DA COACH IS NOT GOOD WITH DA MONEY

by WCK, 100% Injury Rate

You may have heard about Mike Ditka's less than giving Hall of Fame Assistance Trust. The charity that collected $1.3 million in its first three years and gave only $57,000 to needy ex-players.

Naturally this revelation made a few people somewhat mad.

As reported here earlier, Da Coach has now said that because of the furor that his charity has caused, he's shutting it down.

Ditka said he will split the charity's $600,000 in unspent funds between Misericordia, a Catholic home for people with developmental disabilities in Chicago, and the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, a Green Bay, Wis., charity that also helps former players.

Except there's one major problem here. The money from the charity, even if it's dissolved, was supposed to go entirely to NFL vets, not people with developmental disabilities in Chicago. After all, people who gave money to the charity believed they were doing it to get money to NFL vets.

There's also a problem with Ditka's money, as in something isn't matching up right.

In an interview on a Chicago sports talk show on Tuesday, Ditka said his trust has given away $159,000 and has $600,000 left to distribute.

But the most recent tax return Ditka's charity filed with the IRS, in November 2007, shows the gift figure as $57,000 and a fund balance of about $301,000 through 2006.

I don't know exactly what this means, but I'll take a stab.

One: Ditka doesn't care quite as much about the NFL vets as he wanted you to believe.

Two: He's going to have a lot of problems during tax season.