News 12 INVESTIGATES: Shaka Smart's $1.3M deal

If there is any good that will come from the Penn State debacle is that when it comes to compliance entities cannot police themselves. Had Penn State, consulted outside counsel and performed a thorough investigation then the Sandusky issue would have been resolved long ago. Penn State as an institution may have been a bit embarrassed to have such a vile individual using entity resources to commit his heinous acts. However, their institutional and the individual reputations would not have taken such a battering.

Regardless of what we want to believe, college athletics belong to the institutions and if they are state institutions the athletics ultimately belong to all members of the state. As such, Shaka's and all coaches contracts at VCU are a matter of public record and should be scrutinized at all times.

NBC did us a service by writing this article. However, as BradRam, and CVAN accurately point out, NBC should have written a more thorough article that evaluated the factors that lead to Shaka's record breaking salary.

Few who are close to the program question Shaka's salary. However, articles such as these if written appropriately serve the University and the Commonwealth as they would demonstrate that we at VCU are above board, and if there were issue help us to deal with them immediately.

If you have read any of my posts, you will know I have been around a while in connection to VCU and VCU basketball. I was trying explain my feelings on the Final Four run to somebody and it hit me that with his demeanor and humble attitude, Shaka, had in a way that few others could have, re-introduced VCU to the city of Richmond. More local people, more local high school kids, more VCU alumni were excited about the school. It was almost as if they had forgotten VCU was right here, but with the entire nation overloading the VCU web site, local folks had to pay attention.
I went to the VCU School of Business and this is one of the best examples I have ever seen on Return on Investment. You cannot but what he did and continues to do because there is no way to price it...priceless. Channel 12 stay out of it only because I don't want Shaka to think there are any negative opinions out there.

Next to last sentence there should say buy not but...sorry

I don't think Shaka is that fragile and there will always be negative opinions.

As stated, few close to the program question Shaka's salary. In fact as long as his teams keep winning, and the University gains positive benefit relative to this salary there is no reason why he and his staff cannot get a raise.

Again, nothing wrong with the looking into these matters. However, NBC 12 simply needs to include ALL relevant facts.

They should also highlight the salaries of other state institutions' coaches and presidents. At least we are only spending that kind of money on one coach. What about Beamer at VT (~$2.28million) or London (~$2.1million) and Bennett (~$1.7million) at UVA? Sullivan at UVA earns around $680k and Steger at VT earns ~$738k. Just eyeballing it, it sounds like we're about average in terms of athletic coach to president salary ratio.

PS: VT mens basketball head coach James Johnson makes $680k.

That and the fact that our donations and season ticket dollars pay that salary. It has nothing to do with providing an reasonably priced education. If we cut our basketball problem tomorrow the cost of tuition at VCU would not change.

This is making me so upset right now. It is basically saying that we have forgotten about everything about the rest of the school except Shaka and basketball. It's sensationalist journalism and in the wake of everything at penn state is trying to put our admiration of shaka in the forefront. Ahhhhhh I am mad

Who cares? It's NBC12.

There's a reason those guys are at a local Richmond NBC affiliate instead of reporting for a legitimate sports outlet.

They have to get people to watch and read, so sensationalist journalism is inevitable. I think the people who really understand sports understand the truth.

VCU gets much more out of having Shaka Smart as head coach than Shaka Smart gets out of his 1.3+ million yearly salary.

They bumped his salary up about 100,000 dollars, he's been earning over 1 million dollars for a long time now and it's been covered by outlets such as USAToday several months ago. This is as big a non-story as there is out there. Trumpeting it like it's some new-found, ground-breaking investigative journalism is disingenuous and pathetic. Except that it's NBC12, so it doesn't matter one way or another.

The only people watching and reading that story have had plenty of exposure to VCU and Shaka Smart have done for the University. Only the intellectually dishonest will draw anything to be offended about from that report.

If they want to do one of these "appropriately (I've ever seen a local one done appropriately)," they should start by dropping the dopey "investigates" in the title.

You mean attaining a public contract that has been available for over a month isn't a real investigation?

From now on when I get my mail I am going to call it "Investigating The Mailbox".

Asking to see a contract, getting a hold of it and reading it is not an investigation. This article takes away from real investigatory journalists everywhere.

Dude calm down. You haven't done anything is this socieity unless someone wants to disparage your image. This is a poorly written piece, and I'd bet you Shaka the target of this article could care less.

As many of us have pointed out this article leaves out a great deal of pertinent facts that would have served the reading public well.

Again, calm down as someone posted and I think Ive heard in a rap song "haters gonna hate"

This is nothing!

It is a big deal as some sheeple do believe this drivel.