Butch & Jimmy Shear Sheep

BobLee
December05/ 2007

The UNC Fat Cats are quite bumfuzzled these days.  Butch The Rented Rock Star is hungry and Jimmy says “feed him NOW” ….  Jimmy ????  Jimmy Sexton – former student manager at Tennessee and now a sports agent.  One of Jimmy’s clients is Lou Saban’s boy, Nick. ….. Guess who his latest new client is? …. NO!!! Say it ain’t so BobLee.  …. It’s so!

All the yadda yadda about Arkansas and sleeping giants and BCS Poker blah blah blah. …. All that is morphing into boring stuff like contract extensions and another mill or so and lock-in the assistants long term and $150,000,000 stadium upgrades.  The Rented Rock Star is not as happy as The Rented Rock Star would like to be.  Unhappy Rented Rock Stars are not a good thing.

About a month ago there was a national story saying UNC was #1 in “the benevolent sports booster bizness”.  Apparently The Rams Club is the Permian Basin of booster bucks.  It gushes.  The Pale Rider and his new pal Jimmy Sexton saw that story.  Yum yum eat’em up.

Remember Marvin Demoff?  Marv was the Advisor to Rock Stars who uttered the famous phrase “Take the Carolina job, Butch.  I don’t think Alabama is going to open up this year.”  Oops.  Being an advisor to Rock Stars has one very strict rule….. “Never leave $2,000,000 on the table.”   Marv broke that rule.  Marv’s bizness card now reads “Former Advisor To The Pale Rider”.  Enter Jimmy Sexton.  Jimmy’s biz card reads Pale Rider’s New Agent …… uh oh.

In the wild & wooly world of Really Big Time Rock Star College Coaches, Jimmy Sexton is Colonel Tom Parker & SCOTT BORAS rolled in to one …… he is the Musical Chairmaster.

UNC FB fans learned about Headhunter Extraordinaire Chuck Neinas a year ago.  If a school calls Chuck to find them a Rock Star Coach ….. Chuck calls Jimmy.   Jimmy controls half the SEC coaches including Tommy “I’ll Never Leave Oxford” Tubberville and Darth Visor hisownself ….. and Lou’s boy Nick ….. oh, and HOUSTON NUTT too.

But BobLee, if Jimmy controls Houston Nutt would he ….. could he ….. he wouldn’t would he …. surely he wouldn’t ?????  Have any of you naïve Old Well Huggers ever seen an MRI of a sports agent?  No heart …. No conscience …. No Rah Rah school spirit …. Just a ravenous appetite and uncanny ability to recognize naïve Trustees who drink too much Kool-Aid. ….. aye zigga zoomba …. Burp.

Damn BobLee, can it get any worse?  Only if I tell you that Jimmy also represents Frank Beamer ….. and Philip Rivers too.   BANG …. That was Silent Sam shooting himself!

Sports agents don’t get paid for their predecessor’s deals. Only for new deals or Renegotiated deals.

The above info does not really interest the goggle-eyed loonies who lurk here because they never have, nor ever intend to, contribute anything to UNC Athletics except their jackass opinions.  When they blather “WE deserve” a BCS quality FB operation, they mean somebody else needs to buy one that they can then claim ownership of.

Carolina FB fans are like most college sports fans  The spoiled child that “wants a pony”.  “If you really love me you will get me a pony.  If you don’t I’ll hold my breath til I die and it’ll be your fault.”  So the UNC Powers That Be bought them a pony.  A very hungry thoroughbred pony.

 “Everyone likes to Live High 

….. On Someone Else’s Hog.”

    IF the much maligned “fat cats” will keep footing the rapidly escalating bill, the board trolls and Internet urchins will gather at the water cooler to gloat “We Won on Saturday …. Hooray for Us”.

   As we said two weeks ago …. When you rent a mercenary hired gun, it’s the never-ending maintenance and upkeep that eventually breaks you.  The annual tune-up just came due.  Sticker Shock has hit Chapel Hill.

