Coaches Cashing In on Sport’s Popularity

Kermit Davis Jr., the young, successful coach of the Idaho Vandals, took a detour through College Station, Texas, last week en route to the coaches’ convention.

Meanwhile, Michigan State Coach Jud Heathcote, a bigwig in the National Association of Basketball Coaches, received a call from a friend in Moscow, Idaho, he calls “The Old Vandal.”

“Looks like we’ll lose Davis,” to Texas A&M;, Heathcote was told. “If he does well, he moves on. If he doesn’t, we’ll move him on.”

Welcome to musical coaching chairs, fueled in part by a high stakes payoff for the coaches and their schools. The NCAA will earn $1 billion from its television contract over the next seven years and schools can profit from that, as well as the national visibility television provides to sell other aspects of their campuses.

For the coaches, it’s a merry-go-round that offers a chance to move on while the getting’s good, to be in better position to gain the Final Four or to maximize income in a profession in which a record 53 of 293 Division I schools replaced their coach a year ago.

“It’s the most insecure profession in the country today,” said USC’s George Raveling. “Coaches think they are hired to be fired, and you’re always running from the posse. Only a few guys get to wear the white hats.”

The pace of changes is slower this year; 18 coaches resigned or were fired. The domino effect of their replacements coming from within the Division I ranks is just starting. And there will be a big domino effect whenever N.C. State finally terminates Jim Valvano, beginning a scramble for one of the plums of the coaching business.

Some coaches already have cashed in on their success this year. Tom Penders, taking Texas to the final eight in his second year there, signed a new seven-year deal worth $775,000 after Florida reportedly sought his services. He had three years left on his original package.

Nolan Richardson, whose Arkansas team made the Final Four, now is the hottest coaching commodity in the country. Arkansas made sure he stays by arranging a $1 million annuity. Even less well-known coaches cash in: UTEP’s Don Haskins got a $500,000 annuity when Lamar sought to make him coach and athletic director; Tim Floyd, a success in his second year at New Orleans, was given a 10-year contract.

Terry Holland, who retired at Virginia after 16 seasons to become athletic director at alma mater Davidson, said the coaching profession is no different from any other high-profile job.

Some coaches say “get as much as you can because if you don’t get it, someone else will,” said Holland, whose school controls the coach’s shoe contract and who has donated his speaking fees to athletic scholarship funds and to charities.

Each Final Four team will receive more than $1.4 million, and the two ACC teams get to keep more than 70 percent of it. With those kind of big-money numbers, schools are far less tolerant of coaches who cannot produce consistently. Clearly it’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business.

Cincinnati Coach Bobby Huggins points at two examples of that sort of thinking: Shelby Metcalf, who was in his 27th year there when he was fired in midseason, and Don Donaher, who was fired by Dayton even though he had a frequent tournament team and went to the regional finals as recently as 1984. In the basketball business, that’s ancient history.

Of Donaher, Huggins said: “There’s a guy who graduates his kids and is a pillar in the community at a great institution with a lot of integrity. That’s a sign of the times, I guess.”

Of Metcalf, he said: “I don’t think that would have happened years ago. You didn’t see movement. Before, you didn’t see guys criss-crossing the country.”

Davis went from Idaho to Texas A&M;, and a number of coaches expect Mike Montgomery to go from Stanford to Virginia.

Yet, some of the game’s best and most-respected coaches, such as Georgetown’s John Thompson, North Carolina’s Dean Smith and Holland, say the pressure to win always has been there, but that the game has become more visible and coaches are blamed for off-court problems.

“What’s new?” said Smith, lunching with Thompson the other day. “You look at (Jack) Magee, Thompson’s predecessor at Georgetown. Wasn’t he fired because he was 3-21 or something?”

“It sure wasn’t because the folks were graduating,” Thompson said.

The pressure to win is “a lot more because the game’s more visible,” Thompson said. “The game is being covered more in depth than it has been, especially by TV and cable’s involvement, as well as the networks. It only stands to reason students and alumni, because of being more aware of the programs, want the programs to do more, as well as the money, as well as all that’s involved. ...

“That’s what I’m saying about pressures. They have to increase with the visibility. Now you’re playing the national championship. Instead of 12,000 people calling you a bum, you’re playing in arenas with 30,000 to 40,000 people calling you a bum.

“And then folks will look at you and say, ‘Look how much money you make.’ Well, it stands to reason with more responsibility and more pressure. Our society operates that way. With more success, you get paid more. It all reflects society. But the risk is greater also.”

Coaches frequently take the blame for academic failures by athletes who are admitted with academic shortcomings, and they take heat when athletes have other off-the-court problems -- drugs, crime and maybe even shaving points.

“Today you’re called on to do so many different things,” Holland said. “People are getting fired not for wins and losses but for what their kids do off the court. Before, they blamed the parents or the teachers; now they blame the coach. He’s the most visible person.”

Thompson makes another point: If coaches are exploiting their players, then so are television, authors and sportswriters who glorify the game and don’t share the proceeds with the players, either.

Until this year, many NCAA rules changes hurt athletes. But at the January convention, NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz proposed a model for a new system of intercollegiate athletics.

A number of coaches interviewed had the same ideas. They also suggest giving coaches tenure, dividing television rights fees equally among all Division I schools and improving conditions for athletes who are now left without spending money for clothing and transportation home during holidays.

It won’t be easy, said Holland. “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s hard to put it back in.”