If you missed it, Robert Burton is the CEO of Greenwich, CT based Burton Capital Management. He and his family have donated $7 million to UConn over the years. He's received an honorary degree (I'm sure he has...). He recently gave a $3 million gift to the football program and his name is on the football complex.
UConn is not a poor, booster poor school by any means. But they're making the transition from the FCS level to the FBS level. That's not easy, but they've done very well with it, having already played in 2 bowls, and one BCS Bowl, in just 4 years or so of FBS play.
Burton was pissed that his "advice was ignored" when UConn hired a new coach to replace Randy Edsell, who bailed on the team to take the Maryland job. One of his sons had played for new coach Paul Pasqualon at Syracuse. Maybe that was not a plus.
So Burton made a move that will be a Jackass Of the Year nominee and wrote a bitchy, incendiary letter to the university. He demanded that his $3 million gift be returned and his name removed from the football complex. He also said he was canceling the $500,000 year lease on a football luxury box, and sending his company executives to Syracuse for their business training rather than to UConn. All ties between him, his family, his company, and UConn were severed forever.
As I recall he also ripped into the AD, saying he was "fed up" with him and would have fired him a long time ago if he had the authority, and said that both mens' and womens' basketball coaches Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma had a poor working relationship. I don't recall if Calhoun had any response but Auriemma said that Burton's statement was false, and that not only did he not know what the basketball coaches relationship was with the AD at all, that it was none of his business. Auriemma is right on that count.
My opinions are simple:
You're certainly welcome to not donate any more money. Burton doesn't owe UConn anything. If you even want to be a dick and take your name off the sports complex, or even vacate a $500,000 per year luxury box, taking significant money away from a still new FBC program, that's your douchey prerogative. If you're that much of a petty jackass to probably set the football program back a decade with facility shortcomings that hurt recruiting, and maybe even affect scholarships, that's your choice.
But if you have given a $3 million gift, that's a GIFT. There's no taking it back. That money has been spent already. Does he honestly expect the university to start taking away some kids' financial aid, scholarships, technology upgrades, etc. to find the money from elsewhere to give back $3 million. It's not like you can just tear down the sports complex and call it even.
Giving a lot of money to a university or a sports program makes you a booster. It doesn't make you a Co-Athletic Director or a Co-Head Football coach. You have no say and no input in how the university and team conducts its business. Apparently his contribution to the school wasn't meant as a gift. It was meant to buy into a Sports Team General Manager Fantasy. If you want to own a sports team go buy one, period. The Buffalo Bills are probably on clearance sale.
Burton's main beef was that he wanted UConn to hire the University of Florida's former offensive coordinator and they didn't. As it turned out UConn hadn't offered the guy the job because he had already just taken the head coaching job at Temple. Trying to hire the brand new head coach immediately away from another school is in extremely poor taste, especially given that UConn and Temple are pretty close together they probably have an institutional working relationship. UConn didn't pull the dick move, so Burton apparently did, and was planning on crushing the football program back to the Stone Age I guess.
ESPN reported today that the UConn Board of Trustees and its new university president came to pay Burton a visit. I guess he got enough ass kissing to sooth his massive ego and decided that he was backing off all of his demands. I wonder if the university powers said "Yessa Mastah, we'll sho' listen to ya nex' time!" or if they said "Your money is welcome, but you're directives are not. Go be CEO of your company and let the people qualified to run a university athletics program run theirs."
I wonder if the guy even has a clue that he overstepped himself there.
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