1. Agree with the consensus; Amaker seems like a good man and a decent person, but would be a terribly uninspiring hire given his track record. There is literally no indication from his tenure at any of his stops (UM, Seton Hall, or Harvard) that he consistently could have Wake in the top-third of the ACC and in the NCAA tournament under any circumstances. He has not coached a consistent NCAA tournament performer at any of his 3 head coaching jobs--even at Harvard, he has made 4 NCAA tournament appearances in 12 full seasons--and there is absolutely nothing that I can see from his track record to indicate he could take Wake to a level he's been unable to take Harvard or Michigan. I would definitely prefer Matta or Forbes, and probably would prefer Kelsey given his potential upside (but honestly could be swayed either way and agree it's reasonably debatable from either side).
2. As an employer lawyer who frequently drafts executive employment agreements and has personally negotiated and litigated the "for Cause / not for Cause" termination issue, I find the $7.5 million settlement figure completely and 100% believable and honestly is what I would've predicted at the outset of this whole thing. These agreements typically call for some form of severance upon a not-for-Cause termination, and zero severance of any kind upon a for-Cause termination, with the agreement spelling out the specific bases of what constitutes "Cause"--itself a highly negotiated issue that turns entirely on what the agreement ultimately specifies as far as what the "Cause" bases are, when and how they are triggered, any notice obligations, any cure rights of the parties, and so on and so forth. I suspect that upon a not-for-Cause separation, DM was indeed owed the remaining $15 million of his reported salary, and that upon a Cause termination, this number would have been $0. My guess is the parties have spent the last 1-2 months going back and forth posturing and blowing smoke on how the facts of DM's employment have or have not triggered one or more of the Cause bases, and that there is reasonable risk on both sides. (By way of background, typically just being bad at one's job is not sufficient to constitute "Cause," but again it all depends on what the agreement says. Most executive agreements have a Cause trigger along the lines of "Material failure to perform Executive's duties and responsibilities hereunder" which is what I suspect Wake was posturing under here, though again every agreement is different; if the executive had good counsel, it might be limited to "Material willful failure" or a "Repeated willful failure" or a "Repeated material failure . . . which remains uncured following written notice by Employer," etc. Here, we'll never know.) Anyway, in the negotiations I've done on this issue, splitting the distance right down the middle is the most common outcome. Would not surprise me in the least if that is exactly what happened here.