A Gigantic Grain of Salt (Lake)
A source sent me this email; it is just more canon fodder on the Urban Meyer debacle.
I DO NOT CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY OF THE CONTENT:
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Here's the current rumor on the Urban Meyer situation:
Meyer was contacted immediately after the decision to fire Ty was made. The call was actually made before the public knew TY was gone. Meyer repeatedly told Graves (who made the initial contact) that he was committed to coming to ND, which triggered the plane ride to SLC. His only insistence over the phone was that the contract be for five years. Graves agreed to this and Jenkins and White flew out to Utah.
Jenkins had little or nothing to do with the decision about who was to be hired or their compensation. The obvious flaws here are that a) nobody discussed dollars at this point, b) we had immediately put all of our eggs in one basket, and c) Jenkins went out as a figure-head, without a lot of flexibility in what he could offer or negotaiate. We were NOT aware of the amount of Florida's offer until after Jenkins and White got to Utah. Meyer had informed Graves over the phone that Florida had made an offer, but he didn't give any details.
Jenkins and White met with Meyer, who dropped the $12 million+ offer from Florida on them. All ND had was a guaranteed $7 million offer with some performance incentives that would push it to $9 million (supposedly) under certain circumstances.
Meyer is stunned and makes the (obvious) point that this is way below fair market value. Jenkins and White assure him that they can work up another offer. They get out of Meyers office and Jenkins and White spend the next couple of hours on the phone (in a private Utah athletic dept. office) with Graves and BOT. Then, a bad thing happens....
Meyer called to Bob Davie. Nobody is really sure what was said, but the SID at Utah (reporting on WNDU) said that Davie told Meyer that "it's not the same Notre Dame" as his previous term there. Meyer meets again with Jenkins and White in his office. They present him an offer matching that of Florida. Meyer mentions that he talked to Davie and says that he needs some "guarantees."
1/ The first request was that football players who want to enroll early (in the spring) be allowed to do so. This was agreed to after some discussion.
2/ The second request was for a number (don't know how many; word is 4-6) academic "exemptions" a year for recruits. After some more discussion, there was an agreement for 3 recruits but the exemption would only extend to the core requirements. Also, Graves would have to approve any of these personally and they would have to post grades and an SAT score high enough to be considered. All Meyer really cared about was the core courses. Apparently, some RB that Meyer was recruiting for us in 1997 had good grades and a fairly good SAT score, but lacked one of the core requirements and so was completley denied.
3/ Meyer kept going and asked to bring in JUCO players. At this point, Jenkins got peeved. Everything pretty much fell apart from there.
Lou was called to see if he could salvage the deal, but he said that he had already talked to him (prior to the Davie call) and that if he wasn't going to make the deal at this point, then it either wasn't going to happen or shouldn't happen at all. When asked about the meat of the conversation, all Lou said was that he told him if he was thinking about taking the job then
he shouldn't take it. This isn't the kind of thing you should have to think about.
Pretty much everybody was in shell-shock after that. Since we had no back-up plan, we left Salt Lake City with our tail between our legs. Graves mentioned Petrino (the current Louisville coach) as the next target. Two BOT members wanted to go after Tedford.
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Whether or not this is the way it went down is anyone's guess. I do, however, have two comments:
1) Is Bob Davie a villan? He apparently told UM that Notre Dame's admission standards would prevent him from recruiting the talent needed to return the Irish to the elite. Did he need Bob Davie to tell him that?
2) UM worked as an asst coach under Holtz and Davie at ND. Anyone remotely associated with Notre Dame would know that jucos are a non-starter. Why would UM even broach the topic? Was UM looking for a way to shuttle a deal?
2 Comments:
I've heard that, yes, Bob Davie did talk to Meyer before the final decision. Of course, the report I heard only said that Davie cautioned Meyer to look very carefully at the job. Potentially, what is noted here could be classified as such.
Still, I don't know that BD would go out of his way to intentionally dissuade anyone from not taking the ND job. After all, BD still loves the school...he still lives in the Bend!
With the passage of time, everyone will move beyond all these monkeyshines and focus on the original crux of the problem: W's & L's.
The whole story below is somewhat suspect, though pieces sound entirely legitimate. I don't claim to know a lick beyond my work at the Observer with regards to journalistic investigation, but who the hell connected all the dots on the "he said she said", phone calls, etc? Did we have a Reality TV crew following the events? Or is there a Nixon-era phone taping system installed in the AD's offices?
The fact that the Dynamic Duo was not sly enough to scrape together the amount of the Florida offer before making one of their own shows an incredible lack of insight and naivete, and violates dozens of business principles. How did they expect to "negotiate" against an unknown quantity? Also, I find it hard to believe that their initial offer was only $7-9mil/5 years since Willingham got more than that. Last, I don't know what Meyer's penalty was for leaving his contract (an amount Florida surely covered) but that must have been a monetary factor to ND's benefit, though not noted.
Just a response to whomever said Davie still loves ND because he "still lives in the Bend." I really hope you're being sarcastic.
From someone who lives here and knows many of the sports figures and news people in town, Bob Davie is still here because his kids are still in school and he doesn't have another coaching job to take them to. That's it.
He has no love for Notre Dame. I was a student here under his tenure, and since he left (and even before) he's had little to say for ND. The best I've heard is backhanded remarks like "There's an arrogance at Notre Dame...not that that's a bad thing."
He's a bitter, resentful man towards the school. He's trashed it openly at every opportunity. I don't know if his involvement with the Meyer thing is true or not, but I've never known him to miss an opportunity to bad-mouth the school that gave him five years to display his mediocrity.
Am I biased? Yes. Do I know if he had anything to do with this mess? No. But, is he a ND fan? Absolutely not.
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