MU88

Hopefully, you can follow this convoluted story. Shortly after MU's President, Fr. Wild, announced his retirement, four athletes (assumed bball players) were accused of assaulting a student about 6 months earlier. Evidently, the day after the incident, the accuser went to campus police, reported the incident, and then changed her mind. The campus police (rent-a-cops) dropped it. Unfortunately, that violated state law. This came on the heels of a couple other incidents, e.g underage drinking tickets, a bar fight at a private party with some of the Bucks, etc. The matter blew up and the AD at the time was forced to resign. BTW, charges were never brought. However, accuser went to the Chicago Tribune and they wrote a nasty article blasting MU. The Milwaukee paper, not to be outdone, wrote a handful of unpleasant articles on MU. At that point, the MU board hired Fr. Pilarz to replace Fr. Wild. Pilarz, in turn, brought in a new AD, Larry Williams. Evidently, the new hires were instructed to clean up the athletic program. Pilarz and Williams came down hard on the program including moving freshmen into regular dorms, limiting JUCO recruitng, etc. In addition, Larry made some not so well received comments about Buzz in the press. Clearly, Buzz and Larry did not get along. Well, the tension resulted in donations dropping significantly. It didn't help that the AD even declined a donation to build a new "athletic" dorm. Well, the Board get fed up quick and Fr. Pilarz resigned after only 1 1/2 years on the job. Fr. Wild came back as the interim. (Side note, Buzz hand wrote a letter to Fr. Wild every three weeks during Wild's retirement. Evidently, they have a very close relationship.) Well, a couple of months after Fr. Wild's return, Larry Williams abruptly resigned. Our old AD is now the interim AD. It is expected that MU will name a new President at the end of April and he will name the new AD. The assistant AD is a close friend of Buzz and many expect him to get serious consideration for the full time AD position.

Buzz earned $1,888,881 from MU in 2012, which included the smallest bonus ($700,000) since he took the job. His bonuses have ranged from $700,000 to about $1.9 milliion over the past 6 years. MU also paid Team Buzz Williams LP an additional $1 million for professional services. Finally, those numbers don't include outside income such as endorsements, his radio and tv shows and basketball camp revenue. I have been told he is making somewhere around $3.3 million per year, ballpark. Now, I also heard he was offered at least $4 million by SMU last year which he turned down and he also turned down an offer in 2012 to coach an NBA team. As a side note, he was approached by one of the blue blood schools last year to replace their coach who the school felt was about to accept an NBA offer. People say he would have taken that job. All that being said, Buzz isn't about money. If he isn't happy at MU, he will take another job, even it means taking a pay cut. He was just in a power struggle with the President and AD which ended with the President and the AD both leaving Marquette. Has he soured on the University because of those events? People in the know say no, but you never know. BTW, I don't MU fans think USF is garbage. USF is perceived as a football school with little or no commitment to hoops. Given that MU averages about 16,000 a game, has the second highest bball budget in the country and great facilities, most MU fans wonder why Buzz would leave to go to a school that doesn't have the same resources or commitment to basketball?