Winning isn’t always enough for major-college coaches
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Dec. 1, 2015
As this season’s winning NCAA football teams jockey for position in postseason playoffs and bowl games, those who didn’t win at least half of their games begin the process of regrouping in hopes of doing better next year.
Actually, winning isn’t always enough, especially for members of the so-called “Power Five” conferences. On Sunday the University of Georgia, which competes in the prestigious Southeastern Conference, forced its head coach, Mark Richt, out in spite of the fact that his teams have averaged 10 victories a season in his 15-year tenure. Richt will at least be allowed to lead the 9-3 Bulldogs into a bowl game.
His 74 percent career winning rate will be fifth highest among all Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Unfortunately, Richt’s teams haven’t been quite good enough to win an SEC championship in the last 10 years so he’s out.
You’ve got to believe, though, that Richt will land on his feet. Surely someone else will take a chance on a guy who have been able to deliver three wins in every four games.
And Georgia officials will dig a little deeper in an attempt to find someone who can do better. That won’t be easy even in the SEC, one of the richest of the rich conferences.
In 2014, according to NCAA Revenue and Expense Reports, Georgia had athletics revenue totaling $103.5 million, which ranked in the middle of the pack among the SEC’s 12 member institutions. Alabama, perennially at the top of the SEC, had $50 million more.
Of course, Arkansas’ Razorbacks compete in the SEC, too, and ranked a couple of notches below Georgia in athletics revenue.
In most cases money matters in big-time college athletics. The universities that are able to generate the most money have the most to spend, and lavish spending tends to breed to success and bring in more money.
Nevertheless, about half of the major NCAA players are struggling to keep up, as seen in a recent Washington Post study of financial records from the 48 universities in Power Five conferences. The study showed that 25 of those athletic programs ran a deficit in 2014, requiring their universities to make up the difference with subsidies of some sort, such as mandatory student athletic fees.
The remaining 23 university programs, which included Arkansas, managed to at least break even or show a profit without subsidies. That means only a couple dozen of the 230 public schools in NCAA Division I stand on their own.
The SEC looks strong financially, compared to the other major conferences, with only three schools (Auburn, South Carolina and Mississippi) reporting a deficit in 2014, according to the Post.
On the other hand, the Big Ten had seven of its 13 programs in the red, and the PAC-12, which includes Oregon, the richest athletic program in the country, only had two in the black. All eight ACC schools reporting had a deficit.
Remember, too, that last year the NCAA Division I Board of Directors gave the Power Five conferences autonomy over how they can conduct business, and one result was a decision to allow Division I institutions to cover athletes’ “cost of attendance.” That alone will cost member schools an average of $1 million more a year.
The Washington Post article focused on two major programs as examples of the difficult spending battle going on in major college athletics. One was Auburn, where former UA and Arkansas State University coach Gus Malzahn heads the football program.
Auburn has had great success in football, winning a national championship in 2010 with Malzahn as the offensive coordinator and nearly winning another in 2014 when Malzahn returned as head coach after a year at ASU.
That was possible, at least in part, because Auburn’s athletic revenues grew from $57.5 million in 2004 to $109.3 million in 2014. However, spending soared to $126.5 million. The Post pointed out that in 2013-14 Auburn paid Malzahn $4.3 million to coach the football team and also paid his fired predecessor, Gene Chizik, and three assistants a total of $4.1 million not to coach.
Coaches’ salaries were not the whole problem, though. Auburn also installed an 11,000-square-foot video board at a cost of $13.9 million for this fall, even after last year’s deficit. Earlier, the university bought two twin-engine jets at a total cost of just over $14 million, allowing coaches to get anywhere in the country quickly to recruit the top players.
Auburn even posted a loss in the 2014 national championship game, although earning a cut of $2.6 million. The university’s traveling “party” included 370 people and ran up a tab of $2.7 million.
Auburn officials told the Post they expect the university to return to a break-even status this year. For Malzahn, though, 2015 has been a down year. Although Auburn’s 6-6 overall record is good enough for a bowl appearance, the team finished at the bottom of the league’s West Division and lost to arch-rival Alabama. As Mark Richt can testify, that’s not good enough to keep a coaching job in the SEC.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.