A fellow known as “Mattress Mack” has given a gift of $1 million to the University of North Texas football program… on the condition that they rename a new athletics facility after Darrell Dickey, a football coach who was fired by the school three weeks after he had a heart attack. If North Texas refuses… Mattress Mack will have the entire $1 million redirected to the music department.
They’re going to do it. Man, that renaming ceremony is going to be awkward.
Mattress Mack… is all man. If for no other reason than the nickname “Mattress Mack.” His real name is Jim McIngvale, but I guess he sells mattresses and his some goofy commercials that have earned him the nickname. For a short time after high school, I was briefly known as “Mattress MJD,” but for vastly different reasons that I’m not going to get into it other than to tell you, hey, a man’s gotta make a living.
Anyway, I think that’s a pretty awesome thing for Mack to do.
“Right’s right and wrong’s wrong. It’s the right thing to do,” McIngvale said. “I don’t think firing a guy three weeks after he had a heart attack was the right thing to do, either. Even Wall Street is not that callous.”
I also found this little note interesting:
McIngvale’s $1 million gift means a lot at North Texas, where the football program’s budget is about $3.7 million and the music school’s is about $8.7 million.
You don’t see that a lot. I’m guessing circumstances are a little different at, say, I dunno… Miami? I don’t know what their football budget is, but judging from the production values on that “Seventh Floor Crew” song, I know their music department isn’t seeing a lot of money these days.
Oh, and here’s Mattress Mack in action.
Critical Sports Blog Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 9:37 am
He should give the million to Dickey-he’s the one that had the heart attack.
Mark Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Only in Texas could a mattress salesman look more honest than University officials.
Brett Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 11:00 am
–”Mr. Arizona, we understand that your given name is Nathan Huffheim.”
–”Yeah, what about it?”
–”Care to tell us why you changed it?”
–”Sure. Would you buy furniture from a store called ‘Unpainted Huffheim’?”
BA Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I grew up watching those commercials. I think he even recognizes that the commercials are so terrible they are funny.
Quality Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
What you really need to do is go check out the photo in the top right-hand corner of the University of North Texas website (http://www.unt.edu/), over “Early Registration for 2007.”
grungedave Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
It’s a Houston thing…
if you live here, Mattress Mac (no “k”) is a local icon.
grungedave Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Or maybe there *is* a “k” now - wouldn’t be the first time a Houston individual added a letter (Akeem/Hakeem)!
DrewJ Says:
November 18th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Mack (and I agree that there wasn’t a “k” when I was a kid) is one of Houston’s best citizens. He is a big supporter of local athletics (not the least of which was the fact that he used to be the title sponsor of the Houston bowl). The man has more money than God, has raised it through ethical means, and if he likes to throw around his $$ in ways to encourage other people to be ethical, more power to him. His furniture store is the 3rd biggest in the country and almost all of his employees are rehabilitated shady characters.
And if you think that commercial was bad, you should have seen some of the commercial back in the day.
Bouj Says:
November 19th, 2006 at 6:10 am
I agree Mac does some good stuff, but he has the capacity to be a self-righteous prick at times. Before the NFL Draft, he led a personal crusade to draft Vince Young, included multiple full-page ads in the Houston Chronicle. When the Texasn went for Mario, Mac was on TV and the radio ripping them to pieces and said he was going to drop his advertising at Reliant Stadium (which is EVERYWHERE there, so it’s a lot of fucking money). HE acted like a spoiled little shit who didn’t get the toy he wanted for Christmas.
Luis Says:
November 19th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
For what it is worth, the music department at Miami is actually one of the strongest music departments at the university, and quite well funded. Can’t speak for other departments in specific, but overall, the school has a $600M endowment and (as best I can tell) an annual operating budget around 10 times as large as UNT’s. Would be interesting to see what those numbers were in the 70s- I’m guessing ‘much smaller’, but really don’t know.
Jim Says:
November 19th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
North Texas State’s Music Department is a world class music program with a recording contracts for their jazz band and concert band. Their football team will never be able to make that claim…
west Says:
November 20th, 2006 at 3:40 am
I’m pretty sure Mac started his furniture business by selling coke.
Truly Knowin Says:
December 19th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Mcingvale is a greedy asshole who stepped on lots of chumps to get where he is. He sold second hand crap out doors in the awful south tx weather by intimidating his hoodlum sales force into intimidating the morons who came in off his foolish commericials. He even fired his own father as well as literally 1,000s of fools who believed the lie that they would get rich working for him (on commission, starving most faded away from the sales mob of over 100). His charitable contributions are done in the loudest way possible and he intimidates the local media with the threat of witholding his ego-driven ad money from their stations…so none dare tell the truth. Before he grew too big to go unnoticed he hired only white males and would make bigotted statements in sales meetings. He even encouraged drug use by the sales force if “that’s what it takes to get the money.” Only after he was sued and given criminal charges for a scrawny lion biting a little girl’s head half off at his flea market and “Mac” forced to do community sevice did he suddenly become “anti-drug” and used this to get in front of faculties and business groups to promote his self-interests. Nothing he does is original, he took the single location idea from a store in Nebraska (and his curious paranoia about thieves) the jumping up in commercials from Toyota and the attack on the customer from the used car business. When it became known that the real “good old boys” from the houston livestock and rodeo would forever gang up and make certain this self-promotional clown didn’t get the top bid for the prize steer Mac took his bruised ego and went home forever. When the Astros were strong he was suddenly an Astro fan, when the Rockets were the rage he tried to damn near buy thier approval by building their practice site. When Rocket staff see mac and his loud mouthed wife coming someone is sure to mutter “here come the Clampitts”. The Horatio Alger story is bull too, his old man was a big shot weasel in the mobile home insurance market and raised “mac” in a big home in Dallas. And Mac can’t own a business license in texas (the furniture store is in his wife’s name) because Mac was knee deep in the membership-to-gyms-that-would-never-be-built scam in the late 70’s.