Compared to Jimbo, Bowden got pennies
You want to really know how things have changed in college football? Just take a look at Florida State.
Coach left FSU on Friday, accepting a reported 10-year, $75 million guaranteed contract to coach the Aggies at Texas A&M. It’s said to be the richest contract ever in college football.
The man FSU hired to coach football before Fisher, the legendary
was not lured to Tallahassee with such riches.
After the 1975 season, FSU replaced coach
who had won a total of four games over two seasons. The candidates the Seminoles considered were Maryland coach Pitt coach
Texas Tech’s N.C. State’s Tallahassee Leon High coach
and Bowden, who had just coached West Virginia to a 9-3 record and a Peach Bowl win.
Despite many FSU fans wanting Cox and his prostyle passing offense, FSU hired Bowden in January 1976.
The Seminoles opened their proverbial checkbook to give their new coach a four-year contract with an annual salary of … $37,500.
That’s not a typo. No zeros were left out.
It was $37,500. For a full year. Seriously.
Sure, it was 41 years ago — but doesn’t that seem a little low to pay a man who would go on to win 304 games and two national championships for the Seminoles?
Hmm, let’s go back to College Economics 101 for just a minute. Students, please consider ...
According to U.S. Census Bureau, the average U.S. salary in 1976 was $14,922. So, Bowden was making just a little more than 21⁄2 times what a typical American not coaching college football was making back then.
Fisher, with a new annual salary of $7.5 million, will make approximately 100 times what an average American with an advanced degree makes today (roughly $75,000).
If you think something like that would make Bowden say, “Dadgummit,” imagine what this would do to him:
Keeping that starting salary of $37,500 back in 1976, Bowden would have COMMENTARY had to coach until the Year 3976 — yes, 2,000 seasons — to equal the $75 million Fisher will earn in 10 seasons. (And even in 3976, fans would still be asking Bowden why he ever hired son to coach the offense.)
But don’t feel too bad for Bobby. By the time he retired as the Seminoles’ coach in 2009, he was making more than $2.5 million a year — which is close to the amount of change Fisher will lose each year in his new Texas sofa.
The Magic are in the Big Apple for a game this afternoon against the New York Knicks, and I have to wonder if will be there.
No, not the 6-foot-9 power forward. I mean
the mildmannered transit writer for The Village Voice in NYC.
Early last month, a fan of the Magic’s Aaron Gordon found out there was another person with the name Aaron Gordon on Twitter. He tweeted to the nonbasketball-playing Aaron Gordon: “… You really need to change your Twitter name(.) You’re just some political reporter(.) Don’t be ripping off athletes for views.”
To which not-our Aaron Gordon replied, “That’s not just my Twitter name. That’s my name.”
He added, “Let me get this straight: you want me to legally change my name because someone was born several years after me with the same name and went on to play professional basketball and you can’t fathom there might be multiple people by that name and that upsets you?”
All of this caught the attention of the Magic’s Gordon, who retweeted the exchange and told his namesake, “Stay strong, AG. Don't let the haters get to you.”
He told Orlando Sentinel Magic writer
recently, “It’s not often I respond on Twitter, but that was funny. It really, really tickled me.
“I thought it was hysterical. I was laughing hard about that. Somebody really wanted him to change his name and then the fact that he had come 15 years before me — it’s so, so funny.”
By the way, a quick check showed at least 19 other Aaron Gordons on Twitter — all of whom have apparently been screwed over in the NBA Dunk Contest.
I’m kidding. But for future reference:
Magic player Aaron Gordon’s Twitter handle is @Double0AG
New York journalist Aaron Gordon’s Twitter handle is @A_W_Gordon
As Knights fans deal with the news that coach
is leaving after two wonderfully successful seasons at UCF, they should remember the famous quote attributed to
“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”