Chris Lowery: Should SIU Saluki Coach Be Ousted?

Southern Illinois sports fans are uneasy this March, not sure who to cheer for as the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament looms.

The beloved SIUC Dawgs are coming off a lackluster season, 15-15, and chances are the normally prolific Missouri Valley Conference will be sending just one team to the Big Dance.

The ire seems largely focused on Chris Lowery, the head coach of the Southern Illinois University Salukis, with criticism that perhaps the coach doesn't have the recruiting abilities to follow up Matt Painter and Bruce Weber, the last two super coaches for the Dawgs.

The fear once inspired by the defense of "Floorburn U" and the winning streak at the SIUC Arena has abated and the coach is mostly blamed.

But for anyone willing to step beyond the current disappointing season, the problem is not Lowery or even the team; it is the very nature of Southern Illinois sports fans. They are, among other things, generally fiscally conservative.

So what does money management have to do with basketball and why would the coach be the focus of money-related angst?

After Matt Painter left the Dawgs, Lowery inherited a very good team and took them to the Big Dance. SIU had a well-earned reputation as an up and coming mid-major team and Lowery became the youngest NCAA coach ever to make the Big Dance. He was well lauded and loved and a sought after commodity. Several other programs threatened to snatch him away.

So, SIU's administration, having lost Weber to the University of Illinois and Painter to Purdue, decided to protect its assets, offering the young coach a good contract. After he led the Dawgs to the Sweet 16 in 2007, he was offered and accepted a $750,000 annual salary for the next seven years. Even in the wake of a Sweet 16 appearance, local fans were skeptical. The salary seemed astronomical for the region and for the university.

Then, the team had progressively worse seasons. In 2008, they only made it to the second round of the NIT tournament and this year, the team went 15-15, not even causing the usual excitement for Arch Madness, the Missouri Valley Conference tournament in St. Louis.

But the real problem Lowery faces is not just the disappointing performance of his team. It's all about the money.

In the last several years, Southern Illinois University has embarked on a huge campus remodeling project called Saluki Way. The Saluki Way project includes among other things, a new football stadium and major renovations to the SIU Arena. In short, huge investments in the athletic program. Portions of the project are being paid for by major donations, but other portions are being funded by a local sales tax at a time when enrollment is dropping.

Local residents are upset about the sales tax and that the money for Saluki Way is mostly athletic rather than academic. Worse yet, in the two years since construction began on the project, the state of Illinois has fallen deeper and deeper into a financial abyss. At this point, the state owes all of its universities millions of dollars. Budgets cuts across the university have not been enough. In early March, local residents began circulating emails indicating that University President Glenn Poshard is preparing to make system-wide layoffs to address the budgetary concerns.

So Lowery's problem is not just that he has a non-winning, underperforming basketball team. His problem is that he makes ten times as much as the average well-paid Southern Illinoisan and closer to twenty times many local household incomes in a time when everyone else is being forced to cut back.

If the university must go ahead with layoffs, calls for Lowery's ouster will likely get louder as Southern Illinoisans demand to know why they are not getting what they paid for. The more financially savvy will recognize that breaking Lowery's contract means the university is out that money and more to hire a new basketball coach, but to some that may not matter. Lowery has become the portrait of excess in a time when frugality is admired and demanded.