By Phil Goldstein | North Forty News
Until I retired, I worked for 30 years in intercollegiate athletics administration at four different major college programs, where I oversaw the business and budget operations. With the college football season winding down, it’s time for my annual biting of the hand that fed me all those years, specifically a discourse on the unbusinesslike business of big-time college athletics, as illustrated by the latest costly mistakes in hiring football coaches.
I begin my message this year with a bit about Curt Cignetti, hired a year ago by Indiana University to head its historically woeful football program. At the time of his hire, Cignetti was earning $677,000 annually at James Madison University. He was given a six year, $4.5 million a year contract at Indiana. In early November, when the Hoosiers were 10-0 for the first time ever, the university tore up Cignetti’s 11 month old contract and gave him a new, eight year, $9 million a year contract. Indiana then proceeded to lose badly to Ohio State, the only ranked team they played all year. While Indiana under Coach Cignetti may yet go on in a future season to win their first conference title since 1967, how prudent was it of the school’s administration to so quickly assume, based on only 10 games, that 57 years of futility was behind them? Only time will tell if it is or if this circumstance at Indiana University is another in a long history in college athletics of putting emotion ahead of reason in financial decisions.
Meanwhile, here we are at the end of the 2024 season, and the purportedly intelligent directors of athletics of higher education’s (?!) 134 top football programs have coughed up over $50 million to send coaching mistakes packing. If that’s an astounding sum for incompetent decision making, consider that in 2022 and 2023 it was much worse—$71 million and $130 million respectively.
And by the way, most, if not all of a head coach’s staff are usually fired with him, and many of them have their own contracts. The totals above don’t include those additional and considerable buyout costs.
Led by the $10 million in contract buyout owed to West Virginia’s Neal Brown, here are the sums reported as the remaining insults to employment intelligence:
Mike Houston, East Carolina University, $3.3 million; Will Hall, Southern Mississippi University, $860,000; Mike Bloomgren, Rice University, $2 million; Brian Bohannon, Kennesaw State University, $605,000; Stan Drayton, Temple University, $1.9 million; Blake Anderson, Utah State University, $4.5 million; Mike Neu, Ball State University, $550,000; Tom Herman, Florida Atlantic University, $4 million; Don Brown, University of Massachusetts, $1.6 million; Bill Poggi, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, $1.3 million; Kevin Wilson, University of Tulsa, $5.7 million; Mack Brown, University of North Carolina, $2.8 million; Ryan Walters, Purdue University, $9.3 million; Mike MacIntyre, Florida International University, $1.1 million; and Shawn Clark, Appalachian State University, $500,000.
Many of the announcements of coaching firings included the supposed-to-appease caveat that donors, not the institutions’ operating budgets, were contributing the buyout sums. But when I think of the value to true philanthropic causes— endeavors that benefit the really needy—that $251 million paid out for mistakes in just the last three years could bring, that just reinforces why the profession’s value system wore out its welcome with me.
In a popular 1979 football-related movie, the leading character rails against the team’s manipulative, win-at-all-costs mentality by saying, “Every time I call it a game, you call it a business. And every time I call it a business, you call it a game.”
For me at the time that I left the profession, it had ceased to be a game, and it surely wasn’t good business.
Until next time, be well.
Phil Goldstein is in his fifth year writing Tales from Timnath for North Forty News. Phil is a 14-year Timnath resident who is finally using his West Virginia University journalism degree after getting sidetracked 50 years ago. The views expressed herein are Phil’s only. Contact him with comments on the column at [email protected].