Sticker shock long ago stopped blowing away fans of professional sports teams. We have the Darren Dreiforts of the world to thank for that.
A right-handed pitcher out of Wichita State, Dreifort parlayed a 39-45 career record into a five-year, $55 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouts enamored with the velocity of his fastball and the sharpness of his breaking ball projected he soon would learn to hit his spots and forever stay healthy, too. Predictably, it never happened. He blew out his arm, and for their $55 million investment, the Dodgers received nine wins and 15 losses from Dreifort. He made $63.9 million during his nine-year career and just once finished a season with a sub-4.00 ERA.
The Golden State Warriors once signed Adonal Foyle to a five-year, $41 million deal. Who? Precisely. A poet and political activist, Foyle was a terrific student at Colgate University. He has played 11 seasons in the NBA and never has averaged more than 5.9 points per game. Back in 1996, the Seattle SuperSonics gave Jim McIlvaine $35 million for five years. His NBA career lasted seven seasons, and he never averaged more than 3.8 points per game.
Fans have grown numb to the bottomless pit of bad deals in professional sports.
Kansas University soon will announce that its basketball coach Bill Self has signed his new contract. It will be a good deal for both sides. Still, the numbers might shock some because gigantic deals for college basketball coaches are relatively new.
After winning his second consecutive national title, Florida coach Billy Donovan was signed to an extension that pays him $3.5 million per season, setting the new standard for top-line college basketball coaches in demand.
Self falls into that category, especially considering he topped his alma mater’s wish list for a new coach. After Self received assurances that Kansas would upgrade the pay of his assistants, make improvements to the Jayhawker Towers where some of the players reside, move forward with plans to build a new practice facility and give him a new contract that includes a rollover clause, Self told Oklahoma State thanks but no thanks. The Cowboys hired Travis Ford away from UMass.
Athletic director Lew Perkins and Self have been mum on the numbers of the new deal. Even if his average annual salary is, as one whisper says, as high as “$3.2 million to $3.5 million,” numbers that exceed all other projections, it would be difficult to make a case Self is overpaid.
The national title KU just won undoubtedly helps in the areas of alumni donations and more national applicants, which enables the school to be more selective.
Unlike Dreifort, etc., Self has earned his new deal based on performance, not a projection. A proven commodity who has won big at every stop, he won’t wake up next week having forgotten how to coach and how to recruit.
Plus, why not make the job as comfortable in every way for him so that he’s not tempted to bolt when an NBA team comes after him with a caravan of Brink’s armored trucks?
It’s easy to see Self becoming an institution at Kansas the way Mike Krzyzewski is at Duke. That can only help the basketball program and in turn the university.
