Pitchin with Pritch: High school winter sports season underway
The winter sports season for high school students is underway with regular season games in girls and boys basketball and wrestling meets.
It’s been a busy week in college sports as well with mens and women’s basketball, football conference championship games and the start of the NCAA volleyball tournament.
Add to that a whole bunch of hiring, firing, retiring and resigning in college and professional football.
There also was some pretty interesting moving around of coaches and in that movement, some surprises and unbelievable salaries given to some head coaches.
Husker basketball
First of all, the women’s basketball team at Nebraska is off to a great start and have already hit the 100-point mark a couple of times. This is one of the best starts to a season that the women have had in a number of seasons.
The men’s team hasn’t gotten off to that kind of start though. It looks to me there are a number of areas they must improve if they are going to have any success in the Big 10.
I think they have as much talent that Coach Hoiberg has in his few years at Nebraska. Hoiberg has a reputation for being able to take transfer players and make very competitive teams with them.
They suffered a four overtime loss to North Carolina State and fell to Indiana over the weekend.
Against N.C. State, the Huskers lost a 14-point lead with about 10 minutes left in the game. Then they couldn’t hit free-throws when they needed to in the overtimes.
Both teams put up at least 100 points but it was Nebraska who ended up on the short end 104-100.
Another Big 10 team did the opposite of the Huskers as Ohio State was down by 15 to Duke, the number one team in the nation, and came back and defeated the Duke team 71-66. The Big 10 is going to be a tough road to travel for the Huskers. Let’s hope the Huskers get things figured out soon.
Coaching carousal
Another area that I found interesting was in the football coaching changes that were made this past week. There were all kinds of perks for coaches who have been successful the past few years.
I think that the time when coaches stayed at one school for long periods of time and were successful and made very decent salaries will almost certainly be very rare.
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly left the Irish for LSU. And when I mean he left, he signed the papers one evening, met with the team for about four minutes the next morning and was gone. He signed a 10-year contract with LSU worth $95 million, plus additional incentives.
The other big change was at Oklahoma. Lincoln Riley was made one of the highest-paid coaches in college football in 2020 when he signed an extension with Oklahoma.
His previous deal had been a five-year, $32 million deal in 2019 before signing a six-year, $45.2 million deal in July 2020. That included a two-year extension to keep him in Norman through 2025.
He is leaving that behind to become the USC head coach. It is reported that Riley will make $100 million at USC, plus USC will buy both his homes—one in Norman for $500,000 and one in California costing $6 million.
There will also be unlimited use of a private jet 24/7 for him and his family.
Not all coaches make that kind of money, and if you compare schools and coaches and their salaries, you might wonder how some schools even find a coach.
Look at the difference between what USC is paying and what Nebraska pays. There is a big difference but I think I could live with what Nebraska is paying and wouldn’t even miss not having a private jet like Riley will have.