Midweek Mierda: All About The Benjamins

Herbie on the money

Not that we are advocating it, but if you had placed a $20 money-line parlay on Herbstreit’s three upset picks from week one—East Carolina, Bowling Green, and Fresno State—you would have netted roughly $1,200.

How do we know this is correct, you ask? Not because we hit it (drinks we be on us if we did), but a close friend of the blog pulled off this feat.

In case you have an extra Benjamin burning a hole in your pocket, Herbstreit is taking East Carolina and Stanford this weekend.

Bigger Bucks

Speaking of Benjamins, Tressel is getting more these days. Tress is now the highest paid coach in the Big Ten at $3.5M, but he did not receive an extension on his contract, which still ends after the 2012 season.

I am not sure which is more surprising; that the Senator is paid $3.5M to coach the Buckeyes or that Kirk Ferentz is actually paid to coach Iowa.

Tressel goes from “The Best Bargain in College Football,” to a slightly less good bargain as his salary climbs from the eighth highest to fifth. Pete Carroll is first at $4.4M per year, which, as the Dispatch points out, means that nearly $8M worth of head coach will be on the field September 13th.

Tressel also changed language regarding his retirement prior to the end of his contract, which now states that Tressel can request a faculty position and OSU must make one available. Also, Tressel now gets 20 hours for personal use each year on the university-owned private jet—an increase from 10.

Must be nice.

Roundball in the time of pigskin

To absolutely zero fanfare, the Ohio State men’s basketball schedule got underway earlier this week. Kind of.

According to the Dispatch, Matta was hoping to host a season-opening tournament at VCA, but no sponsor was secured. The conference schedule is out, of course, and Ohio State starts league play on December 31. This season the Buckeyes’ two “solo” opponents are Penn State and Wisconsin—good and bad. The non-conference schedule as it stands at the moment has exactly zero interesting games.