So in case you missed this Barry Alveraz Rose Bowl money 'scandal' here's the crib notes version: Last week Thursday Barry says that players asked him to coach in the Rose Bowl and he accepted and call it an honor. Last week Friday Barry tells the Board of Regents that he's 'not going to to this for free' and asks for $217,000 to run the team for a month and coach in Pasadena. Then on Tuesday the Board approved a salary for him more in the neighborhood of $118,500.

Now there are a lot of Badger fans who were up in arms that Barry would asked to get paid, and honestly if I follow good sense I should flat out HATE this move. But here's the thing, I don't hate it. In fact I think I may actually like Barry more because of it. Now conventional wisdom dictates that if you're the 'boss' and one of your employees quits, you are probably the one who has to man up and do two jobs until you hire someone to replace the person that left. Like if Jess quit today (presumably sexual harassment) I'd have to not only do her responsibilities I'd have to reacquire mine which I delegated to her the day we hired her. And my guess is Midwest Communications isn't going to offer me her salary and mine. Actually I'm like 78% sure that Midwest doesn't even know who I am but that's a different story for a different day (just remember this kids: keep a low profile, they can't fire you if they don't know you work there....stealing paychecks 101). So yeah, in the real world you'd probably want Barry to do this out of the kindness of his heart, or at the very least to donate the money to scholarship or something. But that's what I sneaky love about this move, he's not doing either of those things. He wants to coach, he wants to win and he wants his money, and he's Barry frieking Alveraz.

Bottom line is Barry knew he had the Board between a rock and a hard place and he capitalized. I mean what where they going to do, say no to Barry Alveraz? This would be like Santa Claus deciding he doesn't want to work for a non-prof anymore and demanding 5 million dollars from the U.S. government to deliver toys on Christmas Eve. You gonna say no to Santa? For sure not. Same deal with here. You just don't say to no to Barry Alveraz or Santa Claus.

What?