San Diego State University fired its head football coach, Chuck Long, last November after his third straight losing season. So why’s he still keeping office hours?
Mr. Long, a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy but a coach whose Aztec teams went a combined 9-27, has a clause in his contract guaranteeing him $715,900 per year through December 31, 2010, as long as he keeps working at the university. If he gets a new job, he forgoes the money.
Not many takers on the job market these days — surely no one willing to pay a losing coach that kind of coin. So like a modern-day George Costanza, Mr. Long is hanging around the campus doing “projects and analysis.”
San Diego State is paying an outside consultant $125 an hour to work out a settlement. And university officials say that $1-million has been pledged to pay off the former coach’s contract, but it’s not clear how much of that has come through.
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