Well, this is certainly an interesting twist on the whole move to possibly “bump up the stipends” Div. 1-A football players receive.
At the SEC spring meetings Wednesday, South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier tossed out an interesting proposal to the other 11 head coaches in the conference: pay the 70-member traveling parties for each squad $300 per player, per game. Where Spurrier went off the beaten path, however, was the fact that his proposal would require the money to come out of the head coach’s pocket.
And this wasn’t some type of Spurrier schtick, like having himself handcuffed and “arrested” earlier this year. No, the Ol’ Ball Coach was deadly serious, as shown by the fact that he put his proposal to a “vote”.
Somewhat surprisingly, the non-binding, no-chance-in-hell-it-happens “legislation” was signed by Alabama’s Nick Saban, Florida’s Will Muschamp, Tennessee’s Derek Dooley, LSU’s Les Miles, Ole Miss’ Houston Nutt and Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen along with Spurrier. That’s seven coaches who approved of the off-the-wall proposal, but it also means there were five coaches, armed with Spurrier’s “I’m gonna tell the media who doesn’t sign” warning, who “didn’t want to talk about it": Georgia’s Mark Richt, Vanderbilt’s James Franklin, Arkansas’ Bobby Petrino, Auburn’s Gene Chizik and Kentucky’s Joker Phillips.
Spurrier’s “proposal” certainly wouldn’t come cheap; at the rate The OBC proposed, each SEC coach would have to dig deep enough into his own pocket to pull out $252,000 just for the regular season. Toss in an SEC title game appearance and/or a bowl game, and that total would be approaching $300,000.
Of course, and as we stated earlier, there is almost no chance in hell that Spurrier’s proposal gets adopted by the SEC let alone the whole of Div. 1-A football.
Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post tweeted that “Spurrier indicated that the SEC athletic directors did not seem to take his idea seriously.” And, as noted by Cecil Hurt of the Tuscaloosa News on Twitter, “Spurrier’s proposal is a non-starter rules-wise.”
It will though, spur some serious discussion about ways to begin bridging the gap between scholarships and what it actually costs to attend a university. And the discussion angle, we’re thinking, was likely the biggest reason for Spurrier’s proposal in the first place.