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ESPN article on Univ of Houston FB coaching situation (Wellman/Manning related topic)

Bubble Boy

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http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/25682806/the-billionaire-bold-move-houston-dana-holgorsen-hire

The interesting part:

That task came with immediate pressure, as Houston president and chancellor Renu Khator said at a holiday party, shortly after Applewhite's hiring, that "winning is defined at the University of Houston as 10-2. ... We'll fire coaches at 8-4."

Applewhite's teams went 7-5 and 8-5. More important, Pezman said, was the butts in the seats at TDECU Stadium, or rather, lack thereof.

"It wasn't 8-4; that didn't make a difference," Pezman said. "It was the energy and the trajectory of the program.

"We're down 7,000 season tickets since Herman left. It's not Major's fault, but that's almost $3 million a year, just in tickets. So everybody's like, 'How can you afford this?' I'm like, 'How can I not?'" (Holgorsen's deal will pay him an average annual salary of $4 million, a difference of $2.25 million from the $1.75 million per year Houston was paying Applewhite, according to USA Today.)


Needles to say, Chris Pezman is the complete opposite of Ron "don't care" Wellman. And by the way, Houston is 15-0 in basketball this year.
 
I love Renu. She’s great.
 
Can you imagine being held accountable for the "energy and trajectory of the program"? I wonder what that's like.
 
OOOOOOOOOOOPS !!

 
Let's see how the Holgerson hire works out. He has issues and UH is committed to pay him $20 million over the next 5 years, plus they paid his 7 figure WV buy-out, and the remainder of Applewhite's contract. Fans love it when coaches get fired, but coaching turnover sets a program back, and now Houston is throwing around a lot of cash, and in a non-power 5 school, the upside is limited. Essentially, UH needs to be the non-Power V representative in an New Years Bowl at least once over the next 5 years for UH to even begin to see any return on this deal.

BTW, not advocating keeping Manning, but touting UH for firing a coach with a winning record to make a massive investment in Dana Holgorsen is not great leadership IMO, and will end up badly for UH.
 
Let's see how the Holgerson hire works out. He has issues and UH is committed to pay him $20 million over the next 5 years, plus they paid his 7 figure WV buy-out, and the remainder of Applewhite's contract. Fans love it when coaches get fired, but coaching turnover sets a program back, and now Houston is throwing around a lot of cash, and in a non-power 5 school, the upside is limited. Essentially, UH needs to be the non-Power V representative in an New Years Bowl at least once over the next 5 years for UH to even begin to see any return on this deal.

BTW, not advocating keeping Manning, but touting UH for firing a coach with a winning record to make a massive investment in Dana Holgorsen is not great leadership IMO, and will end up badly for UH.

Yeah, but Holgerson went 8-4 this year with an NFL-prospect quarterback (which gets you fired at Houston). If they waited till next year when Holgerson wins 7 games, they'd have a harder time selling the hire, even though Applewhite's buyout would have been cheaper.
 
That's just it: WV had a good, but not great year, after Will Grier fell into his lap. A lot of coaches could go 8-4 with Will Grier at QB and the weapons WV had. Holgorsen is a decent HC with a drinking problem. Throwing $20 million at him and expecting him to make Houston a top 10 program is misguided.
 
Anyone have a sense how much money crappy basketball has cost Wake in lost ticket revenue per year? It's hard to really know how many tickets were sold but not used, and how many tickets were given away or sold for almost nothing. Plus, the couple of marquee non-conference games we would play at home each year have pretty much disappeared. Also, now that Wake owns the Joel, do they now get all of the parking revenue? 5K tickets at an average price of $30/ticket for 15 games would be $2,250,000. Not sure how good of an estimate that would be.
 
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Let's see how the Holgerson hire works out. He has issues and UH is committed to pay him $20 million over the next 5 years, plus they paid his 7 figure WV buy-out, and the remainder of Applewhite's contract. Fans love it when coaches get fired, but coaching turnover sets a program back, and now Houston is throwing around a lot of cash, and in a non-power 5 school, the upside is limited. Essentially, UH needs to be the non-Power V representative in an New Years Bowl at least once over the next 5 years for UH to even begin to see any return on this deal.

