Last Saturday, the University of Texas fired its main football coach, Tom Herman. Buying through Herman will charge the university about $15 million, in addition to the estimated $9 million for his assistant apprentices. In his four years in Texas, Herman’s overall victories and losses were 32-18, adding a 7-3 record and a win in a bowl this year. Sounds like I want to get rid of him quickly, doesn’t it, with the $24 million song?
It was the very University of Texas that blamed the profit disorders related to the pandemic of firing workers, firing others and asking dozens of workers to cut their wages, amid a pandemic that has already killed 350,000 Americans, caused record unemployment and decimated state and college budgets, UT to spend $24 million because it could not withstand the humility of its football team 7-3.
Texas is just the latest example of this year’s exorbitant expenses to lay off school football coaches and pay them the contractual redundancy obligations that universities considered such smart agreements when they hired them and, in most cases, happened in public universities, where the year of the pandemic, presidents talked to their campuses about the “historic” budget disorders they faced , the “heartbreaking” cuts to be made and the “unprecedented” sacrifices that would be needed. Except. . . by the football coach.
Auburn University will have to pay its authorized coach, Gus Malzahn, $21. 7 million, some of which expire in 30 days. Malzahn was to blame for going 68-34 in his eight years at Auburn, and had a record for victories this year. The Auburn Athletics Department has lost $62 million in profits since last spring.
The University of Arizona fired Kevin Sumlin in December and will pay him between $5 million and $7. 29 million to leave. University of Arizona professors face licensing and salary cuts through June 30, 2021 due to the monetary consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The highest-paid workers have their wages reduced.
The University of South Carolina owed Will Muschamp $15 million after firing him at the end of the season. In September, sports director Ray Tanner reported that the Gamecocks faced a $58 million deficit, and in June, South Carolina President Bob Caslen sent this disturbing message to and personal:
“The fiscal landscape before us is more serious than anyone the university has faced since the Great Recession, and the loss of profits for the next fiscal year could overcome the recession in terms of the impact of a year. This will require a new point of creativity and shared sacrifice from across the campus community.
Vanderbilt University has separated the tactics of its coach, Derek Mason. The accusation of his dismissal is not public information because Vanderbilt is a personal institution, not subject to open record legislation, but chances are that this is at least the equivalent of the salary he owed for the remaining two years of his contract, so put it at least $5 million.
The University of Illinois fired Lovie Smith, with a profit that, compared to the others, is modest at $2. 3 million, but good luck convinced the rest of the university that Smith’s victory is a smart business. whose Champain-Urbana campus is the flagship, announced a $270 million budget for fiscal year 2021.
Of course, there have been other layoffs and acquisitions of football coaches, but collectively only the six in total $75 million, and that doesn’t come with (except in Texas) the purchase costs of the coaches. Assistants.
There is no doubt that buybacks and profits were contractually required; However, it is equally certain that school leaders will have to re-examine how long they are willing to participate in such financially irresponsible agreements. They can blame the “market” if they wish. Or they’d probably realize they’re the market and replace it.
An increasingly absurd justification for these outlandish expenses is that they are all paid with personal cash. Couldn’t you use that same personal cash to save jobs, get staff back on leave, avoid payments?Would tycoons be willing to pay scholarships for defensive coordinators?Could college presidents and sports administrators tell their big donors they want that money for anything?Apart from paying extravagant salaries to coaches, couldn’t the loss of billions of dollars in college investments be a sufficient explanation for re-examining philanthropic priorities?
It is not entirely certain that the Knight Commission’s recent call to inter-university athletics for governance adjustments in Division I sports, adding a new governance framework to update the NCAA, for the Football Bowl Football Division of football, will have an effect on solving those problems. . But don’t bet on that.
Ultimately, the monetary excesses of large-scale school football are likely to continue, until college leaders and forums no longer value the millions of dollars that the top establishments lose.
I’m president emeritus of Missouri State University, after I got my B. A. wheaton College in Illinois, I was given a PhD in clinical psychology from the
I’m president emeritus of Missouri State University, after I got my B. A. from Wheaton College, Illinois, earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Illinois in 1973. Then I joined the University of Kentucky College, where I progressed through the ranks of professor and held the position of Director of the Clinical Psychology Program, Director of the Department of Psychology, Dean of The Graduate School and The Provost. In 2005, I was appointed President of Missouri State University. After retiring from the state of Missouri in 2011, I became Missouri Chief Policy Adviser Governor Jay Nixon Recently, writing two books: Degrees and Pedigrees: The Education of America’s Top Executives (2017) and Coming to Grips With Higher Education (2018), both published through Rowman