What Price Victory? Colleges Learning It Can Be Steep

When UCLA went shopping for a football coach this month, administrators at the university found themselves in a predicament.

They could offer a high-profile job, a team steeped in tradition and a scenic campus. But the $600,000 salary wasn’t sufficient to lure an established coach from another school.

May we show you something in a coordinator? Perhaps an up-and-coming assistant?

The new economics of college football are such that every team in this week’s major bowl games -- the Fiesta, Rose, Orange and Sugar -- pays its coach at or near $1 million a season, if not twice that much.

Salaries are being pushed ever higher by the so-called “arms race” that has rival athletic departments spending tens of millions on everything from Heisman Trophy campaigns to new weight rooms and enlarged stadiums.

When seven figures is the benchmark for a veteran coach -- and anything less seems like bargain hunting -- questions arise: Can a high-priced hire generate the revenue to justify his salary? What does all this spending say about the financial health and sanity of the game?

Even Joe Castiglione, the Oklahoma athletic director who paid Coach Bob Stoops $2 million to lead the Sooners to the Rose Bowl, is alarmed by the volatility of the marketplace.

“As soon as one institution makes a move, other institutions feel like they need to follow suit,” he said. “It almost seems like a bidding process.”

Or a feeding frenzy.

As recently as the early 1990s, no coach made $1 million. Then three men -- Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, former Florida Coach Steve Spurrier and former Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz -- neared or exceeded that mark and the paradigm shifted.

Now, more than 20 football coaches at large Division I schools have moved into the seven-figure neighborhood. The same thing has happened in basketball.

That was too rich for UCLA, so Athletic Director Dan Guerrero focused on candidates with lesser track records who fit his $600,000 budget. He settled on Denver Bronco assistant Karl Dorrell.

The same week, Texas A&M; spent $1.5 million to $2 million to lure Dennis Franchione from Alabama. The Crimson Tide filled its vacancy by luring Mike Price from Washington State for a reported $1.5 million a year.

“If you’re not willing to pay, you’re not going to have a shot at the successful and established coaches,” said Jeremy Foley, the Florida athletic director who gave $2 million to Spurrier and still couldn’t keep him from jumping to the NFL.

Marquee hires are “a safe decision, and not necessarily a bad one,” Foley said. “If you hire an established guy, that’s an easier sell to the fans.”

It can also make sense in terms of dollars and cents, said Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, where Coach Mike Bellotti belongs to the million-dollar club.

Burton said escalating salaries are a function of the market.

“There are guys out there who are winning and getting paid only $300,000,” he said. “But there are also guys getting $1 million and their performance is measurable in a lot of tangible ways.”

A winning team boosts ticket sales, endorsement contracts and television money. Experts believe -- but cannot prove -- that alumni and boosters are more likely to donate.

Harder to gauge is the “Flutie Factor,” a controversial theory that originated in 1984 when Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie defeated Miami with a long final-play touchdown pass on national television and his school subsequently experienced a surge in student applications.

This line of reasoning suggests that a coach who wins “might have the ability to pay for himself very quickly,” Burton said.

The equation appears to work for the 40 athletic departments in Division I that have seen their average annual profit rise from $3.8 million to $5.3 million in two years, according to a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. report.

“The revenue from our football team is much greater than the expense,” Oklahoma’s Castiglione said. “The net amount allows us to fund other programs that cannot make it on their own.”

Perspective Check

But there is a flip side to the story.

“I’m not sure I agree with the concept that coaches deserve $1 million,” said Daniel Fulks, accounting program director at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. “That’s more than [twice] what we pay the president of the United States and probably five times what we pay the president of the university.”

Each year, Fulks compiles the NCAA’s Revenues and Expenses for Intercollegiate Athletics Programs report. In 2001, he found that while those 40 athletic departments prospered, 74 others operated at an average deficit of $3.8 million. Almost 30% of football programs were likewise in the red.

At these schools, salaries and benefits consumed more than a quarter of the athletic budget.

Such spending represents a “fundamental corruption” of higher education, said a 2001 report from a high-powered commission.

“A college provost points out that his school spent more money hiring the head football coach than it did hiring five department heads -- combined,” the Knight Foundation’s Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics stated.

