All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

Re: McDermott's Magic Extension: Last Time, I Promise

Why do people think that there is another document? It looks like the extensions are triggered through the original contract.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

This contract was a HUGE mistake by Pollard. When McD got this contract he was probably laughing at how ridiculous Pollard was to agree to it.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

As an attorney (and as a lay person for that matter) it looks clear from the face of the document that GMac gets one year for each YEAR we are down a scholarship and not for each scholarship.
Well, I trust your opinion much more. So the question is how many years were we down. I believe APR issues lasted for at least 2 years and are judged over 4 year periods so it would have been a minimum of 2 years. So the scholly lost to Jiri would be the only question.
 
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re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

I contract like that would have been justified for a bigger name. GM was nationally known as a decent coach, but was never a big name. We would never have gone after him had he not been down the street. I really don't think a 9 year contract was needed to get someone to move from Cedar Falls to Ames.

You would have had to pay a big name atleast twice as much to walk into ISU at that time. AT LEAST twice as much. Heck Iowa signe Lick to a seven year $1.2 million contract at the same time
 
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re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

This contract was a HUGE mistake by Pollard. When McD got this contract he was probably laughing at how ridiculous Pollard was to agree to it.

It seems reasonable to me. Six years plus extra years for detrimental conduct that ocurred before McD was coach.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

The good news is that McD is a man of such incredible integrity that he'll resign without a buyout rather than cause any further damage to the ISU BB program.
 
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re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

Read the actual original contract. It does NOT say that. It basically says 'for each YEAR that iowa state both doesnt make the NCAA tourney and also suffers from a loss of scholarship from something prior to GMac being hired, gmac shall receive an additional year.'

Since we took 3 scholarship hits, but all were in 06-07, it should have only been a 1 year extension.

Also, apparently someone in the AD told Paul Clark yesterday that gmac was given an extension for 3 years in April 07, so it comes direct from the dept.
I don't hink all were in 06-07. APR is an ongoing issue and is looked at each year. It is calculated over a four year period.

The Jiri scholly would be the only ? even in your interpretation.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

It seems reasonable to me. Six years plus extra years for detrimental conduct that ocurred before McD was coach.

Especially when a typical contract is for five years. He really only got one extra year for taking a lot less money.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

I wish people would get it right. So many think JP came out in year two and GAVE GMac an extension. This just isn't true. The extra years were built into the original contract. Due to APR issues and the D1 Scheduling accusations, ISU was set to lose scholarships. Because of this,there were clauses in GMac's original contract that extended the contract if scholarships were lost due to issues not under GMac's control.

So here you have it

6 years- original contract
2 years- 2 scholarships lost due to APR issues related to Morgan's players and player turnover from coaching change
1 year- 1 scholarship lost due to Jiri's NCAA infractions.

That, my friends, is how GMac ended up with the years on his contract. JP didn't just come out and give GMac an extension for no reason or for bad luck.

If you don't like the original contract, then I don't think you really have an idea of where the program was at the time. We weren't paying squat so we offered 6 years to compensate. We had lost players with the LE fiasco, lost players with Morgan's firing, and lost players to attrition. All of which created serious APR issues that cost the program scholarships. We were in the middle of the D1 Scheduling issue and while that turned out to be nothing, the perception was that something was not right. The contract had to have long term ramifications in order to draww candidates.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not making excuses for GMac. I am just pointing out what the contract is and why it was draw up that way

Did you forget that GMac contacted ISU about the job, not the other way around? If he is asking about the job, that should give Pollard a negotiating advantage...
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

I have read too many legal documents and thought I understood them to know that they are never as simple as they look. That is why with my job and personal life, I always have a lawyer look them over.

Like I said "Let's see trust the interpretation of message board posters or trust the interpretation of the legal team that ISU has representing them. Hmmmm, that is a tough decision."

So, I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that you haven't even bothered to look at the contract that you are defending so adamantly?

I also fail to understand the need to start a new thread to tell people in the other thread about the same topic that you think they are wrong.

Third, ISU legal department has said nothing about this, there was no press release about this, there has only been 1 statement from an AAD to a guy that runs a message board site. It's not like lawyers poured over this and clarified this. The AAD doesn't have a degree in law.

Also, for you to say you've read too many legal contracts to believe you can interpret the most simple legal document you have done a whole lot of legal interpretation in your original post. None of the things you claim in your first post were stated by ISU's legal dept or even someone in the Athletics Department. You seem to have either interpreted the contract differently (which is fine, that's what everyone is debating), or you are restating what an internet message board poster has previously stated (which goes against pretty much everything you've said in this thread).
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

Especially when a typical contract is for five years. He really only got one extra year for taking a lot less money.

A lot less money than what? He tripled his UNI salary by moving to ISU. If he thought he could have gotten more from somebody else then he should have waited. Nobody held a gun to his head. If he thought the program was in such shambles that he couldn't turn it around then he never should have taken the job.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

As an attorney (and as a lay person for that matter) it looks clear from the face of the document that GMac gets one year for each YEAR we are down a scholarship and not for each scholarship.

