Filthy rich. If you're excited because it's Friday Payday, do not read this article, in which we learn Bob Stoops is set to receive a $3 million bonus, which will push his 2008 earnings up to $6 million for the year.
If that number boggles the mind, you're not alone, as the University of Texas' Faculty Council on Monday unanimously endorsed the goals and principles of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, whose central message is that the commercialization of collegiate sports has built an unsustainable model for many, if not most, universities.
This is way too big and complicated a can of worms to get into in the morning notes, so we won't, but it's an interesting topic for a more robust discussion sometime - perhaps in the offseason.
Leave work early for football... You're not getting paid enough to stay 'til 5:00 on a Friday anyway, so take off a little early to take in Texas' first spring practice of the year, held today at 3:45 p.m. at DKR.
...or baseball. If this is too early for you to start thinking about football, take off from work early to catch the baseball team's season opener at 2:30 today against Virginia Commonwealth. Texas Sports has your preview. The Statesman spotlights the pitching staff, while Corn Nation has your Big 12 weekend schedule.
High praise for Rick Barnes. I don't have to remind you of Bill Simmons' short-lived love affair with Texas Kevin Durant last season, nor the way he comically (unintentional, lolz!!) threw Rick Barnes under the bus for not winning every single game, including the NCAA Championship, while starting four freshmen and a sophomore.
Of course, no right minded fan should confuse Simmons as a competent analyst of any sport outside the NBA, anyway. He's a columnist, after all.
Even so, Simmons' myopia rubbed a lot of us the wrong way. Enter: John Gasaway and Basketball Prospectus to the rescue. The former Big Ten Wonk blogger has a full-time gig at BP these days, and had some very nice things to say about Rick Barnes and Texas in his midseason conference check in:
After Texas lost to USC in the second round of the NCAA tournament last year, Rick Barnes was the target of a good deal of ill-informed criticism. The general belief seemed to be that any coach who had Kevin Durant, but lost in the second round, must have been doing something wrong. Well, look at the Longhorns today: 22-4 after a 77-50 thrashing of Texas A&M in Austin last night. For the third consecutive season, and with three very different groups of personnel, Barnes has put teams on the floor that score points in abundance. Media tropes mandate that a coach hailed for his decided schematic advantages has to have much more of a brooding and Belichickian personality than does the avuncular and approachable Barnes. Never mind: the results on offense in Austin from 2006 to the present have been Beilein-esque. Barnes is becoming to offense what Ben Howland is to D.
Kahuna always says it best: So take that.
--PB--