Or, in the case of Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz, who will receive $1.6 million for leading his team to the Orange Bowl against USC on Thursday, 15 times what the governor of his state earns.

There is additional concern about the gap between haves and have-nots. While some universities with $1 billion-plus budgets can afford to boost spending, others cannot -- or will not -- keep pace.

Within the University of California system, chancellors have been reluctant to let their athletic directors get caught up in the arms race.

“If you’re in a situation that Cal or UCLA is in, the multimillion-dollar coaches are not in your scope,” California Athletic Director Steve Gladstone said. “It’s incumbent on those athletic directors to be more creative. You’re forced into more of a discovery mode.”

Hiring an unproven commodity can by tricky. Gladstone hit the jackpot when he spent $600,000 on Jeff Tedford, an Oregon assistant who took over at Cal, led the Golden Bears to a 7-5 record and was named Pacific 10 Conference coach of the year. “To discover someone is enormously satisfying,” Gladstone said.

The results have not been as rewarding at nearby Stanford, where the Cardinal also hired an up-and-coming assistant, Buddy Teevens, and struggled this season.

Even if a gamble pays off, schools often pay dearly to keep a winning coach.

At Oklahoma, Stoops began at $675,000 in 1999 before zooming up the pay scale. It took one good season for Cal to renegotiate Tedford’s contract to an unspecified amount closer to $1 million. Foley went through the process -- at a pricier level -- trying to keep Spurrier at Florida.

“If you lose a highly successful coach over dollars, you have to spend money to find another one,” he said. “If he doesn’t work out, you have to pay him and start over. You could end up spending even more money.”

The dollars have, to some extent, changed the nature of the job.

Georgia Coach Mark Richt, whose contract was renegotiated from $800,000 to $1.5 million on Thursday, said: “If someone gave me more money, they shouldn’t expect me to work any harder because I’m already working hard.”

But they might ask him to wedge more duties into his day. In an effort to recoup their investment, athletic directors shepherd coaches through weekly television shows, endorsement responsibilities and booster functions.

“Part of this job is to promote the program and the university and you fund-raise as well,” said USC Coach Pete Carroll, who earns more than $1 million. “I get called on to do a lot of stuff.”

Running a Reverse

There have been attempts to reverse this mega-buck trend.

When Iowa State gave its basketball coach a lucrative contract two years ago, state Rep. Ed Fallon introduced legislation to limit athletic salaries at state schools but received little support. In the late 1990s, when the NCAA capped salaries for assistants, a federal jury ruled it had violated antitrust laws and the association paid a $54.5-million settlement.

“Unfortunately, I think the only way you can get it to stop is to get an antitrust exemption from Congress,” Fulks said.

With all this talk of revenues and expenses, it might seem like coaching has become more about the bottom line than the offensive line. That isn’t entirely true.

Mike Riley, the former coach of the San Diego Chargers and Oregon State, withdrew from Alabama’s search for a chance at UCLA, where he would have been willing to take considerably less money, in part because his family lives on the West Coast. Coaches also consider the prestige of a program and what the move might do for their resumes.

Dorrell eagerly accepted UCLA’s offer because it was his first head coaching job.

But even before his introduction as the new Bruin coach, the 39-year-old showed he was savvy about the economics of his trade.

“If you win games,” he said, “the money comes.”

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College football’s big gainers

Average annual salaries for the coaches in college football’s biggest games, the bowl championship series:

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Fiesta Bowl

Larry Coker, Miami -- $1.05 million, plus bonuses

Jim Tressel, Ohio State -- $645,000, plus over $200,000 in bonuses

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Rose Bowl

Mike Price, Washington State -- $600,000, plus $300,000 in bonuses

Bob Stoops, Oklahoma -- $2 million

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Orange Bowl

Kirk Ferentz, Iowa -- $910,000 plus $700,000 in bonuses

Pete Carroll, USC -- $1.2 million

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Sugar Bowl

Bobby Bowden, Florida State -- $1.3 million plus bonuses

Mark Richt, Georgia -- $1.5 million plus bonuses

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Sources: www.espn.com, www.ncaasports.com, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Columbus Dispatch

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Times staff writers Gary Klein and Lance Pugmire contributed to this report.