The contract is just money. If you are a fan or donor, you could argue that it is "your money" paying the salary, but that is not really how it works. TV and shoes drive a lot of Christian's deal. It certainly isn't ticket sales. By 2020 -- when the deal ends -- we will know if Christian is capable of rebuilding this wreck or if he's a bum. If he's capable, the extension is a bargain. If he's a bum, it is just the cost of doing business.
The contract extension is really just another turning point for Brad Bates. He's really on the line for this. If Christian flames out, it is Bates who will be answering questions...and it will probably be someone else making the next hire.
I would have preferred that BC took a stand and let Christian coach without the extension, but I am not losing sleep over any of it. BC's leaders only take stands when it fits their agendas. Right now they want Christian to succeed, so they are going through the usual motions. Let's hope it pays off.
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how will it pay off? if Christian starts winning and "is a bargain" he will do what every coach does and sell his services to the highest bidder.
BC still doesn't have an indoor practice facility. we routinely rank at the bottom of the entire Power 5 in terms of facilities. just in the past decade how many millions have we paid out to Jags and to Spaz and to Skinner post-termination? my back of the envelope guess would be around $10 million, which would put a big dent in the amount of $ required to put the facilities we need in place to compete. that is "not nothing" as the saying goes, and this isn't funny money just because we are in a conference with a TV deal. BC has a small alumni donor base and no state support. we need to be smart with our very limited funds! just signing him up for an extra year "just because" is completely boneheaded and shows how out of touch the ppl in charge are.
notwithstanding the money, optics-wise it is a terrible look for the university. coming off a winless season merits this guy an extension. he's never even WON an ncaa tournament game! win 2 conference games a year and we'll name the court after you here on the Heights! ever to excel! laughable.
pathetic day for the school. Bates obviously negotiated this but Leahy signed off on it. the entire administration needs to be replaced, from Leahy on down. time for some new blood on the Heights!
between this post and the "Bates can't find any other jobs, so why don't we sign him to an extension" post from a few weeks ago, I'm seriously beginning to worry about the long term outlook of BC sports if ATL has succumbed and fallen "in line" with the University "marching orders." the state of affairs is reminiscent of Stockholm Syndrome. very troubling.
football couldn't start soon enough.
I'm completely with el miz. I don't understand the logic behind its just money at all. We don't have the funds to just waste. And based on how the ridiculous process for firing Donahue went whose to say he goes winless in acc next year we don't fire him because the board doesn't want to buy out another extra year
Optically they look like bafoons
This extension is completely baffling to me. Why in the name of all that is holy do you reward someone coming off an historically lousy season?
I suggest the following is supposed to be known before signing a deal, not after deal is fully run it course
". By 2020 -- when the deal ends -- we will know if Christian is capable of rebuilding this wreck or if he's a bum."
ATL. You are starting to think like a government bureaucrat. - Now that we passed the bill, lefts read it and find out what it says.
Was there only a press release for this? Did anybody have to stand in front of a camera and answer questions?
Dumb and proud of it. We are BC.
I'm with Miz. This deal is reprehensible. We need to clean house from top to bottom. Our culture of losing needs to end now!
Mod, does ATL even read our comments? Seriously doubt it.
"Ever to Extend"
"they are going through the usual motions". Exactly, dump Leahy!
I am not a big fan of Christian but even I have no problem with the one year "extension".
At this point BC fans have to understand that you will probably not get the coach you desire. Say you fire Christian, who will you get to replace him? The program is in such shambles that any decent to half decent coach is going to look and go "I pass.". The Gregg Marshall's, Tim Cluess's and Rodney Terry's... they are going to wait until better jobs open up. In today's NCAA, if you fail at a big school once, you almost never get a second chance.
For now, BC fans have to root for Christian and the program to show some progress to either get back to the old ways or to find a quality replacement if you still want him fired.
I think it does matter. It's only one year, but what message is this sending the fans? Last year was obviously historically atrocious. There doesn't appear to be much hope in the short term. What are we accomplishing by rewarding not mediocrity, but terrible performance?
