matter what happens, for at least two more years after this. But this is, without a doubt, the biggest swing and miss of a head coach hire that UNT has had since they hired Bob Tyler to be the head coach of a program that had Fry's great success and then Jerry Moore's decent teams in 1981. We haven't ever a team since then that was so promising to bring major success to the university like this was supposed to be. It won't surprise me one bit if Johnny Jones becomes our basketball-version of Hayden Fry. Its just so typical of North Texas athletics.

CurveItAround · December 4, 2012

I am too lazy to go look it up. When we chose to not hire Fraschilla, which program did he wind up at?

hickoryhouse · December 4, 2012

ESPN analyist for mainly big 12 games currently. according to wikepedia anyway.

CurveItAround · December 4, 2012

Interesting. I can't believe someone hasn't snatched him up. It seems like only a decade ago he was still coaching. I bet he would be bad ass at recruiting.

MeanMag · December 4, 2012

I am too lazy to go look it up. When we chose to not hire Fraschilla, which program did he wind up at?

Just signed a new contract with espn. I'd be surprised if he's not making more sitting on his ass watching an talking basketball than he would have coaching our team. I hope I'm wrong on that.

MeanMag · December 4, 2012

If you want to talk about ending small time thinking and small time expectations and act like you're big time, the last thing you want to do is give a coach less than 5 years.

If you give him anything less, you probably aren't confident enough in your hire to give him the job to begin with and need to consider someone else.

It's also not uncommon for d1 programs to give 1-2 year extensions every 1-2 years to keep them at 4-5 years.

The extra years are a cost of doin business at the d1 level.

It is likely that anyone unt is willing to offer the job to would have gotten at least 5 years.

Edited December 4, 2012 by MeanMag

filmerj · December 4, 2012

Just signed a new contract with espn. I'd be surprised if he's not making more sitting on his ass watching an talking basketball than he would have coaching our team. I hope I'm wrong on that.

As I posted in another thread he told me via a twitter DM, after questioning his allegiance to SMU while interviewing for NT, he said NT couldn't pay home enough. He's making way more at espn. Hard to give that up I guess. It's a pretty sweet gig. Getting paid to watch bball.

untjim1995 · December 5, 2012

Interesting. I can't believe someone hasn't snatched him up. It seems like only a decade ago he was still coaching. I bet he would be bad ass at recruiting.

Kind of like hiring Steve Lavin at St. John's, huh? I bet that killed their recruiting...oh wait? Huh?

Fraschilla lives in Dallas and has a cush job at ESPN. He son plays at HPHS. This would have been the only job that fit with any desire he had to still coach. We know he was interested. I talked to him personally about Mitchell--"he's the Real Deal." were his exact words. And I don't believe for one moment that he wouldn't come here if he had been offered the job, even if ESPN paid him more. He will always have that to fall back on, just like Lavin does.

But, hey, I'm glad that you seem content that Benford was given his shot to learn to be a head coach with the best collection of basketball talent in school history. It sure looks promising right now!!