The issues discussed at the NCAA convention in San Antonio led me to revisit my notes from our Intercollegiate Athletics Forum held in December. An interesting discussion took place on the state of coaching salaries and how those in the college world are dealing with the marketplace. Here are excerpts.
Tim Pernetti, IMG College: “When I was at Rutgers, our head football coach [Greg Schiano] was our highest-paid employee in the state of New Jersey. His football program created a new brand and image in our market. It created success and brought great visibility to the university. That cannot be measured over a five-year contract that will pay an individual $10 million when the program generates $25 [million] to $30 million a year. It is an immeasurable amount of value that we are able to aggregate through exposure, media and success. The challenge, on the flip side, is that you are going to get what you pay for. Agents are going to push. Coaches know what the average salary of whatever conference they are going to coach [in] is. They are not going to take less money. … You have to pay to find the right people.”
Mike Aresco, American Athletic Conference: “If you want your student athletes to have great coaches, you have to pay them. It is a competitive situation. We have to deal with it and try being reasonable about it. Coaches have a lot of opportunities. But in the end, if you have outstanding coaches and leaders, that is going to obviously have a huge impact on your student athletes, not only while they are at the university but the rest of their lives.”
Greg Brown, Learfield: “If a coach isn’t getting what he believes to be his fair market value, he has a lot of options. There is real pressure. Look at Houston [who re-signed Todd Herman to a five-year deal worth at least $14 million], look at Temple [who re-signed Matt Rhule to a six-year deal], another program not in the power five that is keeping coaches and upping the ante. Why is that? Because [the coaches] had other options. … It is an incredibly competitive marketplace. If you do not have the right person in the chair running these programs at the highest possible level, you are done. It does not work.”
Oliver Luck, NCAA: “As a pragmatic matter, there is no solution beyond self-restraint. There is really no model that anyone has come up with that says how you pare back coaches’ salaries. We are in a free market. We are all capitalists. We all enjoy free enterprise, and that is certainly what we got.”
Abraham D. Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
