4 million dollars a year aside, I wonder if Richt is already regretting taking a job at the athletic department of the University of Miami.
And, LOL at the Franchise. Guy has never held back in lambasting coaches or players for under-performing (and often been right about it), but is sticking to the party line that the UM athletic department, filled with terrible hires, morons, and Shalala cronies...an athletic department that has fared miserably in just about everything but fundraising over the last decade, didn't yet again make a ******* mess of things.
Honestly, while it sucks that we lost those two players in particular, such things happen when you have a bunch of entitled jocks in big D1 programs. However, to 'investigate' them for months, let them participate in summer drills, and only come to a final decision a week before the season starts is disingenuous to the players and the fanbase. Rather it would've been swept under the rug ala your $EC school, or the players should've been suspended immediately, only a crap institution like UM could continue to handle things in such an incompetent manner that a straightforward impermissible benefits investigation leaves everyone, fanbase, players, coaches, ****ed off. In fact, they managed to take something that should've been straightforward, and turned it into something that will make it harder for Richt to do part of his job (recruit top talent.) You think that being heavy handed with the punishment of two top players, one of them local...blitzing the players and coaches with it a god**** week before the season starts, will help out recruiting in any way, shape, or form?
And **** UM for again being overly cautious pussies: The NCAA has already shown they want to sink the school, and that nothing the school can much do will change that. Lawyer up if you have to, but go to bat for your ******* players, don't throw them under the bus because there's a chance the NCAA might not think you did enough. **** 'em. If you want to play with the big boys, try to act like them, go with the punishment YOU think is correct, don't choose the nuclear option because the shadow of the NCAA makes your ****** shudder.
I have no idea why, after the last decade plus of incompetence, so many of you would go to bat for UM athletics. Seems to me the positives around the program: hiring Richt, Ross renovating the stadium, were more along the lines of fortune finally smiling on this downtrodden, mediocre program than anything this incompetent athletic department has accomplished.