Inexperienced AD botched RichRod courtship, then lowballed him
From what I have been able to gather, Rich Rodriguez’s pursuit of the South Carolina football coaching job was bungled by Gamecocks athletic director Ray Tanner. After South Carolina initiated contact with RichRod’s agent, Tanner made several missteps. He left RichRod stranded at a South Carolina airport for more than an hour, left Arizona’s coach unattended in his hotel for several hours, and, worse, apparently offered RichRod less, about $3.1 million per year, than what he was making at UA. Tanner was a career baseball coach at South Carolina until he became the school’s AD in 2012. It showed. His manner in a coaching search left a lot to be desired. The irony is that UA AD Greg Byrne excels at the important detail work of a coaching search; he impressed RichRod in 2011 the way Tanner surely made a bad impression on RichRod.
