For College Coaches, the Cash Is Rolling In
By PETE THAMEL
Published: January 2, 2005
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 31 - In his 24-year odyssey through higher education as president at Brown, Ohio State, Colorado and West Virginia, Gordon Gee maintains he has had one aspiration.
"My goal in life has always been to earn as much money as my football coach," Gee, now chancellor at Vanderbilt, said in a recent telephone interview.
Right now, Gee does make more money than his football coach, but that is not typical at universities with N.C.A.A. Division I-A football programs.
When college presidents meet at the National Collegiate Athletic Association's annual convention, which begins Friday, the rising salaries of coaches will be an item on the agenda.
"How are we going to handle this escalation of cost?" Gee said. "Can we afford to stay in this environment? What are we trying to accomplish?"
The issue sets off drastically different emotions among the main players - the coaches, the agents, the athletic directors and the college presidents.
Gee called it a tragedy. The Oklahoma athletic director, Joe Castiglione, said it was merely reality. Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops said he makes "market value." The sports agent Neil Cornrich said the salaries were too low.
The N.C.A.A. president, Myles Brand, chalked up the recent increases to competition from the N.F.L. and predicted that faculty groups would soon start raising concerns.
Viewpoints may vary, but the dollars do not lie. At least eight Division I-A football coaches make more than $2 million a season, including recent additions to that club: Mack Brown of Texas, Urban Meyer of Florida and Tommy Tuberville of Auburn.
Castiglione predicted that by next spring, 12 to 15 coaches would make salaries of more than $2 million.
"I'm not all that comfortable saying it, but I believe we're much closer to breaking the $3 million barrier than people believe right now," he said.
Castiglione said he was uneasy with the salary escalation, but he was quick to add that it could be justified.
Oklahoma's Stoops makes more than $2.5 million a year, the highest known salary of any college football coach.
But he runs a football program that Castiglione said generates $41 million to $42 million in annual revenue. That finances 70 percent of Oklahoma's budget for its 20-team intercollegiate program. Football expenses account for 30 percent of the athletic budget.
Football, Castiglione said, provides financing in a self-sufficient athletic department that receives no taxpayer or state money.
"If it was a bad dynamic, more and more universities would drop football," Castiglione said. "The value is obvious. So why not apply good business strategy? From a business standpoint, we can justify every penny that we pay Bob and his staff."
He said salaries were reported differently 10 years ago, with coaches' outside revenue - from camps, television and radio shows, speeches and apparel - not counted as part of the total package.
Today, most coaches have all of their ancillary income included in their contract with the universities, which control the outside revenue from endorsements and appearances.
That is one reason, Castiglione said, that the numbers appear larger.
"We're all just trying to be smarter and more efficient in creating a better financial package," he said. "And when a coach leaves, you don't lose outside contacts with them."
Cornrich, the agent for Stoops and many other high-profile college coaches, including Iowa's Kirk Ferentz and Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez, said he saw the salary inflation as indicative of the money football programs make.
Gee said rising salaries were especially a problem because only about a dozen athletic departments were profitable each year, but Cornrich pointed to the huge revenue produced by football.
Cornrich also said that the peripheral benefits of a successful program should not be underestimated - the corollary spike in alumni donations, ticket prices, television rights fees, marketing and merchandising revenue, and student applications for admission.
"If anything," Cornrich said, "I'd argue that coaches' salaries are lagging."
Cornrich said it was simply supply and demand: a winning coach will cost a college more money, just as an apartment in Manhattan will cost more than one in Duluth, Minn.
"It's whatever the market bears," Cornrich said. "As the game gets bigger and revenue increases, there's no reason to draw a line in the sand. The real question should be: When will they start sharing revenue with the people who produce it, other than the coaches?"
Brand, the N.C.A.A. president, said college coaches' salaries began to increase when the N.F.L. started recruiting them in the past few years.
"What's happened through the work of agents and others is that the market between the pro and college ranks has collapsed," Brand said. "It's a single market now. As a result, the salaries and the conditions of employment for football coaches in college are coming to resemble those in the pro ranks."
There has always been a demand to win on campus, but the big money has pressured colleges to win now, and that impatience has contributed to a spate of college firings, including the dismissal of Tyrone Willingham by Notre Dame after the completion of only three years of a five-year contract.
Brand said the consensus was that the trend of escalating coaches' salaries would continue.
Castiglione said: "You can debate it, curse it or embrace it, but if you're going into a competitive market, there's a decision to be made. It's a choice that an institution has to make. If they don't want to do it, they can say no. I'm not complaining, I'm just being candid."
