HJS {l Wrote}:MilitantEagle {l Wrote}:I'd be shocked if SDSU hired him. I can't see why anybody would hire Bates. We'll have to fire him.
You don't have to fire someone who no longer has a contact. Think Office Space.
For Bates, it's an obvious monster step back. But, location and it being a decent MAC-level program makes sense for him. For SDST, you can also see the attraction. Regardless of what we think, his resume remains impressive. Pretty easy for him to spin it as being impossible to win at because of an institutional lack of support. Also, SDST got a little taste of the political nature of conference realignment and may feel that an experienced AD would help in such a world. Finally, let's be fair... our hatred for Buttcut really centers on his utter inability to hire a competent head coach in any sport (despite having many available to him). From SDST's perspective, they could believe that the coaches hired by Bates would be great for their level (and they'd be largely right). Much like how a failing in the NFL isn't a negative for a guy looking to coach in college, same for someone who struggled at the worst athletic program trying to compete on the cheap in the Power 5.
Bates won't have to hire any coaches for the foreseeable future at SDSU. The hoops team is coached by Steve Fischer, the former HC at Michigan (the Fab 5....Chris Webber and the infamous time out) and he has put together a string of 10+ years of 19+ win seasons and multiple NCAA and NIT appearances. Really solid mid-major program. In football, the HC is Rocky Long who is in his 60's, is currently riding a 2 year unbeaten conference winning streak (the polar opposite of what Dazzler is doing) and had the Aztecs ranked in the Top 25 for a while earlier this year. Both coaches are older and may just retire in a few years but they have an active booster/alumni base and they have committed resources to basketball. Football? it is a meh program overall as it is stuck in the MWC. It plays a few P5 teams a year (Cal, UCLA, Oregon State are regulars, Stanford next year) and this year shut out UNH (yup that UNH from Durham), 31-0, on opening day. I think they are about as good talent wise as BC but their coach is better,
Given it is a state school and the facilities were all upgraded on campus recently, the need for that is not as important as at BC. The football team plays in Qualcomm Stadium (the Chargers stadium) and if the city of SD builds a new facility, SDSU will play there. The other option if the Chargers move is to have SDSU take over the Qualcomm site, expand the campus (Qualcomm is about 3 miles from campus, they would make the stadium site a grad school campus, downsize the stadium to about 40,000 seats and bring in an MLS team to co-tenant.
Not a bad landing pad for a failed AD. A salary of about $400K per year, living in So Cal and all the heavy lifting in the job was done by his predecessor, who beat him out for the AD job at Mizzou BTW.
