As furloughs, hiring freezes, and salary cuts become the norm on many campuses, the economic downturn is largely bypassing one class of university employee: football coaches. Perhaps nowhere is that disparity greater than in the Southeastern Conference.
Of the league’s 12 head football coaches, eight make $2-million a year or more, twice as many as in any other league. Just last month, the University of Florida made Urban Meyer the conference’s highest-paid football coach, at $4-million. Right behind him are the University of Alabama’s Nick Saban ($3.9-million) and Louisiana State University’s Les Miles ($3.8-million).
Anyone who attended the league’s preseason media gathering here in July would hardly know that colleges are suffering. Nearly 1,000 reporters, including an ESPN crew, showed up to hear the league’s million-dollar coaches discuss the forthcoming season. The media had to wade through a hotel lobby where hundreds of fans had gathered, some holding copies of Forbes and Sports Illustrated, with cover shots of Mr. Saban.
The top guys aren’t the only winners. The University of Tennessee’s nine assistant football coaches will earn a combined $3.3-million this season. And Alabama will pay its football staff $2.7-million.
In this league, you don’t even have to be a current coach to make millionaire money. The University of Tennessee and Auburn University are paying Phillip Fulmer and Tommy Tuberville, both longtime head coaches who stepped down after last season, a combined $11-million over the next few years.
And that doesn’t even count basketball, where the University of Kentucky just signed John Calipari to a record eight-year, $32-million deal. Potential bonuses and perks could push that figure close to $5-million per season.
The presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors of SEC universities have a ready defense for paying coaches so much: market forces. To stay atop the polls, and to keep greasing the economic engine that drives their entire athletics budget, university leaders say they must remain competitive with professional leagues. At least two SEC coaches, including Mr. Saban and Tennessee’s new coach, Lane Kiffin (a relative bargain, at $2-million), have been head coaches in the NFL.
Athletics officials are quick to remind disgruntled observers that the majority of coaches’ compensation is covered by corporate endorsements, private donations, and other outside money.
Despite those arguments, it’s getting harder to make a case for rising pay, which shows no sign of abating.
“For schools to be increasing the salaries of people already in the millionaire club at a time they’re calling for cuts of the rest of the university is perverse,” says Nathan Tublitz, a professor of biology at the University of Oregon and co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a group of more than 50 Faculty Senate leaders who work to help integrate athletics and academics.
Before Florida gave Mr. Meyer a $750,000 raise, in August, J. Bernard Machen, the university’s president, and Jeremy Foley, its athletic director, met to discuss how the move would go over in Gainesville, where 11 faculty and 49 staff members were recently laid off.
“It’s a difficult time economically, and there’s a lot of pain on this campus,” Mr. Foley says. “But at some point you’ve got to make sure your program stays in place, and Urban’s a key component who helps generate two-thirds of our budget.”
Florida’s athletics program is self-supporting, and Gator fans are among the most fanatical in college sports, so the announcement was largely applauded.
“Do we wish it were different —that our economy and state were in a different place now?” says Jill W. Varnes, a professor of health education and behavior and Florida’s faculty athletics representative. “Yes, but it’s nice to not be in a place where athletics is a drain.”
