Okay, so I've been thinking about George Gwozdecky's contract situation. He's got a few years left on his current deal, and he's been agitating about signing an extension of the deal that would seem him here for the forseeable future.
On one hand, he has a good case to make for long-term deal extension. His team was WCHA Champion and had a record number of players on the all-Academic team. He locked up the number one recruiting class in the country, and he has DU among the top 10 this year after losing a lot players to graduation and the pros. Clearly, he can coach and program-build with a culture of winning. His guys who stay graduate and his players stay out of trouble - DU has had no known police incidents in the 15 years he has been here. He is the best coach of a D-I revenue sport in the state, IMHO.
On the other hand, I can also understand DU's reluctance to hand over the keys to the kingdom. This isn't 2005 anymore. The last five years, Gwozdecky's teams have all underachieved in postseason. Two DU teams favored to make the NCAAs never got there at all, and of the three teams who did make it to the dance, all of them got rudely bounced in the first round against teams who were seeded lower than DU. Gwoz wants to be paid for excellence, but his recent teams have simply not performed with excellence when it counted most at the NCAA level. Additionally, DU is no longer selling out Magness Arena. Fans are starting to vote with their feet, no longer jamming the place to get behind teams who under-achieve in the NCAAs.
On the other hand, by winning it all in 04-and 05, Gwoz raised the level of expectations as well as the quality of the program. Now, getting to the NCAAs is no longer seen here as a quality outcome. First round upsets are now met with a sense of 'choke' rather than "better luck next year".
Ok, so where do we go from here? Gwoz is already paid in the top 5 in the sport and has a current contract that a lot of schools likely won't be able to match. I would imagine there are probably also clauses in his current contract that were negotiated in the Dan Ritchie era years ago that no longer can be supported in the current financial climate and I would guess that DU would want to Gwoz sign to a new contract with more favorable structure to DU rather than just extend the old one, which was likely favorable to Gwoz.
Right now, I think Gwoz needs to win an NCAA tourney game for the first time since 2005, or his teams need to start selling out the place if he wants top tier contract this time around. Gwoz was rewarded with a nice raise and extension when he won the NCAA tournament 5 years ago. Now it's time to prove that DU can sustain elite-program status by winning some NCAA tournament games. The 2005 victory lap is over.
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