I have no specific information about the strange success of PSU wrestling recruiting, but watching from afar, what I am seeing defies financial logic and... as the saying goes...follow the money.
Tuition at PSU is between 32 and 33 thousand dollars a year. Your trying to tell me these kids, who could go almost anywhere for free, are going to incur 33K debt per year for four to five years, to possibly not make the team?? Wrestling isn't even a "profession" one can parlay into a lucrative profession after graduation. They could be debt slaves for decades!!
Maybe the NCAA needs to start looking in to the financial details of the tuition payments for some of these PSU wrestlers and or possibly what happens with hiring "arrangements" when they graduate. After all, PSU has done such a good job in maintaiining the proper “perspective and apearances” in their athletic endevours lately… and this Lubert guy is "not a detailed oriented” guy.
(And if you really want to break out in a cold sweat, read about Luberts involvement in the Sandusky/Second Mile siuation. Talk about lack of instatutional control…except the tangled web extends to politicians and state government!)
The full artcle is at:
http://blog.pennlive.com/davidjones/2011/11/ira_lubert_is_only_member_of_p.html
So, how does Penn State
pay the going rate for a good coach [football]from outside the fold and still maintain the appearance of perspective? That might be where
Ira Lubert comes in.
Lubert is the Philadelphia-based investment manager who represents the power and money on the 6-person search committee installed to find the replacement for Joe Paterno. Four decades ago, he wrestled competitively for Penn State and in practice at the heavyweight level against interim PSU athletics director, search committee chair and future fellow trustee
Dave Joyner. So the story goes, Joyner was better -- very good, in fact -- and, so, represented PSU in most meets. Lubert has not lost at much of anything since. …
Two years ago, Pennsylvania's gaming control board awarded to a group headed by Lubert one of two Philadelphia-area licenses to operate up to 500 slot machines. After two years of legal wrangling, the $100 million, 486-room Valley Forge Casino Resort is under construction and set to open next spring. The slots were estimated at conception to realize $74 million in gross annual revenue by 2017.
It's this sort of liquid wealth that allowed Lubert to help bankroll the $500,000 salary and $1 million bonus that lured wrestling legend Cael Sanderson from his alma mater Iowa State to become PSU's wrestling coach in 2009...
While three career academicians and PSU women's volleyball coach Russ Rose comprise the other two-thirds of the search committee,
it is clearly Lubert and Joyner who will be the men of action in this deal.
...It is Lubert who can act, should he so choose, as both financier and negotiator. The others may talk. But it is his opinions that will carry the real clout (ie money).
“He's a born salesman,” said a longtime acquaintance. “He gets out of bed and he's selling by breakfast. Very outgoing guy. Not detail oriented. Figures out what you want, then tweaks to get you to buy it.”
