As Professor Farnsworth might say, “Good news, everyone.”

And just as in Futurama, this is of course followed by a horrible, terrible announcement.  Namely, that Ed DeChellis has, avoided the chopping block.  Kudos to David Jones on the scoop:

“Yes, Ed will continue to be our head coach,” Curley wrote. “I like the way he runs our program, his assistant coaches and players in the program.”

Don’t fucking lie, Tim. I try not to curse on this website, because at least maintaining the illusion of professionalism is important to me. But we both know that’s not why you’re keeping Ed.  You’re keeping him because he just signed a contract extension, and because you don’t want to eat the $600-or-so-thousand he’s due over each of the next three years.

What makes it even worse, Tim, is how you’ve completely sold out.  You’re adding PSLs to Beaver Stadium, and moving the student section out of the good seats, with the upshot that it’s going to be damn near impossible for any young alumni to attend a game. You’ve plastered advertisements and commercials all over both the Beav and the BJC, to the point where they might as well be called “Thanks Corporate Sponsors Stadium.” Hell, just look at our football schedule and our “7.5 home games a year,” and you realize how Tim Curley’s money-at-all-costs attitude is hurting the fanbase.  Even though you’ve got a living legend at head football coach who you’re paying peanuts to compared to his contemporaries, and a rabid and devoted fanbase that keeps handing you money, you still can’t bite the bullet and fire a man who deserves nothing more than to be kicked out onto the curb.

These are the facts. Ed’s contract runs through the end of the 2014 season, and it pays him about $600,000 a year. You can do the math, that means that buying him out would cost about $1.8 million.  Or, how much Tubby Smith makes every year at Minnesota, according to StL Today. It’s not even close to how much Indiana pays Tom Crean, or how much Ohio State pays Thad Matta on a yearly basis. In two years, Ed would make less than those three make in one, plus Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Michigan’s John Beilein, Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan, Iowa’s Todd Lickliter, and Northwestern’s Bill Carmody. Not only is Ed DeChellis the lowest paid head coach in the Big Ten by at least $200,000, but his salary doesn’t even compare to most of the league’s coaches.

That’s the real reason Penn State’s not going to fire the utter failure that is Ed DeChellis. Take that, and the fact that last year, Penn State basketball made almost $8 million off of men’s basketball, after spending just $4.4 million, and once you realize that all Tim Curley cares about is making money and avoiding scandals, well, his decision is obvious. These numbers come straight from the Equity in Athletics Institution, and are on a .edu site, so I’m pretty sure they’re legit.

Here’s something: last year, Penn State athletics brought in nearly $96 million in revenue. They spent about $76.5 million on operating expenses. Now, I wonder where the extra $20 million went. I wonder why a program that’s bringing in so much money is pinching pennies on one of the two revenue producing sports it has.  That’s right, wrestling, which pays Cael Sanderson a record salary to watch half-naked men play grab ass, isn’t bringing in money, no matter how good it is.  I’m going to need someone to explain to me why any boosters would choose to spend their presumably hard-earned money building up the wrestling program while nobody’s stepping up to bring in a basketball coach with a pulse, but that’s not the story here.

So I beg of you Tim, answer me this: Why sacrifice men’s basketball, why keep a man who clearly is outmatched, whose players gave up on him, and who’s “accomplished” a 34-93 record in seven years at the helm? I’m not getting into the reasons why Ed should go, because we’ve done that time and time again here.  But we haven’t pointed out Tim Curley’s hypocrisy, his outright lies to a fanbase that’s out for blood.

“I believe we are better than our record shows. Ed and I share the same vision for the program. I have complete confidence in Ed and his staff. No one will work harder or bring greater passion to making the necessary progress.”

As Joe Wilson once said, “You lie.” Unless Ed’s vision is spending as little as possible, and the only goal for this team is to avoid some major brouhaha, Ed’s not the man to run it. You’re right, this team did have too much talent to be 3-16. You know the reason why they were? Horrendous coaching. Anybody’s whose watched this team play, game-in and game-out like I have, and like the true Penn State basketball fans have know that. This isn’t a matter of Penn State getting outclassed, not when they’ve blown late leads to teams like Michigan State and Wisconsin, when they’ve hung right with Ohio State, Purdue, and Illinois. No, this is a good team that got dragged down by a coach who didn’t have them prepared, who didn’t have a gamplan, and who was playing checkers while Izzo, Painter, Matta, and Ryan were playing chess.

Don’t sugarcoat this, Tim. If you’d told David Jones “Ed is staying, he earns too much to fire,” you might be betraying all of Nittany Nation, but at least you wouldn’t be a bold-faced liar. This isn’t about vision, or about merit. It’s about two million dollars that you don’t want to pay.  I wonder how just about every other major-conference program in the country manages to do it.

Oh, that’s right, they probably don’t have somebody’s who’s completely incompetent running their athletics department.

If this all comes down to money, I urge you all to make a plea. All of you who really care about Penn State basketball, take the lead of my friend Charlie here. He pledged to double his NLC donation if it would go towards paying for a new coach. But take that one step further. Call up Tim Curley and tell him not only will you double your donation if it means getting a real basketball program, but that as long as Ed DeChellis is still at the helm, you’re not giving Tim Curley and his department a penny.

If it’s going to be about money, at least we can have our say one way or another.