I agree with Miz. This is ridiculous and Bates should stand in front of a camera and answer questions. I think all these posts above are correct. What's JC's overall record at BC? And he gets an extension 3 years out?
Miz, don't forget Donahue too. We still had to pay him off.
Unknown - not sure what it matters if we get a coach we desire or not -- this isnt about Christian getting fired this year its about adding one more year to his contract that will likely need to get bought out and is just wasted cash or will become a hindrance to canning xtian and will saddle us with him longer and only delay the next "rebuild"
At this point without the extension he was under contract - he can earn an extension by winning an ACC game next year
Georgia = "Mod, does ATL even read our comments? Seriously doubt it."
I agree. he has become aloof as to his own blog, but not others. Wizard of Oz Syndrome
Would someone clarify what his contract would be with no changes ??? Would this be his last year ??? Or does his contract expire in 2019 ???? And he will receive an extension to 2020 ??? Getting back to buyouts and $$$$ spent on buyouts , I believe it would be safe to say that Cathy Inglese received some serious termination pay also. But she probably had a clause that prohibited her from disclosing any of the details of her departure. Then BC hired a gem in Frawley. Nuff said , but clarification on this subject of contracts would be appreciated. BC has lost their way !!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
BB had a 5 year deal. his deal is now 6 years, I think running through 2020 (when ATL says we can judge his merit???)
so JC has 3 full year ahead of him, so he gets another 4th year. Joke. bad joke.
I am thinking this is purely on Bates (as in probably JC did not even ask for it). BB wants to appear stable and in control, so he gives extensions to create an aura of stability. Same thing with Daz. Gave him an extension after 2 mediocre seasons (by any measure)
BB was truly horrible at picking coaches at Miami and obviously horrible at picking coaches at BC. By granting extensions he does not need to think about the process for hiring a new coach (must be terrifying for BB).
to keep it positive (for those who crave the happy talk),I will compliment BB.
BB has nice, well coiffed hair. very impressive hair for a 60 year old guy. He also talks a good game about the academics for athletes for those that crave the happy academic talk.
Thank you mod34 - that extension is MORONIC !!!! I really can not understand that move. BC must be losing a good number of their donor base. Even individuals with substantial assets must question the "wasteful/senseless spending" by the senior administrative staff. I am so happy that I threw in the towel on my football season tickets. I will still wish the team good luck and hope their fortunes turn around this year, but only fans like myself will force "CHANGE". I am not a BC grad, but if I were in that category, I would round up my fellow alums and request a meeting with Father Leahy and Brad Bates. Someone must be held accountable. However , the discontent will weaken if Addazio has a good record with this dreadful and very WEAK schedule.
G
I think Leahy has succeeded in getting most people to think about BC in academic terms. Those of us who are passionate about BC sports become fewer and fewer every day, which I think is Leahy's plan. The IVY wannabe's are the ones he's trying to motivate. I'm sure Gtown is his model. For a guy like me who was happy w/ a BC that was a decent school and proud of it's immigrant background it's sad.
hoib - BC ceased being a "decent" school (meaning UMass level) long ago. It is a top tier school now and has been for a while. Yes, still some climbing to do, but it is well beyond 'decent'
and BC ceased being a school for immigrants and immigrants' kids long, long ago. c'mon
Dare to embrace the greatness of BC. Don't settle for meh
Look at Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, etc: excellent academics and sports; both can be achieved and both can enhance the other. How many gold medals did Stanford kids win in Rio? Not that Stanford needs any help, but that is some insanely good PR for the school. Wow.
Mod,
You are confused. Everything else being equal 95 out of 100 people who were accepted to one of the following three: Stanford, Duke or Georgetown and also Boston College would attend one of the aforementioned over Boston College.
Boston College is a very good school. Don't get confused about where it stands.
I know the 5% are the ones that . . . and regression analysis says when you take into account standard of living and spousal income says . . . and the outlier are the ones that . . . but the reality is the reality. You need to know where you are to get to where you want to be.
