Boy, does it pay to suck at your job as a college coach! Here are two examples just from the past week.
Wichita State University finally realized this year that they had a major problem on their hands: Their basketball coach, Gregg Marshall, had a well-documented history of being abusive to his players. They kept him around or ignored the evidence for years, because one thing Marshall used to be pretty good at – besides belittling players and allegedly physically and verbally abusing people connected to his program – was winning games. His record of 525-204 was impressive, and he brought his mid-major program to the Final Four in 2013.
But the allegations came flying out of the woodwork fast the past few months. It was hard to argue that the guy had anger issues after watching this:
The school realized that having a maniac like Marshall as the face of their program is not a great look, so they allowed him to resign Tuesday – and as a parting gift they gave him $7.5 million!
That’s small potatoes compared to what an SEC school can pay a lousy coach to leave. South Carolina University got tired of Will Muschamp’s consistent losing, so they fired him Sunday with the Gamecocks mired in another non-competitive season with their 2-5 record. What Muschamp lacked in coaching ability he more than made up for in lack of charisma. It’s hard to feel sorry for schools who are this unimaginative in their hiring.
While Muschamp will never make it to the Hall of Fame for winning games, he just might for delivering a very low ROI. South Carolina literally cut him a check for $13.2 million just to not show up and coach their team anymore.
I can’t wait to see the update on Muschamp’s LinkedIn page. Do you think he’ll list the fact that he was fired by the University of Florida in 2014 too? Yep, and he took home a check for $7.5 million for that epic failure.
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