Does the Lack of Handy and Grouchy Foretell Further Expansion?

A Georgia Tech sportsblog has reframed the discussion of ACC football in mushroom-housed terms. The insights are quite, well, insightful, but the rumor of Mack Brown being told he'd never be paid as well as the basketball coach rankles a bit.

The story sounds apocryphal, but even taken at face value, it runs up against the harsh reality that colleges don't have that much control over coaching pay. The best Google can tell me eight years after the fact, is that Mack Brown was getting $165,000 from the university at the time of his departure, while Dean Smith was earning $137,000 in 1996. Now I don't doubt Smith was recieving more money overall - Nike had spent years and quite a lot of cash trying to stamp their logo on the previously Converse affilated basketball team (and Adidas branded soccer teams) but such money is distressingly outside the university's control. Expecting the university to subsidize a shoe company's decisions is much too much too ask.

I'm happy for Mack Brown, and no longer resent the manner in which he left North Carolina. (And to be clear, I didn't begrudge him the Texas job, just the poor way he informed the players, and the self-aggrandizing phone call during the Gator Bowl.) But to ascribe him leaving for a more prestigious football job to laziness on the athletic department's fault is, well, lazy.

(Oh and as a comparison, here's Roy Williams' paycheck. Outside compensation is only getting worse, and it's probably the most distasteful aspect of college basketball. A close second? The kids out there actually executing these coaches' visions not seeing a dime.)