Money trumps loyalty for some top college coaches

On Jan. 18, Paul Rhoads, the defensive coordinator for Pitt football, resigned. He took the… On Jan. 18, Paul Rhoads, the defensive coordinator for Pitt football, resigned. He took the same position at Auburn University. Rhoads’ decision came six years after he turned down an offer to fill Auburn’s vacant defensive coordinator position in 2002.

The media picked up that Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson put together a contract extension and pay raise to keep Rhoads on the Panthers’ staff. But when Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville came back a second time, it was an offer Rhoads couldn’t refuse. It is the sixth job Rhoads has held in 18 years of coaching.

“Paul felt like it was time for him to have another opportunity,” Pederson said. “Paul would like to be a head coach. It was a good career move.”

Rhoads’ move was the latest high-profile coaching change in a string of moves over the past two months since the college football season ended. These coaching changes are spurred by winning, but more importantly, winning generates cash and career advancement.

Moves like Rhoads’ in the college sports world, which has become increasingly sophisticated, televised and driven by money, are not unlike those in the corporate world where there is a culture void of loyalty and constancy. This has become the norm. It’s not so different in college sports now.

“Coaches have become like the celebrity CEOs of recent years,” Robert Ruck, a Pitt professor who researches the history of sports, said in an e-mail. “Schools chase them with ever larger sums of cash. It’s been great for the coaches who are able to capitalize on their situation, not so great for sport.”

It wasn’t always like that, said Jim Thompson, founder and executive director of the Positive Coaching Alliance, a nonprofit organization that provides training for coaches on every level.

Basketball coaches like John Wooden at UCLA or Jim Boeheim at Syracuse and Penn State football coach Joe Paterno have created an identity uniform with the schools they coached or still coach. Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has coached the Blue Devils for 28 years.

Coaches like Wooden, Boeheim, Paterno and Krzyzewski are now a rare breed in college sports – just four coaches of teams in the final college basketball Top 25 have been at their respective schools for 10 or more seasons. There are compensations for those coaches who don’t job-hop for money and new challenges. Schools have to keep their star coaches happy to keep making big money.

Krzyzewski had the court inside Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium named after him. The Associated Press reported that Krzyzewski also made close to $1.5 million in compensation in 2005 – triple the salary of the school’s president. Boeheim made $200,000 more than his school’s president in 2005.

Paterno, who has coached Penn State for 42 years, earns an annual salary of more than $512,000. His contributions to Penn State resulted in the school naming the new wing of its library after him. Along with Krzyzewski, Paterno has rejected numerous offers to move elsewhere, including big contract offers to coach at the professional level.

In more recent times, it’s easier to find a new brand of coach: the business-minded coach. The CEO coach.

On Dec. 11, 2007, Atlanta Falcons coach Bobby Petrino abruptly left Atlanta to become head football coach at Arkansas, his third job in a year. Prior to joining the Falcons in January 2007, Petrino had signed a 10-year, $25.5 million contract extension in 2006 to keep coaching Louisville. Petrino signed a four-year, $24.5 million contract with the Falcons. After breaking two contracts to secure a third, Petrino will make $2.85 million a year over the next five years with Arkansas.

A year earlier, Nick Saban became head football coach at Alabama after two years with the Miami Dolphins. Saban has coached five teams in 17 years. He made a guaranteed $4 million last year with Alabama, plus somewhere between $700,000 and $800,000 in bonuses for Alabama’s Independence Bowl win against Colorado on Dec. 30, 2007.

A few months later, John Beilein accepted an offer to coach Michigan basketball. Michigan is Beilein’s fourth Division I head coaching job in 16 years. Beilein made $1.3 million in his first season with Michigan, an $800,000 raise from his job at West Virginia.

These coaches and their media representatives refused to comment.

It’s a sensitive subject for coaches, especially when the move is perceived to be for money.

But the math is easy: Thompson said the easiest way to get a salary bump is to go to a new job.

“Nobody ever hires you saying they’ll give you less than the job you were at,” Thompson said.

Electronic impact

So where did the money come from, and why do coaches seem to bounce around so often these days?

“We’re in a hurry-up-and-win society,” Pederson said. “There is no patience for losing. The coverage surrounding coaching changes generally used to be in the local newspapers and maybe, if it was a really big deal, it made the national papers.”

Now, high profile moves are all over the electronic media.

Blame television for that, said former Pitt sports information director Beano Cook. Cook, a college football commentator and historian for more than 20 years, said loyalty no longer exists in college sports and money reigns supreme.

This trend developed alongside the introduction of college sports on cable television.

“Loyalty is a word that should be out of the dictionary when it comes to coaches,” Cook said. “Cable’s money all at once put so much more money into college sports.”

Pitt basketball coach Jamie Dixon said the increase in coverage is a result of more coaches being fired.

“It’s all about speculation about jobs opening up and where people might go,” said Dixon, whose name popped up when Arizona State had a head coaching vacancy in 2006 and again this off-season when California had an opening. “It’s all over the media when they think a guy will go to this place or that.”

To Pitt professor Valerie Goff, who researches and studies television’s role in society, it’s only natural for cable TV executives to commercialize college sports and show them as much as possible.

“Showing sports generates revenue,” Goff wrote in an e-mail, “which means that there will be more sports shown, which will generate more revenue.”

It’s easy money for TV – sports are a common ground for society, a place to connect to others and identify with a group, region or school, Goff wrote.

“That identity is based not on revealing innermost feelings and opening oneself up to others in an interpersonal way,” Goff wrote. “It is created for us by logos and team colors.”

The genesis

Pederson recalled the first big coaching move that involved big money and affected him personally. In 1982, former Pitt football coach Jackie Sherrill, who was responsible for the development of Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett and star quarterback Dan Marino, took the head coaching position at Texas A’M University in 1982.

Sherrill signed a six-year, $1.7 million contract to coach the Aggies and be its athletic director.

Sherrill had just finished coaching Pitt to three consecutive 11-1 seasons when he took the job in College Station. The Aggies had just completed a 7-5 season.

“It’s money,” said Cook, who added that Texas A’M was desperate for a good coach at the time. “That’s capitalism.”

Pederson added, “Salaries have escalated dramatically in my time in sports. At that time [when Sherrill took the Texas A’M job], that money sounded like a lot.”

Sherrill’s move came just over two years after the creation of ESPN, which began broadcasting the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament in 1982. The televised success of Pitt football made Sherrill a hot coaching commodity.

Thompson said that it’s natural for coaches to job-hop because of what he called “the whole sports culture,” but it’s tough on college athletes who commit to programs for four years. It’s not easy for student-athletes to transfer to a new school, and the athlete has to sit out a year before he or she can resume competing.

“Coaches can leave their contracts whenever they want,” said Thompson. “If a coach is in a bad situation, they can move out of it. Athletes feel trapped. Athletes sign a scholarship and they’re committed.