Air Force tabs Calhoun to replace DeBerry

NCAA Football Betting Lines

12/23/2006 - Colorado Springs, CO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Air Force Academy hired Troy Calhoun as its new head football coach a little more than a week after Fisher DeBerry retired.

Calhoun, who is finishing his first season as the Houston Texans offensive coordinator/quarterback coach, returns to the school from where he graduated in 1989.

Head coach Gary Kubiak brought Calhoun with him from Denver when he became Houston's head coach last year.

Calhoun worked closely with Denver head coach Mike Shanahan in 2005 when he was assistant to the head coach. The Broncos won the AFC West for the 10th time in franchise history.

The offense ranked fifth in the league with 360.4 yards per game, while the defense gave up only 85.2 yards per game on the ground, which ranked second in the NFL.

He became a well-rounded NFL coach with Denver, working as a defensive assistant (2003) before becoming the offensive assistant/special teams coach (2004).

While with the Broncos, Calhoun's teams made the playoffs each year, averaging 11 win per season.

Calhoun, who was the freshman quarterback for the 1985 Falcons that finished fifth in the polls and was 12-1, began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Air Force from 1989-90.

In 1995 he was the quarterbacks coach for Ohio and then spent the next three years as the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach before taking the same position as Wake Forest.

DeBerry, 68, had been at the academy for 27 seasons, spending the last 23 as head coach. His teams posted a 169-107-1 mark overall, recording 17 winning seasons, before falling upon tough times recently.

The Falcons, who went just 4-8 this year (3-5 Mountain West), have had three straight losing campaigns, marking the first time that has happened at Air Force since 1979-81.

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

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