At some point yesterday, someone in College Station, TX, decided to turn on one of those new fangled Google machines and investigate how much money it was going to take to match and then outdo what Marquette is paying head coach Buzz Williams. Based on the tweets from San Antonio Express-News reporter Brent Zwerneman, it appears to have come as a complete shock to everyone related to Texas A&M University that Buzz is being compensated to the tune of nearly $4 million a year. I don't understand how this is possible, seeing as it has only been 42 days since Buzz and Marquette agreed to his brand new contract, not to mention that a school in their own conference, the University of Oklahoma, is largely responsible for that new contract existing.
The thing in the SAEN story that I'm actually most interested by is the part about who A&M would be hiring as an assistant coach. The story claims that, after swiping Buzz from MU, A&M would hire a local high school coach who's currently coaching an ESPN top 50 2012 recruit. Oh, and he also happens to be said recruit's father. Am I insane or is both hiring a high school coach AND hiring a recruit's parent in order to land that recruit a massive NCAA violation?
Seeing as the A&M athletic department's PR skills are a complete joke (seriously, who lets out both "What? He's making HOW much? Oh, we're NEVER paying that!" and "Hey, we're gonna hire that kid's dad so he comes here!" to reporters?), I am forced to believe the list of coaches in this Dallas Morning News article is completely legit. So now A&M has gone from Buzz or Josh Pastner (who flat won't even consider talking to A&M, surprising NO ONE), to two guys who couldn't finish over .500 in the conference that A&M is in, the guy who replaced Mark Turgeon at Wichita State, and a 53 year old who hasn't coached in 9 years. Smooth.