By Clay Horning
It’s not about the money, it’s about the marketplace.
It’s not about the money, it’s about respect.
It’s not about the money, it’s about remaining competitive.
It’s not about the money, it’s about being preemptively prudent.
Fine.
Only when I see that Steve Austin, as portrayed by Lee Majors, will soon have but $2 million on Bob Stoops and I just want to take a shower …
Believe me.
It’s about the money.
Momentarily, the man who runs the program that pays everybody else’s salary (except, perhaps, Jeff Capel’s and Sherri Coale’s) will soon make in excess of $4 million a year.
Of course, that assumes he’s still operating under the contract approved yesterday by the Oklahoma Board of Regents in 2011. By that time, he may well be onto the next contract, this new one already antiquated.
Coale may soon bust $1 million annually. And if Capel can join his female counterpart in the Final Four club, he’s sure to make more than $2 million a lot sooner than 2016 when his new contract says he will.
But who can hand Coale and Capel any grief when the football coach, who recently received $3 million for not quitting, will soon become a $4 million man, sans “stay bonus.”
Yes, I know, when it comes to the money he generates for the university, he’s a bargain.
And he resurrected a program, which pushed giving to the entire athletic department to entirely new levels, which led to facilities upgrades in every athletic program.
And he’s kept it up since the 2000 national title, darn near putting a lock on the Big 12 title, playing for three more national championships and traveling to three more BCS bowls.
And, rumor is, he’s a lot easier to get along with than Alabama’s Nick Saban, who actually makes more than he does.
Winning ain’t free.
But that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
Imagine how underpaid Barry Switzer must have been, coaching in an age when coaches must never have pondered their actual worth, before everybody had to win right now, to bring the money in right now, to participate in a nuclear facilities race right now.
Before universities realized just how much they could tap their fans and donors, before they ever thought of exploiting their brand for all it’s worth.
Before, it seems, they took leather helmets off in favor of something sturdier … when it’s really just a 10- to 15-year phenomenon; driven in large part by, you better believe it, the University of Oklahoma.
But he earned it.
They all earned it.
It is what it is.
Not what it was.
Doesn’t make it right.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
