Fire Tubby?

For what it’s worth, Mitch Barnhardt made a statement in support of Tubby:

“Tubby’s our basketball coach,” athletic director Mitch Barnhart told The Associated Press on Monday. “He’s done a great job of representing the platform of Kentucky basketball. We’ll always look to make adjustments to the things we’ve got to do to get better. Tubby and I will do that collectively.”

It’s probably not enough for some UK fans to get off the subject and focus on basketball, but it is for me. I’m very much looking forward to the Villanova game.

Since there has been some recent speculation regarding Tubby’s contract, I dug around on the internets for a little while and decided to post what his current deal is. If you want to see the actual duplicate copies of the contract, the Herald-Leader has a pdf of it here. If you are lazy (like me) and don’t want to read all 14 pages I’ve provided the abbreviated version below. It is worth checking out the real contract if for no other reason than to check out “Tubby’s” signature. I don’t think I’ve ever seen quotes in a signature before, but I don’t really get out much.

For the sake of attribution, this information comes from SI.com around 2003.

Old contract: Tubby Smith
Contract length: 6-year extension thru 2007
Base salary: $180,000
TV, shoe, apparel income: $1.32 million
Country Club membership: No
Cars: 2
Buyout by coach if he leaves for another job: None
Payout by school if coach is fired: $750,000 per year left on the contract
Tidbits: $1 million retention bonus
New: Tubby Smith
Contract length: 8 years thru 2011
Base salary: $200,000
TV, shoe, apparel income: 2003-04: $1.55 million; 2004-05: $1.625 million; 2005-06: $1.7 million; 2006-07: $1.775 million; 2007-08: $1.85 million; 2008-09: $1.925 million; 2009-10: $2.05 million; 2010-11: $2.175 million
Country Club membership:
Cars: 2
Buyout by coach if he leaves for another job: None
Payout by school if coach is fired: $1 million
Tidbits: If the coach is disabled or dies, all salary and benefits are still provided; $1.5 million retention bonus for fulfilling contract thru April 3, 2007; additional $2.5 million bonus for fulfilling contract thru April 3, 2011; $50,000 bonus for NCAA Final Four appearance; $50,000 bonus if team GPA is 3.0 or better and 90% of players meet NCAA satisfactory progress requirements; $15,000 bonus for winning the SEC championship or qualifying for the NCAA tournament; 20 prime, lower level basketball tickets and 8 football tickets; 4 weeks paid vacation; Use of facilities to conduct basketball camps; Earned $50,000 from his basketball camp last year; $15,000 to appear at Michael Jordan’s basketball camp;$5,000 for a speaking appearance by the U.S. Navy and Department of Defense

Wow, this has been a heck of a week, eh? Buyout rumors, Mitch’s very distant assessment of the program and Coach Smith, and crappy rap videos. We have people saying that Tubby’s contract buyout is possible.

Of course, there are still games to be played. Tonight is Senior Night. Nobody’s talking about giving Sheray, Woo and Bobby a good send-off because we’re all stirring the pot. They have worked and played hard for 4 years. The players deserve for us fans to stop screaming at each other and in the general direction of Memorial Coliseum. The players deserve for us to show them some appreciation for being committed to the Big Blue.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how I can shift gears out of fighting mode and back into Big Blue Fan mode. Given recent events, I think I finally found a path back to being a fan for just a little while longer, until the conclusion of the NCAAs.

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Since the Big Blue Moaning is officially at ear-splitting levels, I figured I’d check in on TubbySmith.com, which I addressed earlier in the season. I was expecting the site to be stale, but it appears the maintainers have raised shields in this time of turmoil.

In the past, when you visit the site’s front page, a little Virtual Tubby Smith walks out from the side and welcomes you to the site. Now, Virtual Tubby walks out and says:

Kentucky fans are the best, and they love Wildcat basketball.

I suppose this was probably recorded at the beginning of the year with the rest of these spots. I bet the website maintainers didn’t think they would have to use this generic recording as a response to negative Tubby backlash.

