LMS wrote:dgreenwell3 wrote:clearly we need to pay lansing more. He was an unknown entity this past season so to be honest why would we pay him more b4 this season.
Why? How about because you lost your last coach for the same reason?
Not really sure how this continues to get so much traction.
McKenna made up his mind he wanted out of Indiana State when the Creighton job became open last year. He badly wanted that job. And when he didn't get it, he was not only crushed, but he had mentally checked out at that point as far as being Indiana State's coach. Many think he didn't have the stomach to be a Division I coach anyhow as time went on. Money was a convenient way to paint his departure solely on that basis, but it wasn't the only reason.
Did it help that Nike had a bunch of money to throw at McKenna? And that his buddy Dana Altman was at Oregon? Sure. No one in their right mind begrudges him for making a move that sets him up better financially. That said, if McKenna thought he was walking into a Creighton-like financial situation at Indiana State, he was severely fooling himself.
Indiana State is paying coaches what it can afford ... which isn't much. It's a teachers' school that doesn't have a rich donor base. Moreover, it pays the price for 50 years of animosity between the university and the city of Terre Haute, of which both parties have been at fault.
ISU will pay a price for that as coaches leave for higher-paying jobs, but frankly, its better than paying someone way over the school's ability to pay and then being stuck with a lemon, a la, Southern Illinois.
There's going to be a reckoning for all of these schools over-paying for coaches. There already has been at SIU and it should be a cautionary tale to other schools in the league.
The silly season of college basketball really is silly, from cash-strapped universities falling all over themselves to hand millions of dollars to barely-proven coaches, to fans (many of whom don't contribute dime one to their booster clubs, etc.) who seem to think prestige is tied solely to salary.
Fans become experts this time of year at spending money institutions don't really have. And very few MVC schools, if any of them, can afford to hang forever in the high six-figure or seven-figure salary range. Not in this economy.