Sanity Check: We have money for coaches, right?
There is a common theme on the board that "Juwan is worth it *IF* we keep Yak." No one seems to be beating Yak's door down for a head coaching gig, but every other school is dying to get him on staff. He's universally ADORED in Ann Arbor. Can we just pay the damn man whether we retain or promote him?
We've got enough capital that we should be legally compensating our student athletes. I won't litigate that here. But since that isn't permitted at the time of this post, let's take our money, back up the bag man dump truck and t-shirt cannon cash wads through Yak's front window. He'll be able to afford to fix it.
Unless I missed something and we're suddenly Poor Sisters of the Heavenly Leprosy University and we can't afford the God damn best.
Another thread that asks an unknowable question and adds zilch to the discussion.
Guess you failed at the very premise of a sanity check? Oof.
Guess you failed at creating a thread that isn't shitty? Ooof
You’ve failed your sanity check.
Your sanity check is to ask a bunch of people on an internet message board if the University of Michigan is fiscally capable of paying for its coaches, and you're surprised people question its relevance? I know people like to act around here like they're more connected than they are, but I ave my doubts anyone here has looked at the AD's books.
You don’t have to read it.
Another thread that asks an unknowable question and adds zilch to the discussion.
Actually we don't. We forgot to lock the Moneybin last night and Flintheart Glomgold's men snuck in and stole our cash.
MANUEL!!!!!!
The common theme on the board is that most people have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s been only five days and people are already freaking out that we haven’t named a coach yet.
"IT"???
That one's for FauxMo
We have somewhere between no funds and infinite funds. Hard to say exactly how much.
What a waste of time writing that
The problem isn't money. The problem is there's no head coach. We can't just say "Hey we'll pay you a bunch of money to keep you and oh by the way you have no idea who your next boss will be and he might want to fire you or you might not want to work with him."
Yeah, he would be crazy not to look around right now, even if he wants to stay here.
I wouldn't expect Yak to stay more than 1-2 years if he isn't promoted. I suppose I'm bothered by the optics of us appearing unwilling to compensate assistant coaches in our (yes) most successful sport of the past 20 years.
Where are you getting this from? Unwilling to pay?
Gulogulo37 summed it up perfectly. You have to have your head coach in place first, then you hire the assistants.
He has not. But everything I looked at had our assistants outside the top 10 in the country (for salaries) even after the bump last fall. I could absolutely be wrong on that and if so someone shoot me the source so I can dig deeper. This is, of course, assuming all compensation is above board (hah).
If I'm right, and maybe I'm just a jerk, I don't think we're an "outside the top 10" university. Any mentality/approach that contributes to that just hinders our success.
So what do you want us to do? Give Yak a new contract before hiring a head coach, so the new coach is not free to hire his own staff?
If that's your thinking, I'm afraid you're failing the "sanity check."
I actually do. And I don't think that's insane. Retaining one of the very best assistants in the country, maintaining a bridge of continuity, possibly salvaging the recruitment of Jalen Wilson... all of those sound like excellent, sane things to me.
Delete this terrible post
This is why we need to be able to upvote the OP.
Because after a week of decidedly unfunny basketball news, anyone who can provide a laugh with a name like "Poor Sisters of the Heavenly Leprosy University" deserves a +1.
I think we only have doge coin. Not Yak likes doge.
Meanwhile in East Lansing, people ask if they have money for couches.
They should be looking in the cushions of those couches.
Day 6. Delirium.
How is that going to work?
AD: we’d love for you to be the head coach at Michigan.
prospective coach: great, I’m very interested.
AD: by the way, I’ve taken the liberty of giving an assistant a bigger contract so you won’t have freedom in hiring your own assistants.
coach: why?
AD: bc I thought he would be a better coach than you can attract, and we wanted to keep a recruit.
Yeah, sounds rational.
(Checks the Michigan Athletic Department account balances)
Access Denied.
Copying something I posted on a different thread this morning, since it's relevant here and got buried.
The amount of money the athletic department has vs how much they have to pay the basketball coach is way over-estimated on this board. For the last few years, the Athletic Department has been operating basically break even - the budgeted surplus for FY19 was only $2.5M. Everyone is acting like it's a multi-billion dollar enterprise that can throw millions around like nothing. It's really not.
This article shows the revenue and expenses of the department over the last decade. You'll notice that the large surpluses of the Martin and Brandon years went away as soon as we hired Harbaugh and bumped up the salaries of all the assistants. A big increase to the salaries of the head and assistant basketball coaches, in the range of $5-10M total, would almost certainly put us in the red.
They can likely make it up with additional donations from the heavy hitters - Warde just has to call a dozen or so guys and ask them to pony up an additional $500k a year and we're covered. But that's easier said than done, and I'm not sure how much the boosters care about the basketball team compared to the football team. If the new staff is going to make more than Beilein and co. did, as a percentage of total revenue, it's going to have to come from somewhere.
I will add to that that how much the AD spends is highly political. Many people think the coaches and administrators are overpaid; no one agrees on where that money should be spent. Fans think the athletes should be compensated, academics wish they had that capital should go back to their programs, students think tuition should go down, taxpayers (who elect the Regents) say the state shouldn't give as much money to the school when it has so much cash coming in through athletics. Michigan's AD is of course totally self-sufficient and does a great job paying full out-of-state tuition to the University, but that doesn't stop people from complaining. I can guarantee that whoever the new coach is, there will be some article somewhere grumbling about how coach makes $XM while our professors are just scraping by. Schlissel, the Regents, and Manuel all have to consider this before they start handing out blank checks.
Logged into upvote this - excellent post. (Given that the poster also thinks Jet's is one of if not the best pizza chain, I'm not surprised)
Firing the money cannon sounds great and is much more feasible at Michigan than many other schools, but it's not a simple matter of lighting the cash fuse. Relatively speaking, the University of Michigan is flush with money. You can and perhaps should quibble with how it spends said money, but one of the reasons it's flush with money is that it oversees, perhaps to a fault, how, when, where, and why that money gets spent.
What if.....now, mind you, this is a big what if......I spent this money - quite accidentally, mind you, on booze and entertainment and there was now no money to pay a new coach? I am just asking IN CASE this happened.
"every other school is dying to get him on staff"
I didn't know he went on that many interviews.