At the bottom of the page, they’ve added a link to Dick Vitale’s January column about Tubby, where Dick calls him “underrated”. You know, just in case some Concerned fans might be clueless about Tubby’s worth as a coach, as given by a well-respected member of the television media.

Changes like these on your website are necessary when you lose 4 out of your last 5 games, I guess. D-Fence! Clap! Clap!

That’s the name of a category over on the Georgia Sports Blog anyway. It’s funny how things work out like that. On one hand you have a very vocal group of UK fans that wish Tubby would have never started here and they can’t wait until he leaves. On the flip side of that you have (I’m assuming here) quite a few Georgia fans that wish Tubby had never left and that he would come back. Although I’m sure that feeling is probably starting to dwindle now that they are having some success and are away from the disastrous Harrick era.

That’s all I have for now. Move along. Come back later.

In case you haven’t heard already, Tubby has his own web site. Here are some highlights from the tour:

• On the main page, a little virtual Tubby Smith walks out from the left side and welcomes you to the site. The Flash chroma-key effect isn’t what I consider “professional web site design”, so I laughed.
• The ‘teacher’ section of the site starts out with a video showing Tubby chest-bump Brandon Stockton, which is one of my top-five Tubby Actions I’ve Ever Seen.
• If you head to the Catland -> Wildcat Lodge link in the top menu, you’ll see a Flash movie of Chuck Hayes doing a MTV Cribs-style tour of the Lodge. I believe the clip is from Tubby’s TV show originally. Anyway, there are few things about the movie, if you’ll watch the whole thing:
  • Wildcat Lodge has to be next on the makeover list for UK Athletics. It is really showing its age. The bedroom windows are hardly big enough to sneak co-eds through.
  • I’m surprised we didn’t get to see Shagari Alleyne’s room. I can imagine that the real reason Shagari had “academic issues” was because he was addicted to World of Warcraft; if we could have seen his room, telltale signs of WoW addiction would have shown, such as several discarded bags of Cheetos and a big orange-stained PC. (BTW, if you ever see a level 60 gnome by the name of ‘SwatMaster21′, we’ll all know its true.
  • Chuck shows off Marquis Estelle’s old dorm room fridge. He also shows off his Dodge Ram named “Bertha”. I guess he can’t afford getting a pimped-out SUV due to all the shoes he has (which he shows off).
• There is an Ask Tubby page, where he will answer your questions you email in. I’d like to know the percentage of messages Tubby’s message handlers will get that are 1) letters attempting to get him to quit and 2) personal attacks. My guess is it will be at least 15%, maybe hovering close to 20%. You stay classy, Kentucky Wildcat fans!
• There’s also a Tubby’s Analysis page, where he breaks down happenings during the season. Currently only pre-College of Charlston analysis is up, where Tubby reveals that, “Bobby Cremins and I are actually good friends. We’ve known one another for some time and competed against each other annually when I was at Georgia and he was at Georgia Tech. It’s good to have Bobby back in the game, and I know he’ll have College of Charleston ready to play.”

I really didn’t want to do this on my first real posting. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to enter the sickening Big Blue Hole that is Richard Cheeks and the “Concerned Fans For UK Basketball.”

His group has gotten some nice publicity due to the Kentucky Kernel (UK’s Student Newspaper) refusing to publish an ad which was an open letter to [UK President] Lee Todd and [UK Athletics Director] Mitch Barnhart calling for Tubby’s dismissal. Here’s a clip of an email Mr. Cheeks posted on the alt.sports.college.sec.kentucky newsgroup where Kernel Editor-In-Chief Chris Poore explains why the Kernel declined the ad:

We didn’t run Cheeks’ ad because it had suspect factual statements in it that, if we ran, could be construed as libel, which is lying about someone in print to defame them. […] If Cheeks’ ad runs, edited by him, in the paper, it will be because it doesn’t contain any information we know to be false that is represented as fact.

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