Big money boosters of WVU football \ athletics are also pissed Rodriguez left for Michigan. Sadly they are not burning things and posting youtube videos. However, they are ripping the WVU administrators a new asshole.
“I tell you what, I’ve never seen anything mishandled as much as this was,” Bob Reynolds, former chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments, said yesterday. “Here’s a university that made a $200,000 decision — it probably could’ve cost less than that [to keep Mr. Rodriguez] — and it’s going to cost them millions” in booster support, potential bowl money and revenue from football success.
“I’ve had calls from at least six major contributors to the program, and they’re all done [donating] because they know the Mickey Mouse things that have gone on there,” Mr. Reynolds continued. “I’ve been in business 36 years, and it’s the worst business decision I’ve ever seen. I’ve been the COO of a 45,000-person company. When somebody’s producing, you ask, ‘What can I do for you to make your life better?’ Not ‘What can I do to make your life more miserable?’ They have no idea how big this is. It’s frightening.”
So in part it seems like keeping him was a money issue. Real intelligent WVU. Here’s a quick lesson in business. Very Large sum of money - small expense = Very Large sum of money. Like any employee, every year you have to give them a little more. Here are Rodriguez’ demands WVU didn’t meet: allotting another $100,000 for his assistant’s bonuses, allowing scholarship players to keep their books so they can sell them at the end of the semester, allowing high school football coaches to attend the games for free (currently a $5 fee), hiring 7 graduate assistants and a recruiting coordinator. It would be one thing if he were asking for another million in salary, but his demands are all trying to help his players and staff.
And now for the quote of the year
“Maybe we should be a farm system,” Mr. Hartley added, “until our coaches get good enough that they can coach at Michigan.”
3 responses so far ↓
1 Shaun // Dec 18, 2007 at 11:50 am
I understand where Reynolds is coming from. However, Rodriguez wasn’t exactly poor or scraping for change to feed his family while at WVU. Yes, those additional things would have been nice but it wasn’t much of an issue when he signed his hefty extension last year. If those are things you want, you bring them up before you sign your extension. The example that Reynolds gave up about the 45,000 company doesn’t apply to this situation whatsoever. A 45,000 company isn’t made up of people with 5 or 6 year contracts. When you negotiate your contract for x amount of years, you make sure you get the demands that you want not just for that year, but for the upcoming two or three at least. You can’t sign a 6 year deal and then after year one say I also want this this and this; even if it’s for the better good of the program. To up and leave over whatever, $100,000, or even $500,000 shows poor character on the part of Rodriguez as well. There are a lot of ways you can try to get what you want that don’t include packing up and jumping ship.
2 cgb // Dec 18, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Some of those things were part of the contract extension. WVU just hadn’t made good on them yet.
3 simon // Dec 18, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Ha the majority of those things don’t boost him or his coaching staff in anyway they just help the program recruit. That’s probably what the decision came down to, he can recruit better at Michigan and he’ll have a better chance to win there.
Either way I don’t exactly think that WVU is just going to collapse into a meaningless program. They should pull a good coach in.
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