Mark Cuban reportedly offers IU $10 million to fire Davis
By Ross
Leslie, THG Sports
The latest rumor
concerning embattled Indiana University
basketball coach Mike Davis includes a certain Benefactor who would like the
school’s athletic department to oust
Davis and find someone who can return the program to the success it enjoyed
during its glory days under Bobby Knight.
Word on the street is that
Dallas Mavericks owner and star of ABC’s The Benefactor Mark Cuban (a
1981 IU grad) has offered the Indiana Board of Trustees $10 million if the
school would fire Davis. Since Cuban has no personal qualms with Davis
other than his horrible coaching, he has also agreed to give Davis an office job
with the Mavericks as part of the package.
It is well known that
Cuban is one of Indiana basketball’s biggest fans. After becoming a
multi-millionaire in the early 90s after selling his computer consulting company
MicroSolutions to CompuServe, Cuban and friend Todd Wagner started AudioNet, a
service that enabled people to listen to radio broadcasts from around the
country through the Internet, mainly so they could catch IU games on the radio
wherever they were.
AudioNet grew in
popularity in the late 1990s and was renamed Broadcast.com. The company was
eventually acquired by Yahoo.com for $6 billion worth of stock, making Cuban a
billionaire. Cuban used his new-found wealth to purchase the Dallas Mavericks
in 2000. He currently owns the team and operates HDNet, an all high-definition
TV network.
When Bobby Knight was
fired as coach of Indiana in 2000, Cuban offered Knight a job working for the
Mavericks. Knight instead later took a job as head basketball coach at Texas
Tech.
