Fire Todd Butler

[Ricardo del Rio]

I mentioned in an earlier post that the AD has to be looking at whether or not WSU can afford to buy-out HCTB vs can WSU afford not to buy-out HCTB.

I am becoming more and more convinced that WSU can't afford not to buy-out HCTB. In the long run the cost of retaining HCTB probably exceeds the cost of terminating HCTB.

The loss of ticket revenue should play into the analysis.
Say 25 home games x 1,500 fans/game x $6.00/fan = $225,000/season. Yes, I just pulled these numbers out my posterior. The purpose is just to give an idea.

Or maybe another way of looking at it is how much attendance will increase with Hooper or Standifer.

[SB Shock]

We would've got Sonny Galloway.

I dunno if that would've been a good thing or bad thing.

I think it would have been a good thing - at least he would have won and did everything in his power to stick it to OU.

[shockfan89_]

I really thought we would win 35 games this season and that would buy HCTB another year or two and lower the buy out to a manageable $600,000. Now it appears we will be lucky to win 20 games and I no longer think we have a choice. I have been in the camp that didn't think there was any way WSU would spend nearly 2 million dollars buying out baseball coaches contracts in a three year period. That just shows extreme mismanagement in the Athletic Department. How does someone not lose their job over this?

[1972Shocker]

The school saved money year over year by not retaining GS in 2013, right? That margin is probably pretty close to what a new coach would cost. What I'm saying is that TB plus hypothetical Hoop or Standiford is likely similar to what GS alone was costing the University.

The stilled owed Gene $750,000 for the 2013-14 year. At the end of this 2015-16 season they will have paid Gene and Butler a combined $1,670,000 if my math is correct. I am assuming no bonuses for Butler. If Gene had not been fired and continued to work at the same salary we would have paid him $2,250,000 over that same time period. So we will have saved $580k by replacing Gene as of the end of this season. Going forward they are spending $430k less per year on Butler than on Gene. Obviously, hypothetical since we don't know for sure if Gene had been retained he would have continued at his $750,000 per year. Not sure that would have been the case had they retained Gene.

[SHOCKvalue]

The stilled owed Gene $750,000 for the 2013-14 year. At the end of this 2015-16 season they will have paid Gene and Butler a combined $1,670,000 if my math is correct. I am assuming no bonuses for Butler. If Gene had not been fired and continued to work at the same salary we would have paid him $2,250,000 over that same time period. So we will have saved $580k by replacing Gene as of the end of this season. Going forward they are spending $430k less per year on Butler than on Gene. Obviously, hypothetical since we don't know for sure if Gene had been retained he would have continued at his $750,000 per year. Not sure that would have been the case had they retained Gene.

Not trying to call you out or anything, but are you sure GS was making $750K/yr? That seems a good $250K over what I had in my head from old articles.

[1972Shocker]

Not trying to call you out or anything, but are you sure GS was making $750K/yr? That seems a good $250K over what I had in my head from old articles.

I would have to go back and check. That is what I remember although that may have included some incentive bonuses. So no at this point I would not say I am sure about that.

Edit: Yes, your are right. I found an Eagle article saying they owed him his base salary of $531,000 for 2013-15.

So we paid Gene and Butler a combined $1,451,000 over the past three years vs 3 years of Gene which would cost us $1,593,000 assuming Gene's last annual salary remained in place. So WSU has save about $142k as of the end of this season over the past 3 years and would save around $200k per year going forward vs Gene's last salary.

Doesn't really change the equation too much. Still need to get make a change and it will have been an expensive mistake.

[ShockTalk]

The school saved money year over year by not retaining GS in 2013, right? That margin is probably pretty close to what a new coach would cost. What I'm saying is that TB plus hypothetical Hoop or Standiford is likely similar to what GS alone was costing the University.

I would have to go back and check. That is what I remember although that may have included some incentive bonuses. So no at this point I would not say I am sure about that.

Edit: Yes, your are right. I found an Eagle article saying they owed him his base salary of $531,000 for 2013-15.

So we paid Gene and Butler a combined $1,451,000 over the past three years vs 3 years of Gene which would cost us $1,593,000 assuming Gene's last annual salary remained in place. So WSU has save about $142k as of the end of this season over the past 3 years and would save around $200k per year going forward vs Gene's last salary.

