The University of Wyoming (where I spent my four undergraduate years - or, was it five....)built a wonderful basketball and other event arena in the mid-80s for $15 million. I have no idea how it was financed but I think 10,000 sold seats for 15 men's basketball games a year would pay the mortgage and maintenance - and then some.
I just happened upon this article yesterday in the sports section of the Tucson paper.
azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona Saturday, 16 March 2002
Bucks keep Cowboys' coach in saddle
By Greg Hansen
ALBUQUERQUE - Wyoming is so taken with its young basketball coach that it has given Steve McClain a piece of the action.
Every Cowboy fan (and even those non-Wyoming fans who mosey over the border from des-pised Colorado State) pays a 75 cent per-ticket tax to McClain. The Wyoming high command uses a different language in an attempt to avoid someone writing that McClain is holding the place hostage.
"It's a contractual incentive," said UW athletic director Lee Moon.
Nevertheless, McClain earned $105,275 from the ticket tax this season. Could anyone in the great state of Wyoming have been happier than McClain two weeks ago when the Cowboys drew a record crowd of 16,089 for a title-clinching game against Utah? Not likely.
McClain earned his money and the Cowboys earned a 57-56 win in a game for the ages to claim the Mountain West Conference regular-season title.
Those who habit the Pac-10 and think Pullman, Wash., gets a bad rap should do a study of Laramie, Wyo. Pullman is the Hilton to Laramie's Red Roof Inn. The Cowboys change head coaches, what, every 18 months? McClain's predecessor, Larry Shyatt wasn't in town that long; he spent 11 months in Laramie before bolting for the job at Clemson.
No longer does a sports fan have to visit Home Depot to buy a steppingstone. Wyoming has an NCAA-record surplus.
The late John Mooney, a nice guy not given to idle ridicule, and dean of sports columnists in the Mountain West Conference, wrote: "Laramie is a nice place to visit - if you happen to be there on the day it is summer."
Yes, it's cold in Laramie the way it's hot in Gila Bend, but Wyoming has become a consistent regional power in its major sports, football and basketball, and the school would like to keep it that way. Thus, it catapulted its boyish-looking coach (McClain is 39, and claims to have attended, as a high school student in Orient, Iowa, Lute Olson's Hawkeye Basketball Camp 20 years ago) into a much higher tax bracket.
McClain, formerly an assistant coach at TCU, enjoyed a five-minute honeymoon when hired by Wyoming in the spring of 1998. After that, the Cowboy Joe Nation gave him all the time he required - 30 seconds, perhaps - to confirm that he wouldn't abandon the school the way so many football and basketball coaches have done in the last 20 years.
"It was a very volatile situation," McClain was saying Friday before his team's workout at The Pit. "I had to earn the Wyoming fans respect, and I had to get their trust."
McClain has done that and more. The Cowboys have won back-to-back MWC championships, and Thursday's rousing victory over favored Gonzaga surely made McClain the most popular man in Wyoming since mountainman Jim Bridger.
Now they want to assure that he doesn't take the first stage out of town, much like ex-Wyoming coaches Dennis Erickson, Joe Tiller and Dana Dimel, who didn't stick around long enough to get to know the difference between Cody and Casper.
The UW gives McClain $20 for each season ticket sold in excess of 3,000. It tripled the amount of a potential buyout, to $300,000, to be given to McClain if the school ever fires him. His compensation package soared from $350,000 to about $560,000 this year, which puts him at a level with Arizona State's Rob Evans and Oregon's Ernie Kent.
You can say that McClain is sufficiently paid to be expected to win the big games. The school has rarely played any bigger than today's game against Arizona.
"At times, we let the pressure get to us," said McClain of Wyoming's bumpy ride through the regular season, in which the Cowboys lost to Boise State, Detroit and twice had to go to overtime to beat (gasp) Air Force. You can forget that now. A victory over Arizona today would make McClain a Sweet Sixteen coach, and what school in need of a coach (DePaul or Florida State, perhaps?) wouldn't target the man from Wyoming?
There is no secret.
"If (a recruit) needs a big city where there are 20 nightclubs, then don't come to Wyoming," McClain said Friday. "When I recruit a player, I take them out to the Cavalryman (restaurant) where they have a bunch of deer heads sticking out from the wall. Hey, that's Wyoming."
Whatever, it's working.
McClain has won 60 games across the last three seasons, and he has done so with a decidedly non-Wyoming roster. The team that plays Arizona today includes players from Chicago, Nigeria and Los Angeles. The point is: If he can win there, he can win anywhere.
Imagine what they'd pay for a Sweet Sixteen coach at DePaul |
