Links
Archives
Monday, October 29, 2007
|
Uh, hey guys... How's that whole academic bonus payment thing working out? 'COLLEGE FOOTBALL POWERS PROVE ACADEMIC BONUS PAYMENTS WORTHLESS '..."The bottom line is, if you don't win, you are going to get fired," says University of Georgia coach Mark Richt, who will earn a salary of $2 million this season with a potential $200,000 in on-field bonuses and $50,000 in academic incentives. Richt says if half his salary was based on academic performance, "you'd recruit guys you know would get 4.0s. They might not be able to play, and then you'll get canned because you can't play on the field." ... "It's public relations; a shell game," says Phil Hughes, associate athletic director at Kansas State University, which doesn't offer academic bonuses. "It's a feel-good story that suggests we somehow care about this." David Graham, 38, Ohio State University's director of student-athlete support services, says the academic bonus isn't a motivator. "A $50,000 bonus on a $2 million contract isn't what gets them moving in the morning," he says. Ohio State coach Jim Tressel earns a salary of $2.2 million, and has an academic bonus of as much as $300,000. An examination of the 2007 coaching contracts at 81 of the biggest football programs at public universities shows that 29 of the 81 don't offer academic bonuses. The contracts are public records under state laws. Top coaches often earn at least $1 million in salary. University of Alabama coach Nick Saban, 55, earns a minimum $3.52 million. His academic bonus is as much as $100,000, or less than 3 percent of his salary. Tedford's $3.3 Million Jeff Tedford, 45, coach at the University of California at Berkeley, makes $3.3 million, and a maximum academic bonus of $25,000, or less than 1 percent. Greg Schiano, 41, coach at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, will earn at least $1.6 million and could get an academic bonus of as much as $45,000, 2.8 percent of his salary. The four-year average graduation rate published last year for the football team at Cal-Berkeley was 37 percent, trailing the school's overall average of 86 percent. Rutgers graduated 50 percent of its football players, according to last year's report, compared with the student body average of 72 percent. Gerald Gurney, 56, the University of Oklahoma's senior associate athletic director for academics and student life, says the academic bonuses are hypocritical and should be eliminated. "The size of these incentives compared to those for going to bowl games or winning games are miniscule," says Gurney. "So the incentives really aren't meaningful at all in terms of changing behavior." ...' |