BTW, not advocating keeping Manning, but touting UH for firing a coach with a winning record to make a massive investment in Dana Holgorsen is not great leadership IMO, and will end up badly for UH.

For the record, I am not affirming UH's move - in fact they seem a bit delusional. However, I did find it interesting that the AD took lost revenue and "energy and trajectory of the program" into consideration with his decision. It is clear that Wellman could give a rat's ass about that stuff.
 
For the record, I am not affirming UH's move - in fact they seem a bit delusional. However, I did find it interesting that the AD took lost revenue and "energy and trajectory of the program" into consideration with his decision. It is clear that Wellman could give a rat's ass about that stuff.

Understand. With the revenue as a member of the ACC, there may not be as much pressure to generate revenue via ticket and concession sales. Also, Manning was not going to get fired after 2017 when WF went to its first NCAA tourney in years. So, while in retrospect Manning should've been dismissed after last season, I can see some argument for giving him a pass for last season. What is unforgiveable and nonsensical was the decision to give DM an extension through 2025 (with either no or almost no buy-out) at the beginning of last season. Where would Danny have gone if WF had not extended him? He had no leverage and WF just threw millions at him.

That decision was far worse than the $20 million contract for Holgorsen.
 
What is unforgiveable and nonsensical was the decision to give DM an extension through 2025 (with either no or almost no buy-out) at the beginning of last season. Where would Danny have gone if WF had not extended him? He had no leverage and WF just threw millions at him.

That decision was far worse than the $20 million contract for Holgorsen.[/QUOTE]

Well that's assuming that the Goodman source and information is accurate, which I find very hard to believe.
 
Hope that you are right, but the Manning contract story has been out there awhile and no one has refuted it. It's not like the public is clamoring for knowledge about the WF/Manning contract, Goodman has zero incentive to issue a false report about Manning's contract. Also, Goodman is a generally reliable source of information.
 
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Wake doesn't talk about stuff like that. Wake is also notoriously cheap in contract negotiations and renegotiations. Which makes me question how Goodman has a source that can provide such inside information which seems to be so contradictory to how the athletic department operates.
 
I suspect when we look at next year's 990 filing that both Manning and Clawson will have been bumped up to the 2.3 2.4 million dollar salary range in the first year of their contract extensions and that neither one of them has a fully guaranteed contract.
 
Wake doesn't talk about stuff like that. Wake is also notoriously cheap in contract negotiations and renegotiations. Which makes me question how Goodman has a source that can provide such inside information which seems to be so contradictory to how the athletic department operates.

Notoriously cheap in contract negotiations? Maybe in initial contracts, but Grobe and Prosser were very well paid after their extensions (by the standard of the day).

Which is probably why the preemptive and potentially
Over generous extensions were made in the first place- because Wellman did not want to be held over a barrel again.
 
Notoriously cheap in contract negotiations? Maybe in initial contracts, but Grobe and Prosser were very well paid after their extensions (by the standard of the day).

Which is probably why the preemptive and potentially
Over generous extensions were made in the first place- because Wellman did not want to be held over a barrel again.
Middle of the pack salaries after proven success
 
Wake doesn't talk about stuff like that. Wake is also notoriously cheap in contract negotiations and renegotiations. Which makes me question how Goodman has a source that can provide such inside information which seems to be so contradictory to how the athletic department operates.

My guess is that Goodman's source is Manning's agent (or someone that works for his agent). Would also guess that Goodman has deep enough relationship with said agent to know that the agent wouldn't BS Goodman. Again, Goodman is known for getting scoops if he starts putting out false info, his career goes down the drain. Really can't imagine Goodman allowing news about a WF basketball coach's contract to jeopardize his rep. It's not like college sports fans are hankering for news about WF basketball. If there was doubt about the validity of the report, Goodman would have no incentive to just throw it out there.
 
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