Fun With Mickey Furfari!
By Editorial Staff
For the uninformed, Mickey Furfari has been covering Mountaineer Sports since roughly 1832. His writing is why sports pages were once so popular and are now so dead. Whereas our frequent target Chuck Landon is, was, has been, and always will be a hack, Furfari was once a excellent writer. He still attends most if not all of the major WVU press conferences, and can often be heard saying ”WHAT, WHAT” like your grandfather doing a bad Steve Austin impression. Recently, his columns having taken a heavy anti-Luck/Holgorsen pro-Stewart slant. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, is utter horsecrap. It’s time tear this baby apart.
Coach’s salary a concern
MORGANTOWN – Dana Holgorsen, West Virginia University’s new head football coach, never has held such a position at any level.
Thanks for the update.
Not even in high school, state college or even the lowest collegiate classification.
The lowest collegiate classification being Marshall.
In confirming that this is his first shot during his first press conference, the 39-year-old Iowa native responded by saying, “You’ve got to start sometime at some place.”
It’s difficult to argue with such reasoning. But is a first-time head coach really worth a starting base salary of $1.4 million a year?
It’s difficult to argue with such reasoning, but please keep reading while I attempt to argue with the reasoning.
Oliver Luck, WVU’s new athletic director, gave Holgorsen a six-year contract for $12 million. For a beginner, that might be a world record.
Nope Charlie Weis, despite never being a Head Coach at either the college or pro level, got a 6 yr/12 million deal from Notre Dame in 2004. (ESPN)
It has to be the most WVU ever paid a new head football coach with no previous experience. And that doesn’t even include incentives, which could be very, very generous.
As they should be.
If Holgorsen stays here six years, projected perks could hoist his total earnings to somewhat more than $12 million.
I think Bill Stewart had a base salary of just $700,000 in taking over the WVU reins after that magnificent 48-28 upset of No. 3-ranked Oklahoma in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.
Oh ”just 700,000′? How were we ever able to keep such a rising star?
What’s more, his penciled-in base salary for a fourth year as the Mountaineer mentor was only $950,000 had he not been forced to resign.
Which is roughly 900,000 more than he was worth.
Where is the athletic department going to get all the money to keep from ending fiscal 2011-12 in the red? Luck spent millions getting rid of football coaches he had fired.
Because they sucked at their jobs. Unless you write for a newspaper, if you suck at your job for long enough, you get fired.
A friend suggested that money owed WVU by former head coaches Rich Rodriguez (football) and John Beilein (basketball) for contract-breaking might help this go-round. But such payments are about to run out.
But more money is going to come in from having a team people actually want to watch play.
Holgorsen’s forte is football offense, and his units ranked near the top nationally in three previous one-year coordinator stints. But now he must prove he can produce as the head man.
The salaries paid even to some assistant coaches and to head coaches in the so-called minor sports recently have been eye-popping.
It’s called the free market.
It’s as if no one believes – or cares – that our country still is struggling in depressing economic straits.
Clearly our economic troubles are connected to connected to Holgorsen being paid fairly.
Millions of unemployed people certainly have voiced a growing concerns, though.
Yes, I’m sure there’s an unemployed writer out there somewhere who just read your column and is screaming at the top of his lungs, because even after drinking a mason jar full of ether, he could write something better than this.