In the end, again the number of scholarships meant so very little to us. All those extra scholarships are playing ball in Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, and Timbuktoo. Yes, we had those scholarships but Coach did not use them wisely.

This contract is almost like a bait and switch in that we were thinking that we were going to get a dependable, winning coach (albeit a tournament potential every year or so). Instead we received an overall final product effort in conference where we can beat Nebraska and Colorado at home and maybe on the road in Lincoln and everybody else is a question mark.

So, if JP did not draw up the nine year potential contract, who did? I have seen no answer to that question lately. Is there anyone out there who knows? I mean we can discuss the contract all day, but who put the words in the contract for Greg to sign?
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

So, if JP did not draw up the nine year potential contract, who did? I have seen no answer to that question lately. Is there anyone out there who knows? I mean we can discuss the contract all day, but who put the words in the contract for Greg to sign?

No one has answered that because no one is asking about it. No one disagrees that JP wrote the contract. Very few people disagree that it was poorly constructed.

Personally, I don't think the original contract was that poorly written. It's the interpretation of the 3 year extension that is messed up. I would say the majority of the fan base didn't want to make a coaching change until now. By my interpretation of the contract McD only has 3 years left and a buyout of 1.5 million. That isn't all that unreasonable as it's pretty standard to always keep your head coach on contract for 4 years for recruiting purposes. However, the misinterpretation of the 3 years of extension is fubar and is the only thing that is making this contract seem insane. Without that it is a 6 year base contract to come into a program with pending scholarship reductions that could extend it. If we would have been actually competing down scholarships for 3 years I'm not sure a 9 year contract wouldn't be warranted. But the fact is we only competed down 1 year which should equate to at 7 year contract.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

Like I said, understand the situation at the time. Which it looks like you don't. D1 Scheduling was a joke but at the time we were hiring, it was being investigated and no one knew what would come out of it including potential hires and the AD. It is very easy for you to say right now that D1 Scheduling was a joke but at that time you had no idea how it would turn out. No one did. don't acct like the contract was signed after the D1 investigation was complete. It wasn't

We were paying crap. Every contract has incentives so you have to go back to base salary. Guaranteed money was/is less than our competitors. If GMac was making $755K here + incentives, other colleges were offering $1 mil + incentives. Less money equals more years. Most coaches sign five year deals so it really only equated to one more year.


I appreciate your condescending tone and all, but it's not my job to understand the situation at the time, it's Pollard's and if he would have spent more than a hour digging into it I think he probably could have figured it out. It's not like the investigation drug on for years. He wanted Wayne gone and the D1 scheduling thing was his vehicle to accomplish that. Based on how he's handled McD, I think it's safe to assume that if the same thing happened to him, Pollard would be standing behing him in support waiting for the facts to sort themselves out.
 
Re: McDermott's Magic Extension: Last Time, I Promise

The new info is great and all; but it doesn't change the fact that Mac is under contract until 2015 and we can't afford a buyout
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Perhaps you didn't notice from the severl pages of posts before yours, but the issue here is that based on wording of his contract, it seems like he really shouldn't be extended to 2015. It also looks like nobody can find any documentation that even says that he is under contract to 2015. Obviously without knowing what his actual contract status is, we don't know how much his buyout is. And without knowing how much his buyout is, you can't really determine if we can afford it.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

What's the point of spending millions building nice practices facilities, locker rooms, athlete study centers when we can't put together enough money to get rid of a failed coach? Heck, the practice facilities, locker rooms and study centers are all well and good. But right now, the coach can't even keep enough players on the team to use those facilities. So we have empty locker rooms, a coach without any real incentive to win, losing records and a new shiny practice facility?????
 
Re: McDermott's Magic Extension: Last Time, I Promise

Bottom line is that we are stuck in a bad contract until 2014-2015 season, which really sucks.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

Also, recall that GMAC was being seriously courted by K-State at the time. They were offering more money and didn't have any stigma lingering over their program (well-other than the fact they were K-State.) Some forget that it wasn't just Iowa State after GMAC.
 
Re: McDermott's Magic Extension: Last Time, I Promise

Bottom line is that we are stuck in a bad contract until 2014-2015 season, which really sucks.

Did you even read the thread? That may not be the case at all.
 
re: All "Gripes" with Greg McDermott

Also, recall that GMAC was being seriously courted by K-State at the time. They were offering more money and didn't have any stigma lingering over their program (well-other than the fact they were K-State.) Some forget that it wasn't just Iowa State after GMAC.

That, or KSU was just using GM as a negotiating ploy to pay Bob Huggins less. ISU was courting both Rob Jeter (was that the name?) and Greg McDermott. KSU was courting Bob Huggins and Greg McDermott. And Greg McDermott was courting both KSU and ISU. Ultimately, Greg McDermott got the sweetest deal in this game.
 

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