A&M director of facilities Billy Pickard has been let go in a budget-cutting move by the athletic department. Pickard is one of 17 staff members cut from the athletic department, in a move that $Bill said was necessary to remove $4.5 million off the budget.

Billy Pickard has been with A&M since the time of Paul "Bear" Bryant, where he served as a student manager for the football team. Pickard is a legendary figure in the athletic department, and I have never found anyone with anything bad to say about him.

If $Bill really wanted to get rid of some unnecessary expenses in the athletic department, why didn't he offer to cut his own salary? If we assume our average athletic budget under his tenure here has been $50 million (I think it is a lot higher than that, but we'll use $50 million for now), that means we have spent $350 million over the past seven years, and the results have been 0 conference championships in football, 0 conference championships in men's basketball, and 1 conference championship in baseball. Seven years, one conference title in a major sport. This is what we're paying $Bill the third-highest salary in the Big 12 for?

I should add that as someone who has only been with the athletic department for seven years, I don't necessarily think it is right that $Bill gets to remove someone who has served the athletic department their whole working life just for some cost-cutting.

Maybe if $Bill hadn't arranged for us to pay Dennis Franchione $4 million to not coach our football team for two years, this move wouldn't be necessary.