Rain over Manoa this morning. Good thing they’re not out on the practice field running around. Beautiful to see though. Have a good day, Tsaiko-people!

I’d still like yesterday’s question answered:
Are there more players than usual participating in summer drills?

The flaw in that plan is that SDSU and UNLV have major budgetary problems and could be force to drop out of D-IA if they lose $3 million per year by going from the MWC to the WAC.

Garret,

I’ve always wondered why coaches have contracts that run for x years. Why can’t coaches be like regular employees where their job continues until they leave or get fired? What say you my friend?

Curt,

Assistant coaches have year-to-year contracts, but head coaches have multi-year contracts all around D-IA. There are several reasons for this:

1. Recruits would NOT commit to a school if they thought that the head coach might not be there when they were there. A coach with a 1-year contract would be recruiting a player that wouldn’t even join the school until his contract was over!

2. Coaches need time to implement their systems and recruit players for their systems. That is why you hear coaches talking about a 3-year plan, since a system cannot be effective until it has players that fit the system and the team understands the system.

3. Every other D-IA school gives a multi-year contract so the market *requires* every school to give a new coach a multi-year contract. The same thing happens in industry…you CANNOT compare coaches to regular employees, you have to compare coaches to people in leadership or key positions at companies. Those types of people *do* have multi-year contracts or significant buy-out clauses if they are fired early. I know executives in the wireless industry that were hired at the VP or higher level and fired a few months later…the “golden handshake” they received to leave the company is FAR more than Mack’s entire 5-year contract.

You also have weird contracts in industry that are given because that is what the market requires. For example, I had a contract once that would pay me a bonus of $200k or more if I just stayed with the company for 4 years. This is in addition to my regular salary, stock options, annual bonuses, and so on. If I quit I left that behind, but if they fired me (even if they had a cause to fire like incompetence or sexual harassment!) they had to immediately give me $200k. All “key” people were given similar contracts at the same time, and many of them immediately stopped working (wanting to be fired for incompetence) or did things on purpose that they *hoped* would get them fired. One guy had me convinced that he was dangerous and needed to be put into a mental institution. That made the company so crazy to work for that I quit and left the money and big salary behind.

Happy Birthday Mr. Takai!