. . . it is much easier to make yourself a school known for athletics than it is to make yourself a school known for academics. IFFFFF, there is a plan and it is push academics and the sports program gets waylaid I am fine. As long as there is a long term vision that includes athletics . . . based on the relationship that Boston College has with the ACC and Hockey East I believe that that vision exists.
That being said, again, we need a couple mens basketball players and a couple o-linemen and the major programs are back in action.
. . . my concern is that I am seeing a major investment financially in mens basketball and football and the results are terrible. Adazzio has a legitimate salary and he has legitimate assistants. Christian also has a legitimate salary and legitimate assistants(Spinelli and Heath).
Those programs should be 8-4 and 22-10 annually.
Knuck - just a poorly thought out post by you. I am not confused. I rarely am. In fact, I never placed BC in the category of Stanford or Duke if you would read more carefully (g'town is not in that group and should soon be supplanted by BC as the premier Jesuit school. . . . ND is next!). I said BC is excellent but still has a ways to climb.
Believe in your school. It is an excellent school not some tepid "a very good school" F that noise.
Academics comes first, obviously, but athletics has a very important supporting role. Plus we need to keep old bucks like Hoib entertained and thus connected to the mother ship
You are saying Boston College can be like Duke, Stanford and Northwestern but it isn't right now. And that folks should pretend(think/believe) that it is going to be, somehow.
That is nonsensical hyperbole.
Boston College needs to take action to get to the level of those schools, like I said. It might just be consciously doing that by focusing on academics and student quality of life through ground improvement. Those two are far more difficult to attain notoriety in than sports.
Like I also said the school is still heavily invested in sports financially based on hc and assistant hc salaries and that is an area of concern given the results the last 2-3 years.
You need to be able to think long term and short term in an action oriented way since action in this regard is beneficial to others(students, alumni, friends, school employees) and not just the individual. That is your problem. Everything you write is utterly egocentric.
knuck. ego centric would be me writing about me. I don't write about about me, unless responding to others e.g. "I am not confused. I rarely am.". In fact I often tell people to not comment on me. I comment in BC sports. Nothing I write is egocentric, actually.
I could mention your frequent cursing and wild denigration of others and draw some conclusions about that, but I don't think it very interesting on a sports blog. Nor am I as an imaginary, fictional blog character very interesting to discuss here either. Let's stick to BC, football and taking a giant dump as often as possible on Daz, BB and JC. Ha!
The people I've met from Duke and Stanford are insufferable, so full of themselves. They're the last people we should be trying to emulate. Give me my old beer drinking classmate buddies any day, and BTW we've done ok, by being not the Ivy league. We don't need any USN ranking to tell us our value.
The tone of ones writing conveys their perspective. Yours regardless of whether you agree or not it is egocentric.
The critic always comes from a perspective of inferiority. That is driven by the ego.
It is normal when talking about Boston College basketball and football to feel inferior most of the time. With you it is all the time. Under every circumstance.
To set the record straight: back over half a century ago when I was preparing to pick a college, there was an article, I think in Time, on the "top five" Catholic universities from an academic point of view. As I recall, they were: BC, Georgetown, ND, St. Louis University, and (maybe) Fordham or Holy Cross. At my Jesuit hs in NY, opinion -- right or wrong -- was that BC was probably number one among this group. Academically. That's why I went there. Now, it's true BC and ND and G'twn and others have all come a long, long way since then, but it is absurd to imagine that BC was on the level of UMass (to use the example cited) at any time in living memory. I think that folks have projected backward the trajectory of more recent decades and imagined a BC emerging from a South Boston ghetto just before then. My only point is that such emergence happened earlier than some may realize.
But to return to the issue at hand, I am as astounded as anyone here at the JC extension. (I talked to him once. He seemed a very decent guy. Made a much better impression on me than BB.) Almost as astounded at Atl's shrug of the shoulders. He had always been the gold standard of good sense and reasoned outrage.
