By early Sunday evening, word was out that Gus Malzahn was on the verge of accepting an unprecedented $21 million 7-year package to become the head coach at Vanderbilt. Not bad for somebody who was coaching high school ball five years ago.
Except that 24 hours later, Auburn was announcing they were nearly tripling his salary to keep him down on the Plains, putting him on $1.3M a year as an assistant coach – itself almost an unprecedented sum.
The obvious question at this point – was he ever actually serious about the Vandy offer or were we just something for him to use to squeeze Auburn? And was our administration actually serious about pursuing him, or did the media just run with a name and he leveraged the opportunity? And above all, why didn’t Vanderbilt roll somebody out yesterday evening – I know it’s 5 PM on a Sunday, I don’t care, this is 2010 and news doesn’t wait for opening of business on Monday morning – to at least say “there is no deal, this is all hype, we have nothing to say one way or the other” and damp down the speculation?
It’s a bad situation for Vanderbilt now. They went all in and the other guys flopped the nuts. Now we have to go back with hat in hand to one of the guys who we were allegedly calling last night to thank for their interest before we went in another direction, which almost guarantees we’ll be overpaying for somebody else’s OC. And of course, the Mike Leach option is still on the table, but that’s the wildest of wild cards and something I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with.
For a few hours, though, it looked as if the push was actually on – that the administration was doubling down on a commitment to take Vanderbilt Commodore football to the same level as the baseball and basketball programs: perennial national ranking and regular postseason participant. It remains to be seen whether they can muster the enthusiasm for another push with whoever the second choice turns out to be…or if that person can really get us over the hump.