Gillispie Stays at A&M

Arkansas official: Gillispie to remain at Texas A&M
By JEFF CARLTON, AP Sports Writer

We need to find a really good phrase to describe this trend of ratcheting salaries every off season:

Texas A&M officials would not discuss the terms of the new deal or say when an announcement might come. The 47-year-old coach makes about $1.25 million a year, but two Texas newspapers, citing unidentified sources, reported the new deal could be worth between $1.6 million and $2 million a year.

Texas A&M spokesman Alan Cannon declined to comment.

The $2 million figure would make Gillispie the highest paid coach in the Big 12, exceeding Rick Barnes’ $1.8 million salary at Texas and Bill Self’s $1.6 million at Kansas.

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

06-07 Basketball General NCS Basketball

36 Responses to Gillispie Stays at A&M

  1. partialqualifier 03/30/2007 at 8:35 AM #

    I will try and think of a term, but it seems Calipari is the master…so maybe his name should be included!

    In the end though….these guys always get what they deserve. They blackmail their current universities into paying huge sums of money and then fans grow very impatient with them. Look at Rick Barnes…last year everyone in Texas loved him cause he was getting into the tournament and raising Texas basketball to new levels. Then comes the State debacle….Barnes gets a raise after three “no” answers to State…Texas has about the same type of year as before…but now its not good enough. Now some people down there are saying how horrible a coach he is…after one season!! It’s almost like….”yea we’ll pony up for ya coach…but you better be worth 2 million, cause we can pay Jack Leg 650,000 to lose in the first round.” So good luck…

  2. ncsu96 03/30/2007 at 8:49 AM #

    http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2007/03/29/razorback_central/032907uabkbperception.txt

    Jay Bilas takes a shot at Frank Broyles…big suprise. A few days old but still entertaining.

    This time of year reminds me how happy I am that we like both of our coaches in the revenue sports. It may still be honeymoon but I’m loving it!

  3. Rochester 03/30/2007 at 9:17 AM #

    Maybe this is my East Coast/ACC bias showing through here, but is Arkansas really still considered at top 20 type job (as was mentioned in that story) to anyone out there? That program has become more irrelevant than we were before we finally got back to the tournament in 2002–and they went to the tournament this year. Who cares about Arkansas? They threw names like Tim Floyd and Bill Self out, but why would they have any interest (other than sheer dollars) in going to Arkansas?

  4. Mr O 03/30/2007 at 9:19 AM #

    I am firm believer that you should be paid your fair market value, so I can’t fault any coach who gets a big raise. If someone wants to pay you and in some cases over pay you, then there is no reason a coach should turn down the money.

    $2 million for Gilespie? Wow. We got out cheap for the time being.

  5. WendellPackster 03/30/2007 at 9:24 AM #

    “We need to find a really good phrase to describe this trend of ratcheting salaries every off season.”

    How about

    the (salary) bump or run
    or
    stick it to the (f)an

  6. Dan 03/30/2007 at 9:25 AM #

    Its the Blackmail-apari effect.

  7. gopack968 03/30/2007 at 9:28 AM #

    Barnes-ing a raise?

  8. Clever_Wolf_Name 03/30/2007 at 9:31 AM #

    I read last night that Myles Brand was asked about escalating coaching salaries and his response was, more or less, “What are we to do?” It’s up to each individual school. The NCAA: Keep send us checks and we’ll ignore everything.

  9. noah 03/30/2007 at 9:33 AM #

    I don’t have a problem with the rising salaries. I do think someone ought to do a saber-metric type breakdown as to where you get your money’s worth and where you spend too much.

    For instance, is any coach actually WORTH $3 million a year? Yeah, you can pay it. But do you get $3 million worth from it?

  10. lush 03/30/2007 at 10:10 AM #

    how about calibarned. wow such and such coach, you really calibarned that school!

  11. packbackr04 03/30/2007 at 10:27 AM #

    that Young on WV is sick… he hit like 6 tres last night.

    kilborn anyone? release, rotation, splash.
    he is the dagger. he did us in, he did clemson in. great game last night for the mountaineers. i bet morganton is on fire right now, literally. they burn their furniture in the streets there, i seen it.

  12. McPete 03/30/2007 at 10:32 AM #

    I got an answer: coaching and talent. and the new jersey nets ran that o with kidd and carter and somehow it worked.

  13. Cedarblockhead 03/30/2007 at 10:36 AM #

    Back to the topic, I would not be surprised to see Ark go after Herb. All they have to see is his record of winning and hsi recruiting. He already has two McDs at ASU!!!!!11!!