Doesn't really change the equation too much. Still need to get make a change and it will have been an expensive mistake.

These are solid financial reasons not to wait. As the financials looked like the only real hesitation I can see for the AD, they need to act.

[ShockTalk]

We would've got Sonny Galloway.

I dunno if that would've been a good thing or bad thing.

Yes we would have gotten him as he has said as much. I think it would have been a good thing.

[ShockerFever]

Yes we would have gotten him as he has said as much. I think it would have been a good thing.

Assuming he didn't bring any NCAA sanctions with him.

[Cdizzle]

I don't think there was anything wrong with taking back Gene. In fact, I thought the whole situation kindof lit a fire under the coaching staff's ass for a couple years. They had a pretty huge influx of talent and went to a couple of Super's.

[Play Angry]

Gene admitted that he and Brent stopped going after the top-level talent when Pete Kozma and Derek Norris went high in the draft and signed out of high school (I believe there were two other semi high-profile commits in that class whose names escape me. We lost them to the draft as well). The staff was fed up with the unpredictability of filling a class when a high percentage of commits were unlikely to step foot on campus.

That was sort of the beginning of the end from a talent standpoint. When you look at subsequent classes, we had some really good players but very, very few studs in the sense we'd grown accustomed to getting over the previous two decades. It was particularly unlucky that the attitude shifted at the exact moment when our replacement quota reached its highest level following the 2007 and 2008 runs.

[ShockerFever]

The Drive on KFH is leading with the WSU baseball disaster.

Now is a good time to get your digs in.

[WstateU]

Gene admitted that he and Brent stopped going after the top-level talent when Pete Kozma and Derek Norris went high in the draft and signed out of high school (I believe there were two other semi high-profile commits in that class whose names escape me. We lost them to the draft as well). The staff was fed up with the unpredictability of filling a class when a high percentage of commits were unlikely to step foot on campus.

That was sort of the beginning of the end from a talent standpoint. When you look at subsequent classes, we had some really good players but very, very few studs in the sense we'd grown accustomed to getting over the previous two decades. It was particularly unlucky that the attitude shifted at the exact moment when our replacement quota reached its highest level following the 2007 and 2008 runs.

I recall losing Logan Watkins in the 2008 draft; he's in the Cubs organization and has played in the bigs.

[Cdizzle]

Gene admitted that he and Brent stopped going after the top-level talent when Pete Kozma and Derek Norris went high in the draft and signed out of high school (I believe there were two other semi high-profile commits in that class whose names escape me. We lost them to the draft as well). The staff was fed up with the unpredictability of filling a class when a high percentage of commits were unlikely to step foot on campus.

That was sort of the beginning of the end from a talent standpoint. When you look at subsequent classes, we had some really good players but very, very few studs in the sense we'd grown accustomed to getting over the previous two decades. It was particularly unlucky that the attitude shifted at the exact moment when our replacement quota reached its highest level following the 2007 and 2008 runs.

The MLB draft got crazy at exactly the time WSU started landing some of those big names. MLB has since changed the bonus rules that decimated the WSU recruiting classes and Junior classes, often WAY late in the summer. The new limit on bonus pools has helped clean some of that up, but alas, a bit late for this program.

[Play Angry]

The MLB draft got crazy at exactly the time WSU started landing some of those big names. MLB has since changed the bonus rules that decimated the WSU recruiting classes and Junior classes, often WAY late in the summer. The new limit on bonus pools has helped clean some of that up, but alas, a bit late for this program.

Yea, the bonus pool rules definitely helped, but I would dispute the bolded. That class was an oddity and stung the most since we had so many local kids (who had been pledged to WSU) go incredibly high in the draft, but we had been landing that quality of recruit with regularity for a long time by that point. Sometimes they showed up (Pelfrey after he slipped ~10 rounds further than expected), sometimes they didn't (Jason and Nathan Cromer in 1999), but the inconvenience had existed for a really long time.

Other coaches had adapted by oversigning their classes, which Gene was loathe to do although he ultimately embraced this practice in his last few years. By then it didn't really matter since we were oversigning more to boot off unproductive returners rather than anticipating a bevy of departures lured by big signing bonuses.