Friday, October 14, 2005
Frank heading back to the bank
Randy King
Randy King's Tech Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
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I'll take a free pass for being a day late here this week. Just blame Frank "The Bank" Beamer for my tardiness.
As I getting ready to fire up the Insider on Thursday afternoon, word began to break out of Blacksburg that Beamer had agreed to terms on a seven-year contract with Tech that sweetened his already sweet deal with a new, fresh dump-truck load of sugar.
Five days before turning 59, Beamer was the smiling recipient of one heck of a birthday gift -- a tidy, little $570,170 raise that bumped his guaranteed annual salary to $2.08 million. The deal also includes additional incentive bonuses through the 2012 season, and includes a three-year option should Beamer care to keep coaching past age 66.
While the additional incentive bonuses weren't specified, Beamer already had one of the -- if the not the best -- postseason perks package in the country. Take last season, for example. By winning the ACC title and making a BCS bowl appearance, Beamer raked in approximately $550,000 in bonuses and outside endorsement income.
Add it up and Beamer fell just $13,000 -- mere pocket change to him -- short of making $2 million last season.
In addition, Beamer sought and got the pay raises for his nine assistant coaches that he so craved from Tech athletic director Jim Weaver. The assistants will divide a $100,000 pot on Jan. 1, 2006, then divy up another $100K on July 1, 2006. That's in addition to their normal five-percent pay raises per year.
The total assistants pay will now amount to about $1.4 million per year, which is fair market value and put Beamer's boys in line with other perennial top-10 programs.
Weaver had no choice but bend in the end in regards to the assistants' compensation request from Beamer. The AD realizes that his coach is the closest thing to God to the faithful of Hokie Nation and getting a deal done was paramount.
Weaver really no choice. Although Beamer really didn't have a leverage hammer -- everybody knows he doesn't want to go anywhere -- Weaver still had to ante up to all the coach's requests because there would been a lynch mob assembling in his front yard if he had somehow alienated Beamer and let him and his loyal staff slip away to another school willing to pony up enough bucks.
Let Beamer slide and hire a new guy who can't match the won-loss record, and Weaver's legacy -- the expansion of Lane Stadium -- could have turned into a black hole. Sixty-six thousand and some seats mean absolutely nothing if you can't fill 'em all.
Besides, five years from now, the way coaching salaries have been on the rise, Beamer's deal will likely look like a bargain to Weaver and Tech.
As bad as it was at the time, the late-season collapse of the talented 2003 team -- on top of similar fold jobs the previous two years -- seems to have rekindled the fire under Beamer and his staff. Beamer & Co. has done its best coaching job the past year and a half, leading a team picked to finish sixth to the ACC title in the school's inaugural season in the league in 2004. This season, the Hokies are 6-0 out of the gate and considered a strong bet to go undefeated, win another ACC crown, and be a serious contender for the national title.
On top of everything, Beamer is a Hokie. He's a Tech guy. He played football at Tech. And the loyal Hokie followers love him to death. He's one of their own.
Beamer may have come from the hills of Carroll County, but this ol' country boy is one of the shrewdest businessmen on the block. When his longtime agent, Craig Kelley, died last year, he checked around and hired Jimmy Sexton as his new deal-driver. Sexton, who operates out of Memphis, Tenn., has blitzed his way into the elite of agenthood the past couple years. He recently worked $2 million-a-year deals for Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer and Auburn's Tommy Tuberville before finding a ticket for Beamer on the same money train.
Although exact numbers would take a while to dig up, Beamer's new contract is definitely top-10 on the money chart. Other coaches known to be making $2 million in guaranteed salary are Southern California's Pete Carroll, Texas' Mack Brown, Florida State's Bobby Bowden, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Florida's Urban Meyer, plus Fulmer and Tuberville.
While Beamer said during the negotiations that money wasn't an issue to him, there is an elite status attached to being paid among the best in your line of employment. Beamer certainly has qualified for the group, taking the Hokies to 12 consecutive bowl games while posting a gaudy 117-37 record over the past dozen-plus seasons.
A guy who was close to being fired after a 2-9-1 season in 1992 has turned to pure gold since. Combined with his other outside business interests -- I'm told that Beamer owns a couple of Outback Steakhouses -- and product endorsement commercials, Beamer has enough green to buy his entire hometown of Fancy Gap.
Plus, when you're Frank Beamer, you don't have to pay for much in Blacksburg. His contract pays for his Blacksburg Country Club membership. He and his wife, Cheryl, each are given plush, loaner cars to tool around town in. I know the guy doesn't have to pay for a meal when he goes to Beamers, the Christiansburg restaurant that pays him to bear his name.
Blacksburg to Starkville, Miss., sounds like an expensive trip. Well, I don't care how many times Cheryl Beamer flies to Mississippi State to watch her son, Shane, coach. She'll never run out of loot, even is she starts chartering a private jet.
I couldn't help but chuckle last night when I turned on the television and the first thing I saw was Beamer working the lot of Brambleton Imports in Roanoke. Here's Beamer endorsing all these wonderful "pre-owned" vehicles. I couldn't resist wondering to myself, "When is the last time this guy has driven a used car?"
Hey, all I can say is it's a nice gig if you can get it.
A couple of weeks ago, my 16-year-old son, Justin, came home from another long day of school and football practice at Northside High. The 6-foot-1, 240-pound offensive tackle appeared a little down. So I asked him, "what's wrong, man?"
"Dad, I don't want to weigh 300 pounds," he said. "Every offensive lineman I see playing college ball on TV weighs 300 or more. I think I want to get into coaching instead. Coaches don't have to run sprints, either."
Smart kid, I say.
Go for it, boy. Who knows, maybe you can help the old man out one day. This 1992 Chevy Lumina isn't going to last much longer.
