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.

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