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Rich Rodriguez (official thread of last laughs)

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NFBuck;1162528; said:
Well, there were the cheerleader rumors at wvu. I have a hard time buying those though. What hot co-ed wants a romp with a doughy douchebag with bad hairplugs that dresses like a cheap used-car salesman?
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...who makes millions of dollars a year. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'...


BTW: It's been awhile since someone claimed that it was only OSU fans who thought RR was a douche bag. I wonder why that is.
 
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Not only did he not ask (at the time of the 2007 extension) that it be reduced, it looks like it actually increased from the 2002 contract. According to an ESPN article that was reporting on the collapse of his negotiations with Alabama a couple of years ago, anyway:
ESPN - Rodriguez ponders 'Bama, Morgantown - College Football
...
West Virginia increased Rodriguez's salary to $1.1 million last summer. The terms of his contract include a $2 million payment to the university if he leaves before Aug. 31, 2007.
Sources told ESPN's Joe Schad that Alabama extended a six-year, $12 million offer to Rodriguez and that Alabama would pay West Virginia a $2 million buyout. The proposed deal would make Rodriguez among the top 10 highest-paid college coaches in the nation, doubling his current salary.
The Birmingham News reported on its Web site late Thursday that Rodriguez was offered more than $2 million a year with incentives and would have one of the highest-paid coaching staffs in the Southeastern Conference.
The newspaper, citing anonymous sources, said Alabama officials expected him to sign the deal on Friday. That turned out not to be the case.
West Virginia tailback Steve Slaton, in Orlando to attend Thursday night's Home Depot College Football Awards Show at Walt Disney World Resort, told ESPN.com's Mark Schlabach that Rodriguez told his team he's not going anywhere.
When told later that a deal could be imminent, however, Slaton told Schad, "It's a business. He's got to do what's best for his family. It hurts, but we'll be OK."
Center Dan Mozes added, "I'm disappointed. He said he was going to be there his whole career. I'd think he'd stick to his word. If you graduated from there and were a coach there, why would you leave? Maybe it's the money."
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I've read the (edit) whole 328 pages of the RR deposition. He used the term 'fraudulently induced', rather than the word 'coerced'.

He had a $2 million liquidated damages figure in his original contract with WVU, dating back several years. In early December, 2006 he and his agent initiated discussions for a new contract; since he was mentioned for the Alabama job. He portrays that as concerns about the future of the program, since he was losing some assistants, rather than having WVU increase his salary in order to prevent him going to Alabama or elsewhere. He signed a 'term sheet' in December, 2006; which included an increase in his salary and an increase in the liquidated damages amount. The term sheet did not include any mention of things like eliminating the $5 ticket prices for high school coaches, student textbooks, a website for RR, and things he said he was verablly promised by WVU board members before he signed the new contract.

He signed the new contract on August 24th, 2007. The contract matched the term sheet that was signed the previous December; increasing his salary and the liquidated damages amount. In his original contract, the salary was in the $1 million ballpark and the damages were $2 million. In the new contract, the salary was just under $2 million and the damages amount was increased to $4 million, so the damages amount was still close to 2 years worth of salary.

The term sheet was agreed to when Hardesty was President of WVU. During the summer of 2007, Mike Garrison started his term as President. He was in place when RR signed the contract on August 24th; and RR states that Garrison had indicated to RR that he didn't believe in liquidated damages and that if it came into play the amount would be negotiated to about half that amount. If Garrison said that, he's either a slime-ball or an idiot.

RR also claims that he was pressured into signing the contract before the season started, including the importance of it being signed being mentioned in a conversation with Governor Joe Manchin. Manchin was a friend of RR who was involved in getting RR on the WV football team as a preferred walk-on, and RR also worked one summer during high school at a Manchin family-owned carpet store, so they've known each other a long time.

The other affidavits will be interesting (Garrison's especially), but other than the claim that WVU President Garrison made a verbal agreement to negotiate the liquidated damages (and that may be meaningless, compared to a signed contract), RR's position looks extremely weak. Why he didn't ask TSUN to pay the liquidated damages amount (or at least half of it) is a mystery to me. (Edit - keep reading, apparently he did).

Edit - I'm reading the rest of the deposition. Tuberville has a $7 million liquidated damages deal, and Richt's is $10.2 million. These amounts are paid to the coach if he is fired, but paid to the University if the coach leaves on his own.

When RR first met with TSUN, they had a Letter of Intent which mentioned a $2 million dollar amount for liquidated damages. RR's folks asked that it be raised to $4 million.

When RR is asked if there is a clause in his TSUN contract (part of which was apparently blackened out or redacted in the copy the WVU lawyers have), that states that TSUN and/or a TSUN booster will pay the liquidated damages amount due to WVU, RR's lawyer (Robon) instructs him not to answer. Robon was present at the meeting in Toledo on December 14th where TSUN AD Bill Martin and TSUN President Mary Sue Coleman talked over the contract with RR, his agent, and his wife Rita.

Along with the phone call to Pryor on Sunday, December 16th (supposedly two minutes before notifying the WV team), RR also called Rocko Khoury and Boubacar Cissoko later that day using his WV-provided cell phone.

The WVU lawyer also pointed out that the contract had a clause removed on August 24, 2007, the day it was signed. The clause related to a renegotiation after a BCS game appearance, and RR didn't want that to be the only time it was possible to revisit the contract. So they changed it and re-typed the page before the contract was signed. He then tells RR that if he had an objection to the $4 million dollar liquidated damages amount, he could have also asked for that to be changed before he signed.
 
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BuckeyeNation27;1162982; said:
which school would you rather coach at.....Michigan or Alabama?
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In decisions of this magnitude, I resort to the lyrics of the Beach Boy classic "California Girls". It's a simple algorithm, in which my geographic preference is indicated by the order in which the regions appear in the song. In this case, it's quite easy, as Southern girls -- with the way they talk -- has precedence over the Northern Girls. Intraregionally it gets a bit more difficult to divine.

fortunately for myself and my family, I have seldom (read as never) faced "decisions of this magnitude". :)
 
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If I piece all this nonsense together, one of the pictures that might emerge is that Dick Wad's strategy is to get fired at TSUN, use the $4 mill in liquidated damage to pay back WVU, and then go re-stake his original claim for the HC job at Arkansas.

Why else would ANYONE go through these contortions?

Which brings me to the same old conclusion... Ann Arbor is (still) a whore! :biggrin:
 
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shetuck;1163069; said:
If I piece all this nonsense together, one of the pictures that might emerge is that Dick Wad's strategy is to get fired at TSUN, use the $4 mill in liquidated damage to pay back WVU, and then go re-stake his original claim for the HC job at Arkansas.

Why else would ANYONE go through these contortions?
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Or - he wants to take his turn in Jim Tressel's barrel.
 
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Why did RR feel pressured to sign the 8/24/07 amendment? His contract was not scheduled to expire until 1/15/2010. This isn't a situation where RR would have been working without a contract. There was no need for any contract amendment, and contract negotiations started only when RR approached WVU demanding more money for himself in line with the previous Alabama offer.
 
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shetuck;1163069; said:
If I piece all this nonsense together, one of the pictures that might emerge is that Dick Wad's strategy is to get fired at TSUN, use the $4 mill in liquidated damage to pay back WVU, and then go re-stake his original claim for the HC job at Arkansas.

Why else would ANYONE go through these contortions?

Which brings me to the same old conclusion... Ann Arbor is (still) a whore! :biggrin:
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I am not familiar with "Arkansas".....I belieive you are referring to the Our Kansas job.
 
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