Monday, December 31, 2007

Fire Rick Neuheisel For Sale: $250,000

Now that Slick Rick Neuheisel is back in the game, so is his domain.

But if you want the hottest domain name going — Fire Rick Neuheisel.com — get ready to pay. A Michigan man named Mike owns the site and has the following terms of sale:
  • You must donate $75,000 to the University of Colorado general scholarship fund.
  • You must donate $75,000 to the University of Washington scholarships for students program.
  • You must donate $100,000 to the Teach for America program.
We contacted Mike and he explained the reasons behind his unusual demands:

Why did you purchase the site?

Mostly as a kiss off/parody of other "Fire X" sites. This was at the time of the height of popularity of the Ron Zook site. Major college athletics is very broken right now in many respects, this is where I think fans become way, way too involved. I really don't think a slight dip in a program's quality should be worth having a coach being fired.

And of course, to a fan, the only measure of quality is wins and losses, not how many special cases your program has to bring in to get those wins or whether or not your coach is teaching athletes to become the leaders of tomorrow. It's just a game. If a team's success or lack thereof affects you in any way, unless you are directly involved with the program as a player or coach, you have problems.

Why did you post the message you did?

As much as I hate the "Fire X" sites, Rick Neuheisel to me is another person who is a major problem with college athletics. He has no regard for any part of the college experience that doesn't involve his football team nor the rules that try to keep college football from not being NFL Triple-A ball. And for Washington having to pay millions of dollars to pay him off was sickening to me.

Secondly, I am really getting sick of the amount of money that is thrown around now in major college athletics. Why should a football coach make millions of dollars? If it's a private school or your athletic department is self-sustaining (meaning no money from students at all), then sure, go ahead, pay all you want. But even the ones that claim they are self-sustaining are not, since they usually have to charge students for tickets.

To me, this was the perfect combination of combining the ludicrousness of the "Fire X" site with the obscenity of the money being thrown around and schools' willingness to latch on to obvious problem cases if it can mean a few extra wins.

Do you work in academia?

No. I chose the education groups involved because a college/university, after all, is supposed to be about the education. I'm not some ivory tower snob, I see a lot of college athletics. I have Michigan football and hockey season tickets and I regularly attend softball, baseball and water polo. Although I really don't know how much longer for football. My season ticket is approaching $500. For eight games. Absolutely ridiculous.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two hundred and fifty large? Good luck with that!

Anonymous said...

I'd like for Mike to list the 50 strikes against Rick Neuheissel. (msp?)

Anonymous said...

GO BUFFS!!!!