Are Millionaire NCAA Football and Basketball Coaches Worth the Money?

As more and more NCAA football and basketball coaches join the millionaire ranks, it's appropriate to ask the question, "are the fans getting their money's worth?" By now, most of us are familiar with sports cliches that adorn the desks and walls of football and basketball coaches such as, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," and "Just win, baby." Indeed, if the coach doesn't have a winning team, it may not take more than one season to find him out of a job. Are the fans and the alumni too demanding? Are expectations unrealistic? It depends on the university and the perceived "tradition" that that school has in a given sport. Some schools are considered "basketball schools," while others are "football schools." It isn't often that a school excels in both sports, but recent trends with the University of Florida and Ohio State in the mid 2000's just goes to show that there are exceptions.

Although any major conference such as the Big Ten, the Atlantic Coast Conference, or the Big Twelve, to name a few, has it's share of millionaire coaches, let's use the Big Twelve as an example. In football, as of 2008, all but two coaches of the twelve conference schools have compensation packages that earn them $1 million a year. Now we all know that there are endorsement deals that probably get the remaining two coaches who haven't achieved millionaire status into the seven figure earner's column, but as of the time of this writing, only Oklahoma State's MIke Gundy and Kansas State's Ron Prince were in the sub-$1,000,000 a year earner's category. Although Ron Prince is reportedly about to close a deal guaranteeing him $1,100,000 a season for the next five years. Mack Brown, of the Texas Longhorns has achieved multi-million dollar status, earning almost $3 million a season at $2.8 million, which puts him at the top spot in the conference.

In the Big 12, only Oklahoma and Texas have competed for national football championships in recent years. Nebraska, a perennial power, hasn't done so since 2001. Two newcomers to the league, Mike Sherman and Art Briles, each earn $1.8 million and $1.4 million a season respectively. In the case of Briles, he takes over a Baylor football team that hasn't been anywhere near a conference title. While Kansas' Mark Mangino was in the hunt for a national championship in 2007, as was Gary Pinkel of Missouri, should fans expect their team to be in the hunt for a national championship every year, simply because the team's coach earns one of the top three or four salaries in their conference?

Here are some odd things that can happen to you if you don't perform. In 2007, Nebraska's Bill Callahan, already earning about $2 million a season to coach the Cornhuskers, was offered a contract extension after the first few games of the season when the team performed well. By season's end, the team's defense had collapsed and gave up a record 76 points in a loss to the University of Kansas and another 65 in a loss to Colorado. Callahan was both "extended and fired" within the same season. Nebraska is the same university that fired former Coach Frank Solich in 2003 for only having a 10 win, 3 loss season, and at the time, was the coach with the sixth best winning percentage of all active coaches in the NCAA. The athletic director who fired Solich said that "we play for national championships here at Nebraska." Two seasons later, both the athletic director who fired Solich and the man who replaced him, Callahan, were gone.

Another unusual situation that is bound to reoccur again and again, is when the university that hired a coach and now fires him, or if that coach accepts another job elsewhere, has to buy out the remaining "years" on a coach's contract. West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez, in the Big East, had a $4 million buyout when he bolted to the University of MIchigan. Meaning that because Coach Rodriguez left West Virginia for what he perceived to be greener pastures at the University of MIchigan, West Virginia wanted $4 million in compensation for the loss of his services. Michigan eventually coughed up $2.5 million of it, leaving the rest to be paid by Coach Rodriguez. Ron Prince of Kansas State in the Big 12 had no buyout until his contract was renegotiated, and if he gets fired for non-performance in the first year, the University still has to pay him $1 million. Here's a guy that in two seasons, has compiled a team record of 12 wins and 13 losses. Buyouts are the latest "in" thing in a coach's contract, guaranteeing them a long-term unemployment benefit, should they fail to get rehired at another school. Switching to NCAA basketball for a moment, it wasn't that long ago, that almost one-third of the college basketball jobs in one year became vacant, only to be filled by coaches switching schools. As examples, witness long-time Kentucky coach Tubby Smith leaving Kentucky to coach at Minnesota. Billy Gillespie left Texas A & M to coach at Kentucky, and Tom Crean left Marquette to coach at Indiana. Whether these coaches perform in their new gigs or not, the only thing certain is that regardless of the outcome, win or lose, the coach will get close to $1 million anyway if he leaves under his own power, or if the university gives him the boot.

So are these millionaire NCAA coaches worth the salaries they're getting? That depends on the school. When Nebraska hired a coach to replace the retiring legend, Tom Osborne, and when national championships or contention thereof wasn't forthcoming, the 10-3 Frank Solich was still canned. If the school expects to win a championship every year, then it's to be expected that the higher the salary, the lower the job security when you don't win. Perhaps a better way to measure whether a millionaire coach is worth the money is in viewing the team's performance on the field. When a team is giving up more than 50 points a game, in the case of former Coach Callahan at Nebraska, you have to feel a little shaky about your chances of keeping your job. But if your season record is 6 wins and 6 losses in a twelve game schedule, and the losses were of the type that could have gone either way, then the fans may feel that at least the team is trying to win, and that the coach should escape the blame. Still, it seems as if it reaches the point where the coach wants to take an early retirement, all he has to do is have a dropoff in the level of performance from a season ago, and then the coach can receive his lucrative million dollar buyout and go fishing.