Fnancial Success by Being a Unsuccessful Football Coach

Ideally, one should choose a life's work that is socially useful, stimulating, respectable, financially renumerating, and gives you joy in your life.  On the other hand, most of us mortals have to work with what we can get.

Millenials have read a number of lists of most needed and best-paying occupations; hopefully to guide them in making this golden decision.  On the other hand, some choose poorly: they become meth lab specialists, prostitutes, used car salesmen, and politicians.  But, clearly, the real magabucks come if you are lucky enough to be  Fortune 500 company CEO or a football coach.

A football coach?  Now, very few get to coach on the Division one level; and they get big bucks for doing so.   It's a high-pressure job, with the administration and alumni (less often alumnae) riding on your case if you do not at least produce a conference championship.  Respectability?  Judging by salaries, they are more highly regarded than college presidents or state governors.  Maybe I'd better not pursue this idea too much further, though!

This year, three of the 14 SEC football coaches bit the dust: Derek Dooley of Tennessee, Joker Phillips of Kentucky, and Gene Chizik of Auburn.  All of those institutions had previously replaced other coaches with them.  There seems to be a coach merry-go-round, with new riders regularly.

The result: Tennessee and Auburn have to eat the costs of the big bucks contracts by buyouts of 5 million and 7.5 million dollars, respectively.  That is serious pain for all but Harvard and Yale, institutions that might be satisfied with victories over Vermont Home for Unwed Mothers or Massachuetts or Dartmouth.  Kentucky, by contrast, was in the hole by only 2.5 million dollars.  Presumably they put their money in basketball.

So this my cunning plan:

1)  Get hired as a Head Coach at some ACC or SEC university with a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract.  This would require persuasive skills to be enumerated later.

2)  Absolutely guarantee the fans a victorious season in the first year, a conference championship in the second year, and a national championship in the final year.  Promise them beans, and deliver a flatus.

3)  Give a lot of rah-rah speeches to alumni groups and appar on Sports Talk Radio to work everyone's expectations to their max.

4)  Now the cunning plan begins to take place:  First, have a loss to a homecoming game-quality opponent, followed by an embarrassing loss to a conference opponent.

5)  To adjust for problems on defense, I will hire some clown to deal with defense problems.

6)  If the offense is feeble, I will try new strategies, like drop-kicking field goals and punting on third down.  Hey, Carrot Top would make a neat offensive line coach!

7)  Hopefully, by mid-season the football fanatics will holler for my head; and I will have to take up lodging in a downtown hotel under an assumed name.  The hue and cry to fire me will grow and grow.

8)  Finally, the university will fire me, and continue to honor my multimillion dollar contract.  Imagine: getting paid without working!

9)  I will then immigrate to the Cote d'Azure and finish out the season, leading a life of indolent bliss.

10)  After two or three years of living incognito, I will make occasional appearance as a sports commentator on ESPN.

All I need now is to convince some naive Athletic Director who will sell me to the alumni. 

However, my reverie aside, probably the best I would be hired for is Assistant Cheerleader Coach.