Fired San Diego State Coach Chuck Long Is World's First $700K Paperweight

The once-competitive but now persistently woeful San Diego State football program fired coach Chuck Long this year, replacing him with Ball State's Brady Hoke. Long went just 9-27 at Montezuma Mesa, failing to light a fire under the Aztec offense despite his offensive background at Oklahoma.

Good luck getting an explanation as to why, but a clause in his contract with SDSU demanded he be "re-assigned" if the school terminated him as its head football coach. The San Diego Union-Tribune's Brent Schrotenboer reports Long is now doing "projects" and "analysis" for the cash-strapped state school at a hefty $700K price tag.

Putting a hefty dose of lipstick on this pig, Aztec Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel says "The projects we have for him right now are mostly related to campus issues relative to athletics. In other words, 'How can we be more successful at San Diego State, using his experience?' We've asked him to do some analysis for us on that sort of thing. He's been very good about it, whether that's admissions, whether that's fundraising, any of those things that can help us be more successful."

In other words, nonsense work.

Fittingly, Long wants out. His side claims to want to negotiate an out while SDSU certainly would love to get rid of him and paying that ridiculous amount of money for him to do special projects. Rightly so, Long won't be stepping down for free either but would also not be taking a head coaching gig anytime soon. The gap in pay between a normal assistants' job and his current pay is vast, however. The Union Tribune estimates he could make $200K as an assistant.

So unless something is resolved, the parties are stuck with each other, with Long making huge coin but also not in the coaching game and diminishing his chances to return to a respectable gig somewhere.

Awesome. Really, really, awesome. All in a bad economy, at a state school in a state plagued by massive budget deficits.

Even without that 20/20 hindsight thing I could have told you San Diego State shouldn't have hired him or paid him so much money. Long's seemingly a nice guy, but he was just one of a string of successful offensive coordinators at Oklahoma, arguably the worst of the obviously competent group since Bob Stoops took over. He didn't exactly bring an innovative offense, wasn't exactly Jim Jones when it came to charisma, and had no experience reviving a smaller program in the fashion of an Urban Meyer or Dan Hawkins.

Reviving the mid-level programs is not so much about great recruiting but maintaining the level of talent traditionally at that program and then finding ways to do something special with it on the field. San Diego State will never be a USC as far as pulling in talent. It won't even be a Cal or Arizona. How they get ahead is through innovation and doing things different. Either installing a wacky 3-3-5 defense, running a variation of the spread or run-and-shoot, things like that.

Long offered none of that, at least judging by his background. It was a bad fit, something the Aztec athletic department should have seen well in advance. Now look what's happened.

(via The Wiz)