1. BIG PAPA DOES A BURNOUT ON YOUR ATHLETIC PROGRAM. HIS ATHLETIC PROGRAM
The first instance of someone messing with your football program this week: John Schnatter, aka BIG PAPA, aka Daddy Burnout, aka MC Botox, aka the biggest booster of the Louisville athletic program.
The pizza sultan of Kentuckiana aired his grievances about Louisville’s leadership in a meeting of the board of trustees this week. The complaints centered primarily on the lack of public presence by Louisville leadership—i.e. their athletic director Tom Jurich, a lifer who’s been at the job since 1997.
Tom Jurich hired Bobby Petrino twice. That’s not entirely relevant to this conversation, it’s just fun to point out that there is someone on the planet who did that.
Yung Garlic Butter also played the rather nasty move of pointing out in pretty exact numbers that the Louisville athletic program runs on financial terms not too dissimilar to yours, most likely. Oh, and he reminded everyone who paid for the stadium, and who...owns it? John Schnatter sort of says he owns the stadium here.
“We’re doing this by the skin of our teeth. We’re going to put $60 million in a stadium – by the way, it’s my stadium,” Schnatter said, laughing. “And we’re $5 million over budget and we’ve got 10 days cash on hand. That’s crazy.”
If you have ten days cash on hand, you’re doing better than the Louisville athletic program right now. Oh, and you’re probably not expanding a stadium, either, which is a sound financial decision on your part if true. If you are expanding a stadium, shame on you for not following the NFL’s lead and threatening to move unless your neighbors pay for it.
This is the first instance of someone with power and/or money attempting to influence your football program today, and the only one involving someone who does burnouts in front of a captive audience during his team’s football games. He also said you couldn’t fix the university until you fixed athletics? There’s some strangeness going on in Louisville.
2. NO ONE INVOLVED IN WEST VIRGINIA THINGS HAS A NAME THAT DID NOT COME FROM A SCRIPT ABOUT WEST VIRGINIA.
This instance of someone messing with your football program comes from West Virginia, and is for once NOT about West Virginia University.
Marshall’s football team, coached by DOC HOLLIDAY, went 3-9 in 2016. West Virginia’s current governor, JIM JUSTICE, is a Marshall graduate and football fan. If you’re familiar with the long history of West Virginia politicians meddling in football matters, you can fill in the rest. If not, well, we’ll keep going to you can get a taste for how this goes.
First, JIM JUSTICE had a meeting when he was governor-elect with the president of Marshall University, JEROME GILBERT, about the Marshall football team’s struggles, clearly a high priority for any incoming governor in the state of West Virginia, a state that literally has no other problems of any kind. It’s very important that when news of a governor futzing around with a football program comes out that everyone stay cool and deny everything, which is exactly what JEROME—-
“I probably shouldn’t comment on any of that,” Gilbert said Wednesday evening. “I want to maintain a good relationship with the governor, and it’s unfortunate that this information got out.”
—yes that’s not what Jerome did.
Three months later, JIM JUSTICE again called a meeting, this time with five members of the Marshall board of governors to get rid of DOC HOLLIDAY and replace him with former Marshall coach BOBBY PRUETT, whose name only really gets all-caps here for being acceptably bumpkin-ish, and not ripped directly from the galleys of The Wettest County in the World. Pruett was the coach for the Randy Moss era at Marshall, and is one season shy of qualifying for the ten seasons necessary to be inducted into the CFB Hall of Fame.
Let’s take a quick breather to watch RANDY MOSS beat some ass in the open field and marvel at nature’s miracles.
[swoons for ten minutes]
Right.
The takeaway: Doc Holliday now knows for sure-sure that the governor wants him fired. Imagine going to your normal, everyday job today thinking “it’s a beautiful spring day, and also the governor woke up thinking about how to get me canned.” It has to be an invigorating feeling, like being chased by the police at 20 mph all the time wherever you go, forever, until it ends.
Also, we’ll leave you with the name of the Marshall University board of governors members, all of whom are real people, and at least two of which should be in a special two-hour Justified movie experience.
The five board members who met with Justice in March are WYATT SCAGGS, James Bailes, OSHEL CRAIGO, Tim Dagostine and Christie Kinsey.