  14. Cedarblockhead 03/30/2007 at 10:41 AM #

    “which leads me to believe, you guessed it, its not the system its_!”

    the bad luck

    No coach has ever had that many injuries and transfers to deal with. It is obviously not his fault. You cannot play poker with 49 cards.

  15. lush 03/30/2007 at 10:43 AM #

    ^hilarious

  16. lush 03/30/2007 at 10:47 AM #

    you know it the movie kingpin, where woody gets the reputation for being a loser and everyone says “what a munson”? the next time a coach plays sheisty and gets a raise he should be referred to as a barnical. “that billy gillespie, what a barnical.” this needs to catch on.

  17. Texpack 03/30/2007 at 10:52 AM #

    Fearflation would be my term.

    My co-worker is a big pig and when he brought up Bill Self’s name yesterday I laughed and told him no way. Arkansas is not at all on the same level as KU, UK, UCLA, etc. Frank Broyles even says they have the ninth best facilities in the SEC.

    As for Gillispie, I have been waiting for someone to be successful with the A&M roundball program for the entire 23 years that I have lived in the great state of Texas. I really thought Melvin Watkins had the background to do it. I remember watching him on some of the really good UNCC teams in the 70’s. He had a pure point guard’s mentality. As for the amount of $$ being thrown Gillispie’s way, his biggest accomplishment is a sweet sixteen trip this year. He hasn’t even been at A&M long enough to see if he is going to be able to recruit. Imagine if HWSNBN had taken them to five straight NCAA Tournaments. We could be talking $2.8-3.0 million/yr

  18. VaWolf82 03/30/2007 at 11:00 AM #

    I may not have gotten all of the off-topic posts deleted, but I got alot of them. “He who walks in the desert” is gone. When he actually accomplishes something with his offense, then the Herbavores are welcome to come and gloat on one of my entries.

    Until then, the idiotic claim that someone else’s success somehow reflects favorably on State’s former coach will not be tolerated on my entries. He’s gone and the Herbavores can move to Tempe or just move on…your choice.

  19. lush 03/30/2007 at 11:15 AM #

    oh come on, i thought i made a good point, oh well.

    so who is going to be the next coach to pull the barnical? HOw about all 4 Final Four coaches. With all the attention for Gtown, i think it might be THompson the III. However, Donovan has a golden oppurtunity with the whole Kentucky thing going on. But in Donovans case i think he has earned a raise, so he is probably a bad example. Was Matta the coach when michael redd took osu to the final four? If so he has probably earned a raise, but if not OSU should beware of the barnical factor. I think howland will stay at UCLA, and he has earned a raise with consecutive final fours.

    ALso look out for Beilein to toy with Michigan to barnical his way into more money at WVU, why would he want to leave unless it was for more money. So there you have it, the barnical watch is on for JTIII and Beilien.

    Has barnical caught on yet?

  20. Pack92 03/30/2007 at 11:31 AM #

    If anyone has read any of the posts from Arkansas fans on ESPN over the last few days you can’t help but wonder what they smoke out there. They were SURE they were getting Gillispie – there was NO WAY he would turn them down. They had the pockets to buy him AND some of the BEST facilities in the country.

    I bet Texas is watching all this with a great deal of uneasiness. If THEY have the best then why is he making less than the coach at A&M? Could not have happened to a nicer bunch.

  21. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 03/30/2007 at 11:32 AM #

    “For instance, is any coach actually WORTH $3 million a year?”

    The value of anything is what someone is willing to pay for it. So yes, a coach is worth $3 million dollars a year. If the person paying feels the return on their investment is paying off then they will stop paying. This is free market economics 101, something that is considered evil by many today but it is our system and it has worked pretty damn well for the last 230+ years.

  22. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 03/30/2007 at 11:33 AM #

    …isn’t paying off…

  23. VaWolf82 03/30/2007 at 12:23 PM #

    I may have to apologize to Mebane. WVU’s NIT wins do remind me of the ones that Herb would get:

    Del St – #120
    UMass – #61
    NCSU – #90
    MSU – #64
    Clemson – #46

    Herb’s downfall was always those pesky teams ranked higher than #50.

  24. WP 01 03/30/2007 at 12:24 PM #

    Billy Clyde is balking. He’ll be the next Kentucky coach.

  25. class of 74 03/30/2007 at 12:34 PM #

    I’d say the way coaches salaries are set in this state we are getting a comparative bargain. The school is only on the hook for a couple of hundred thousand each with Sid and Roy while the boosters are paying the freight. Most of the others mentioned here are paid directly by the school, which in my mind is a big difference. And a big reason why our professors have no right to bitch about what “the school pays a coach”. Check the contracts, it’s the private boosters and shoe companies that pick up the tab not the schools.

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