Fire Chris Ault

On November 28, 2007 8:58 AM "a former elt 2jv"asked...

I seem to recall that when Chris Ault fired Tormey, that Steve Spurier was also available. What about Bill Callahan?

I'll be honest, I'm personally biased against Callahan. My mother's family is from Nebraska so I grew up with the Huskers as my second favorite team. I'm also not too big on the Raiders (forgive me). From what I've seen of him...he can make some adjustments, but I'm not sure how well he leads teams. Considering what's been happening in Oakland I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there since I'm pretty sure that the higherups in that organization have something to do with it. But at Nebraska, he's got some splendid athletes on that team but my gut tells me that he's not a terribly good motivator. Not to mention his demeanor through his tenure there has been less than cordial. Nebraska bases a LOT on their tradition, right from the top of the school down to the general admission gamers, and snubbing that the way he has takes away a huge part of the motivating factor at a school like that. I hate to say it, but that could be a plus here where the traditions aren't as set in stone and aren't treated as a religion by more than a few hundred fans. There is a chance that he could do some good things here, but does Nevada have the kind of dough to snag him? And again, I'm not a big personal fan of the guy, but that's my problem not the school's.

I have a feeling that the Pack can't offer a guy like Steve Spurier enough to even consider the job. For the kind of money he's used to getting I'm not sure if we could even get him here to do a clinic.

I said in a previous post that we have some good donors, but when you look in the stands in a mid-season game against Idaho and we are barely able to clear a 5-digit attendance, well, it shows that there's just not a great amount of passion in the community at large and that translates into dollars. With the basketball team's success, too, what "at large" support there is tends to go in that direction. I suppose that's not a fair comarison, come to think about it: if we had a 30K seat basketball arena, would we still bring in more than 12-13K for bigger games? It's unfortunate, and I bet that if we were to cough up the cash to get a "name" coach it would probably pay dividends, but that requries a TON of capital.

http://www.dopke.com/Archives_Pages/Coaching_Changes/DIACoachesComp2006.htm

Here's a webpage what gives 101 of the D-1A head coaches salaries. Ault ranks 81st. Chris Petersen at Boise St. makes $640K and is ranked 63rd as a second year coach overall. Boise has passionate fans and they put what they can into the coffers. Even Mike Sanford at UNLV is 74th at $435K. Considering that Ault came into the third stint with a raise over what Tormey was making and has been bumped since then, it tells me that we just aren't able to put the money into it that even Baylor can (Guy Morriss, #34, $1,144,236).

So I guess my point is: I wish we could go pie-in-the-sky over the next guy, but it ain't gonna happen.

GO PACK, BEAT CAL!!!