College sports’ fastest-rising expense: Paying coaches not to work – Chicago Tribune
Adler’s conclusion: Changing coaches has minimal, if any, impact on team success. In fact, among the worst teams, Adler found, those that changed coaches won about the same amount over five years as those that didn’t. For mediocre teams, those that changed coaches actually fared worse.
There are, of course, examples of coaching changes that turn around football programs, Adler acknowledged, such as Nick Saban‘s hire at Alabama in 2007 and Jim Harbaugh’s this season for Michigan. But for every revival, Adler found, there were several teams that just cycled through coaches, piling up millions in severance along the way.
For example, in 2009, Kansas fired Mark Mangino and paid him $3 million in severance. In 2011, Kansas fired Turner Gill and paid him $6 million in severance. In 2014, Kansas fired Charlie Weis, whom the school owed $5.6 million, which is part of more than $24 million Weis reportedly will collect in severance combined between Kansas and Notre Dame, which fired him in 2009.
Adler thinks athletic directors probably underestimate the disruptive impact of changing a coach – and overestimate how quickly a new coach can build a winner.
“What are you buying when you buy out the coach for $2 million, $3 million or $4 million and pay a premium for the next hot name on the market that year?” Adler said. “Are you really buying a transformed program, or is it just scapegoating the guy who was there?”
– – –
At the October news conference announcing Edsall’s firing, Anderson said that increasing revenue from the Big Ten conference would help his program cover the $2.6 million severance.
“We’ll be able to weather this,” the athletic director said.
In 2010, when Anderson fired Friedgen, a Maryland athletics news release said the program would cover the $2 million buyout “through revenue generation, private fundraising and strategic business decisions.”
Neither time did Anderson or Maryland athletics mention one important revenue generator for the program: students.
Maryland athletics has struggled financially for the past few years. In 2012, the program cut seven sports to save money. In 2014, it ran a $17.6 million deficit, according to a Post review.
To help pay its bills, Maryland athletics charges one of the largest mandatory student fees in the Power Five. Each full-time undergrad at College Park paid $406 into athletics in 2014, generating $11.3 million all told for Maryland athletics.
In an interview, Damon Evans, Maryland athletics’ chief financial officer, said no student-fee dollars will pay Edsall’s severance next year.
“We bring in more than enough revenue in other categories: corporate sales and sponsorships, Big Ten money,” Evans said. “There are plenty of dollars generated in those areas to use for severance pay.”
When announcing firings, officials commonly promise certain sources of revenue – often state funds or student fees – will not be used to pay a coach’s buyout. Some experts consider these explanations deceptive attempts to minimize outrage.
“That doesn’t make any financial sense,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College and a sports-business expert. “They collect money from various sources, and they use it to pay their expenses. … That’s like saying when I bought my ticket to see the Maryland game, it went to coaches’ salary, but when you bought a ticket, it paid the tutors.”
Sometimes athletic departments will say donors agreed to cover a buyout. Money is fungible, though, as Zimbalist and others pointed out; every dollar an athletic department pays in severance is a dollar the department isn’t using for something else.
“If those donors weren’t giving money for the buyout, the AD would be hitting them up for a new locker room or scoreboard,” Zimbalist said.
To determine how much students chip in to severance, Zimbalist recommended splitting up an athletic department’s expenses proportionally: Whatever percentage of the department’s overall spending is covered by student fees, that percentage of the severance also comes from students.
In 2014, student fees paid about 15 percent of Maryland’s expenses. If that percentage remained the same next year, then Maryland students would fund about $400,000 of Edsall’s severance – or about $62 per full-time undergrad. And they won’t be the only students seeing their mandatory-fee money go to severance.
The top three Power Five programs most reliant on student fees – Virginia, Rutgers and Maryland – will all owe severance next year. Rutgers owes as much as $5.9 million over several years to fired athletic director Julie Hermann and football coach Kyle Flood and his staff, and Virginia will pay $2.7 million to former football coach Mike London through 2016.
Virginia, Rutgers and Maryland fit the profile of poor or mediocre football teams Adler found would be better off with patience. But Adler, the political science professor, knows first-hand that in college sports, patience is often in short supply. In 2010, Colorado fired Dan Hawkins, paying him a $2.1 million buyout. Replacement Jon Embree lasted two seasons before he was fired with a $1.6 million buyout.
Current coach Mike MacIntyre is 10-27 in three seasons. He’s signed through 2018. If he’s fired before then, his contract calls for the school to pay him $2.3 million for each remaining year on his contract.
Last week, Adler noticed an article in a local newspaper, an interview with Colorado Athletic Director Rick George about the football team’s future. George said MacIntyre’s job was safe for next year – but that the Buffaloes need to start winning.
“There are lots of schools that have tried to buy their way into the upper echelon . . . and occasionally they will be successful,” Adler said. “But you can also spend an awful lot of money and get nowhere.”
About Us
Free Shipping
If your order is $35 or more, you may qualify for free shipping. With free shipping, your order will be delivered 5-8 business days.
