San Diego State Defines Incompetence

There's always an endless fascination with finding programs that can be considered "sleeping giants." Those are the schools where it seems that with a little work and the right coach, the program could go from bottom feeder to ranked and respectability.

Rutgers is the most recent example of a football program that had the natural recruiting territory and finally made the move from historical laughing stock to good program. The mistake is assuming that it all related to simply hiring and retaining the right coach to recruit, coach and change the culture. There's no denying the importance of that. The other component, though, is just as important: a competent and committed athletic department. Without the latter, no real change will happen -- no matter who is hired.

On the West Coast, San Diego State holds the distinction as the program most commonly considered a "sleeping giant." Often just slightly below .500 and occasionally competent there was much working for them.

California, and particularly the San Diego area, is a particularly valuable recruiting area. San Diego is a beautiful city. The Aztecs play in the Mountain West, which has some very good programs but is not so strong that a program like San Diego State could not rise quickly and sustain the progress.

The problem is that the San Diego State athletic department does not have the competence to finish a job. Whether it is the debacle of the lease conflict still going with the city of San Diego over Qualcomm Stadium, or the ongoing mess with the former head coach the Aztecs .

When San Diego State decided to fire Chuck Long, the issue was not about whether they should or not. After three seasons and a Greg Robinson-esque 9-27 record, there was no question that Long had earned his termination. The issue was money. SDSU still had to pay the remaining two years on Long's contract at a total of $1.4 million. For an athletic department that had already been running yearly deficits, this was a problem.

Luckily, the school raised student fees and private donors kicked in nearly a million towards the buyout. Long was fired and Brady Hoke was brought in following a successful run at Ball State. Yet, somehow that was not the end.

It turns out that the braintrust at SDSU had worked Long's contract so that rather than actually firing him, they removed him to work on "special projects." Something Long is not particularly interested in doing, but will do because he doesn't collect $700-thousand this year and next without doing it.

It took San Diego State over six months to figure this was not a healthy plan. The school did not do the simple thing, and work it out so that they could pay him the difference between $700,000 and what he would get as an assistant coach somewhere (admittedly a little late to do that this year), or simply work out some plan where Long gets his money and leaves the campus.

Instead the school that already had money problems in the athletic department, and like most California universities is facing a major budget crunch, has decided to spend more money. They hired an outside consultant to negotiate a deal.

Dan Kelley, former labor relations manager for the city of San Diego, has been brought in to mediate a way out of an awkward contract situation for Long and SDSU.

"The only thing I'll say about that is we are negotiating, and we're hopeful of a good outcome," SDSU Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel said.

Long was fired as football coach last November but is being paid $715,900 per year until his contract runs out on Dec. 31, 2010. In the meantime, Long is being required to keep office hours on campus and do "projects" through the remainder of his contract.

The goal is to get Long out of the arrangement while saving SDSU some of the money. Which again, if they had let him pursue assistant coaches jobs, could have resulted in that deal. The plan now is hiring an outside consultant at $125 per hour to make the deal happen.

Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel previously argued that Long's contract was better for SDSU "because we don't have any obligation to pay the difference."

The defense of the contract was laughable at the time, and clearly is shown to be idiocy in light of the present negotiations to end that clause.

For new coach Brady Hoke's sake, hopefully he's got nearly as good a contract. Even if Hoke does the surprising thing and starts turning around SDSU, the competence and questionable commitment from the Aztec athletic department makes it likely that Hoke will be poached by another program before long.