Sanity prevails in negotiations with steadfast Smith
Score one for common sense.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Lovie Smith would cost the Chicago Bears, but it did take the Bears -- and they finally did the math. They went past the $5 million-a-year deal that should have been the starting point for negotiations and wound up with a four-year extension that reportedly pays Smith an average of $5.5 million per.
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| Throughout it all, Lovie Smith never took shots at Bears management. (US Presswire) |
All Smith did was deliver the club its first Super Bowl appearance since the 1985 Bears, and that should count for something. So should his two playoff appearances the past two years, the first time the Bears made consecutive playoff bows since 1991.
But this is what should count most: Smith's poise under fire.
I'm not talking about how he handled himself during the Super Bowl loss to Indianapolis or that overtime win over Seattle in the NFC divisional playoffs. No, I'm talking about how he handled himself at the combine a week ago when many of the 385 credentialed media pressed him to torch the Bears for not making a reasonable offer.
Smith wouldn't do it, playing the loyal soldier to the end. He kept saying he had faith something would happen and that he saw no reason why a settlement couldn't be reached. Well, something did happen, and it happened after the Bears came to their senses.
Let's face it, it's not difficult to figure out what a successful head coach should make these days. You start at $5 million, a figure Washington paid Steve Spurrier back in 2002 to lose for two seasons, and work your way up.
Only the Bears are supposed to be tighter than Ebenezer Scrooge -- with an agreement so unimaginable that Frank Bauer, Smith's agent, last week told ESPN that, barring "an unforeseen breakthrough," he didn't see Smith and the team settling before the beginning of this season.
Well, something unforeseen did happen. The Bears got smart. They re-signed Smith and general manager Jerry Angelo, and let's hear it for sanity.
The longer the Bears let the Smith negotiations drag on the worse it was bound to become for the club. This was one PR war they could not win, not with a Super Bowl coach pulling down an embarrassingly-low $1.35 million a year. OK, so that's a lot of money to most of us, but it's not to someone in Smith's profession.
The Redskins pay their defensive coordinator nearly twice that, for crying out loud, and Atlanta just hired Bobby Petrino away from the University of Louisville for nearly $5 million a year. He hasn't coached an NFL game.
So Chicago did what it should've done long ago, which was to jack up Smith's contract and bring it into line with what today's head coaches earn. It wasn't hard figuring out what Smith deserved; what was hard was getting the Bears to accept that number.
Now, Smith seems happy. He should. He gained a raise he deserved. Bears' fans should be happy, too. They no longer have to deal with an unnecessary distraction that could've been avoided had Chicago weighed the market for today's coaches.
But give the Bears this: I don't know if they were reluctant, and I don't care. They did what they should've done. They did what was right. And isn't that what this business is all about? Score two for Lovie, and one for the Bears.