In the end, success in sports depends on the quality of leadership, the coaches and those who hire them. Could anything be clearer?
What's puzzling is that BC's top leader does not seem to understand the role of sports in the success of the university. If not for its national success in football starting more than a century ago (and its luck in acquiring that catchy moniker), ND would have been another of the obscure Catholic colleges whose closures in the middle of the last century nobody noticed. There would seem to be a lesson here.
If the likes of Villanova, Gonzaga, Georgetown, etc. can excel in basketball, BC's leadership stands indicted when it does not. BC has advantages these others for the most part don't: Boston, beautiful campus, ACC, etc.
In any event, it doesn't look as though they'll be getting any money from me anytime soon... That being my one and only way, however small, to help.
well said unknown, except i think in the 1960s and 1970s Holy Cross was considered academically superior to BC.
knuck: freud you are not! oh my god that was some bad psychoanalysis. You must not have been taught by Joe Tecce
this whole debate re: what sort of school BC is and should be is a conversation for another day.
on its face and in a vacuum, extending Christian was a stupid move. big school, small school, middle of the road school, you don't give a coach a 1-year extension and commit more money to him after the worst year in school history. bad move by bates, regardless of how you view BC and where you think BC should be/is headed.
Maybe I used the word decent where I should of used the word good, and UMASS is a fine school. I know many smaht people who went there. The ranking I'm most interested in is 65. That's what we are in the p65, and after having the chance to ask the guy who runs the show what he thought about that, I've drawn the conclusion that he could care less. So until he goes I expect us to be the Wash. generals of the ACC. JC's extension is the most recent example of that mentality.
I've never seen so much bickering between people who fundamentally agree with each other!! Anyway - I can't understand the Christian extension either. Just harkens back to the Spaziani extension given for the same recruiting excuse. Although the Spaziani decision seemed worse as it was a longer extension. As others have said (particularly after the Globe piece) - nothing much will change on the Heights until we get more capable people running the show. Unless you are a huge donor with influence - not sure what anyone can do about it as a practical matter. We all see the thing just withering on the vine as a result of poor judgment and execution at the top. Its frustrating to everyone. I'd be a little more optimistic if the sports writers raised the heat more often as most institutions hate bad publicity. But there just isn't that much interest and the writers don't like to rock the boat on the college level here like they do with the pros. Just hope that somehow someway SA and JC can make substantial progress this year despite the history.
Lads, on the bright side, I applaud this debate not deteriorating into the usual bomb throwing profanities. On the other hand, stop with the personal attacks (especially against Mod). It's juvenile. I enjoy everyones points of view.
ATL, why am I doing your job?
The quality of the hiring and success of the coaches is a different issue than saying Leahy does not care about sports. The salaries allocated to the coaching staffs and willingness to hire known assistants versus unknown assistants indicate that sports are recognized for the positive impact they can have. In 25 years of following the basketball and football programs I don't recall an ex-headcoach(more expensive and arguably a better coach) being an assistant.
That is a major indicator to me that the leadership fully supports athletics. They might support athletics too much. We are building state of the art baseball/softball stadiums for a dormant baseball program who spends 60% of the season "on the road."
Leahy didn't even go to Yorks 1000 win. This infuriated my classmates who are big time hockey fans. That tells you how interested in sports he is.
You'd think the AD would be skillful enough to let everyone know what limitations and expectations he is working under.
Nappy
Bates is a classic yes man. He has parlayed that into a pretty nice life for himself w/ little in actual quality production to show for it. He would never even imply any criticism of Leahy. He's gotten this far by not rocking the boat. He's a #2 man who will always stay that way.
Hoib - Probably right but if I knew the guy I'd remind him that he has a lot of years left before retirement and needs to position himself to move on to a comparable or better paying AD job than what he has at BC. That's not going to happen if he lets the BC revenue programs fall into the shitter. So he better get lucky or hope Leahy is around for a while. But if your right - then we should never have hired the guy - putting aside that his record at Miami didn't justify hiring him in the first place. Guy makes a ton of $ for doing very little.
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