Now this is a gesture. Florida Gators head basketball coach Billy Donovan is putting off signing a new contract, because he thinks it might send the wrong message to his team. Now, before I start my Donovan in ‘08 campaign, it should probably be pointed out that this move might not cost him any money (in fact, it might even make him more), but at the very least, it’s the right thing to do for his team. It sends a good message.

He deserves more money by market standards, and the school was willing and ready to renegotiate, but he told them no. Florida’s got a few guys coming back this year who could have made the jump to the NBA, but turned down the money. And Donovan says he feels like it wouldn’t be right if he took a bunch of money while the kids had to wait for theirs.

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t feel right when I see some of our players make sacrifices like they did financially to come back and to play here … they don’t need to see me signing a big, long-term contract and benefiting off our team success.”

Hey… that’s nice. That’s the adjective that comes to mind. That’s… it’s just nice. I’m not sure that it’s particularly altruistic, because there’s a good chance that if Florida is awesome again (and they should be), that he’ll cash in for an even bigger deal next summer, but I still like the gesture.

And I’m not trying to harp on the negative here, because I think it’s a very cool thing. As a coaching move alone, it’s excellent, and it’s probably not something that a lot of coaches would have even thought of, let alone considered. His players will definitely dig something like this, and they’re young enough and, since they’re Gators, dim enough that they won’t think anything except, “Wow, coach is an awesome guy, and he really loves us.”