[Goose]

1.  Do you really believe this is a possibility?  It seems nonsensical to me - that an endowment would fund that way.  Plus, if that were the case, don't you think Stanford or Muir would make that public to offset the hue and cry generated when the 990 news broke?

Why is it nonsensical? People who have seen how Stanford often redirects contributions to the University in (very) unanticipated manners may chose to guard against that by specifying exactly how and when the money made on the endowment above and beyond the amount required to overcome inflation must be spent. You want to fund the head coach (not  new TV screens for Muir to watch) so you just say all "excess" proceeds must be spent on his salary. It may be the management of the fund has done real well in the last few years and there is lots of money to spend, maybe more than anybody predicted when the chair was endowed.  As for why Stanford/Muir aren't saying how the endowed chair plays into the funding, maybe the terms of the endowment forbid it, or maybe they don't want to make public the fact that it is actually outside of their control.
I am not saying this is the case, but it certainly could be. Since I don't know (and apparently nobody in this boards seems to know) just how much money and under what terms the endowed chair operates, I can't evaluate how much of Shaw's salary is actually Department of Athletics money and how much is from the endowed chair. If the numbers are zero and all respectively, I am not "outraged". If the opposite is the case (probably impossible, the endowed chair must pay something) I certainly would be "outraged". Somewhere in between is the threshold of "outrage". But since I don't know this information, I am merely bemused.

[Goose]

1.  Do you really believe this is a possibility?  It seems nonsensical to me - that an endowment would fund that way.  Plus, if that were the case, don't you think Stanford or Muir would make that public to offset the hue and cry generated when the 990 news broke?

Why is it nonsensical? People who have seen how Stanford often redirects contributions to the University in (very) unanticipated manners may chose to guard against that by specifying exactly how and when the money made on the endowment above and beyond the amount required to overcome inflation must be spent. You want to fund the head coach (not  new TV screens for Muir to watch) so you just say all "excess" proceeds must be spent on his salary. It may be the management of the fund has done real well in the last few years and there is lots of money to spend, maybe more than anybody predicted when the chair was endowed.  As for why Stanford/Muir aren't saying how the endowed chair plays into the funding, maybe the terms of the endowment forbid it, or maybe they don't want to make public the fact that it is actually outside of their control.
I am not saying this is the case, but it certainly could be. Since I don't know (and apparently nobody in this boards seems to know) just how much money and under what terms the endowed chair operates, I can't evaluate how much of Shaw's salary is actually Department of Athletics money and how much is from the endowed chair. If the numbers are zero and all respectively, I am not "outraged". If the opposite is the case (probably impossible, the endowed chair must pay something) I certainly would be "outraged". Somewhere in between is the threshold of "outrage". But since I don't know this information, I am merely bemused.