Up Butch’s contract ….. extend Butch’s contract ….. guarantee/increase Assistants contracts …. Break ground on $150,000,000 “Kenan Expansion” ….  Grab your ankles …. Squeal like a pig …. Eat a bug …. Give Butch ANYTHING he wants because you already sold your immortal soul to BCS Beelzebub.  

If Butch (and Jimmy) isn’t happy, Butch goes By By and:

UNC becomes the laughingstock of Big Time College Football.  Pay the “ransom” now and UNC becomes a case study of how the sports arms race can turn a quite proud academic institution into a sniveling compliant slave to misdirected priorities.  A lot of sexual metaphors apply here.  Insert your favorite.  A tube of KY jelly might help. ….. to quote the pledges of Omega House – “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

Dickie could offer two new sweater vests and a sandwich named The Pale Rider at Spanky’s.  Jimmy Sexton is not excited about 3% of a sandwich.

The same small group of generous contributors that anted up to bring back Ol’ Roy …. And anted up for the Ernie Williamson Building …. And The New Bosh …. And …. And ad finitum.  Now are being asked to sell off more blue chip stocks and hock Grandpa’s gold watch …. because Marv Demoff thought Alabama would keep Mike Shula one more year.  Butch COULD have had $3,000,000+ and 95,000 screaming red elephants instead of $2,000,000, 55,000 polite Tar Heels and some freakin’ pine trees.  Jimmy Sexton doesn’t get 3% of a bunch of pine trees.

What has The Pale Rider done since Marv negotiated the original deal?  He has won 3 games, lost 6, and recruited Marvin Austin.  Everything else is “He might _____”.  He has a handful of incoming recruits and is positioned to maybe corral some fleet foots and nasty boyz from two time zones away who think LT is Ladamian Tomlinson and might have heard of Michael Jordan.  But to his everlasting credit The Pale Rider has never pretended to be anything other than what he is ….. a mercenary Rock Star …. who MIGHT someday make some football fans’ vicarious dreams come true.  If not at UNC, then somewhere else.  It really does not matter where.

 Butch is not “bad” or “evil”.  He just is not what so many want him to be.

Meanwhile half a mile south of Butch’s not fancy enough Kenan office sits another Rock Star. But he’s “home-grown”. This one wears a ring saying National Champions – 2005.  This one can recite from memory every jersey in the rafters.  On the matter of money, he once said “how many golf balls does one man need?”  This one works in a once hallowed shrine that is showing the wear and tear of ten years of deferred maintenance.  Roy Williams HAS accomplished everything AND MORE that he was brought back to UNC to do.  Ol’ Roy = RESULTS.  He wants to be appreciated and wants to reward his staff for their record of accomplishments.  Ol’ Roy wants some Fat Cat Love too.

So Fat Cats must keep on liquidating those assets and writing those big “keep Butch & Jimmy (and Roy too) happy” checks.  This beast is hungry ….. really really hungry.  “Keep feeding the beast” cry the goggle-eyed faction. “We want to live high” …. on someone else’s hog.

“Excuse me Mr Fulton, Jimmy Sexton is on the line.  He’s waiting for you to fax back the latest renegotiated contract.  He says he’s adding zeros for every minute he has to wait.”

Out at Carolina Meadows …..

“I told’em so.”  sighs KOBF “but no one harked to the sound of my warning.  Oh me, oh my.” 

>>><<<

    The Kenan fortunes originally came from what industry?

Hint …. It wasn’t oil.

 >>><<<

   I debated posting this column until after The High Noon Showdown At F-Bomb Alley. But delaying this news doesn’t alter the reality.  Whether the otherwise astute men who facilitated the current dilemma really understood the rules of the game is not known.  If they didn’t, they surely do now.

    No one knows how this will shake out in the weeks to come.  The much maligned Fat Cats ante up or _____ .  If a relatively small bunch of wealthy men keep throwing bunches of bucks at Butch (and Jimmy), he will stay for the time being.  Each of us applies our own sense of ethics to a situation none of us have ever been in.  

    Whatever happens ….. Butch Davis never has been, nor ever will be, what so many so very much want him to be ….. A real Tar Heel.   

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