The Precarious World of College Coaches and ADs

As I reflect on the new year I can’t help but think about the 25 college football coaches who changed jobs at the end of last year. About 20 were fired, and the rest moved to new jobs. The coaching slaughter at D1 athletics occurs annually. Sometimes it is richly deserved as with Bobby Petrino for his scurrilous lying and cheating at Arkansas. This year we learned elite college coaches now only have two years to turn around programs with Jon Embree at Colorado. Sometimes it ends a fine career as with Ted Tedford’s ten years at Cal. This predictable year-end carnage got me to thinking of how brutal college athletics leadership has become, and how insecure the tenure is for the senior elite college athletic leaders—coaches and athletic directors. I believe this  remarkable insecurity helps drive  the craziness of recruiting, cheating and salaries in elite college sports.

To get some perspective I thought over my almost eight years serving as a faculty athletic representative in the Pacific 10/12 conference. While my numbers may not be perfect based upon faulty memory, here is the carnage of the 10 original Pac 10 schools over that 8-year period:

Athletic Directors            21

Football Coaches            22

Basketball Coaches         24

30 leadership positions associated with revenue sports—67 personnel changes—200+ percent turnover.

The PAC 10/12 is a destination conference; most leave involuntarily. Only six left voluntarily, one to be a college vice president and one to be a conference commissioner, 2 to the NFL and 1 to the NBA. The rest left under duress. Athletic directors and head football and basketball coaches do not get fired or hired these days without the involvement of the college presidents.  This means all these firings involved the complicity of the President and often regents of the university.

NCAA President Mark Emmert dislikes the locution “business of college athletics,” so do I. Maybe the "enterprise of college athletics?" Not sure, but no words can hide the brittle brutal reality that coaches and athletic directors get fired if they do not win. Winning brings revenue and prestige and can temporarily satisfy insatiable boosters. As I learned, it does not matter how many students you graduate; it almost does not matter how many minor or line skirting violations you have, unless you bring horrible scandal to the university. The reality and incentives for coaches and athletic directors are clear—Win. 

Commentators scream and bemoan the cheating and legal shading and excessive rules of the NCAA. But this constellation is all connected. Coaches and athletic director must win. They know that and despite the rhetoric, little else matters. The frantic drive to win and win fast and continue winning, drives the obsession with recruiting. It drives the obsession with keeping student athletes happy once they arrive. It drives the fixation on high salaries to get the best coaching talent, but also the knowledge of the coach that they can be fired in an instant even for a winning season.  These drives are fed by possessive, obsessive and over-involved boosters who pay for the bloated salaries and new facilities as well as sponsor the skirting of the rules outside of the boundaries of the program. The inordinate power of the boosters also accounts for how little time coaches now have to build programs and how little leeway they have to have a bad season or two.  Even as astoundingly successful coach as Chip Kelly at Oregon finds himself on the outs with boosters because he does not kowtow to their whims.

This win or nothing environment and the reality that a coach or AD can go from hero to pariah in three months shapes the environment that molds coaches and athletic directors.

We all know how tightly strung modern college coaches are. These are not laid back guys; they are driven competitors and hate to lose as much as they love to win.  We see them go off like volcanoes on the sideline sometimes against their own players or assistants. At practices they can sometimes seem almost maniacal in their intensity and demands on 19 year olds. Most morph into unbelievable control freaks focusing upon micro-managing details, recruiting and games. We can watch the living archetype with Nick Saban at Alabama and see the costs of it with what happened with Urban Meyer when he had to take a sabbatical from the game to protect his health and sanity.

We need to remember that coaches are human beings, and most of them stay in college because they love working with student athletes and helping athletes grow as people as well as players. They enter coaching as driven, smart and passionate human beings. But the ultra competitive and hair trigger firing environment shapes them in ways most of them would not choose to grow. Professional sports goes through coaches at a relentless rate; the day after the end of the 2012 NFL season 7 head coaches and 5 general managers were fired. But NFL teams make no pretense to educate, care for and help young men grow. Sadly most college coaches really do care about helping their student athletes grow as humans as well as players, but they also know they are not rewarded for the quality of humanity they instill in their students.

We can bemoan a lot of this, and it has always been with us. Go back forty or fifty years and the same problems existed, the same obsessions and the same corruptions. There was less money and less TV exposure, but college sports, like most things in life, never had a time of innocence.

The point I want to make here is that to a considerable extent the behavior of coaches and athletic directors is shaped by the precarious demands of their jobs and the signals sent to them about winning as the absolute priority. Even worse all the coaches see that moral sluggards like Bobby Petrino gets hired by whomever it was that hired him. 

Despite the craziness most coaches still coach. In most college sports they receive decent pay and graduate students and love their job, their sports and their student athletes. Even at the crazed elite levels of the revenue sports you still can see this shine through in quiet moments or early time before practice or team meetings. But the players are not stupid, they are 19-22 years old, but they know their coaches are on the firing line and they feel their own responsibility when a coach gets fired.

I want to make clear that the problem here ultimately lies with the Presidents and the boosters whom they serve. Every coach who has been fired knows what it is like to be a hero one day and a nonperson the next, wiped out of the history and marketing of the university as thoroughly as Orwell would wipe someone out in 1984.

The good Presidents know they are complicit and feel trapped, riding a tiger of revenue and passion they cannot ultimately control. Most Presidents have far more important and deeper issues to attend to than college athletics, but it takes an inordinate amount of their time and accounts for most of the press their universities receive. Few like or enjoy this, yet they continue to clamor to join Division 1A athletics and football even knowing the costs and losses.

I believe this anger and fear over being trapped accounts for much of the energy driving the Presidents for modern reform. They may never get the TV money monster under control, but they know they have to try. The changes in high school requirements, progress towards degree, the penalties of APR and the new attempts to deny access of NCAA championships tied to graduation rates all create cumulative vectors to redirect some of the coaches’ energy towards education and graduation of students. It also motivates athletic directors to invest more money in academic and student support.

But here again, even as they struggle to inflect academics back into the equations and change the incentive structure for coaches, we know that some president somewhere will reliably hire a moral failure like Bobby Petrino to coach again or that John Caliperi with two vacated championships will be hired again.

At this time of pressure and absurdity, the coaches face pressures and firing windows that exist in no other industry. Yet they stay in. The vast majority live almost nomadic lives moving from team to team when staffs are fired or they have a chance to move up. But the vast majority still care about the student athletes. They still struggle to teach about life along with sport; about learning along with winning.

These leaders live in a toxic system sustained by world class educators. Some make huge salaries, most make good salaries with very unstable and nomadic lives.  They coach from passion and joy in their sport and loyalty to their students. The incentives of the elite level and their putative academic leaders often erode this, but they carry on. I salute them.

NCAA versus Presidents as Reform Opposition Mounts

With all the hoopla around signing day behind us, it might be a good opportunity to take a look at the NCAA reform agenda to help their student athletes. The NCAA Presidents blinked at the NCAA convention in a stare down with their membership. The NCAA reform efforts stumbled as predictable but often silent opposition finally showed its ugly face.

Coaches resented higher academic standards and really resent having to give four-year scholarships; less well off schools resented higher costs; many schools resented and feared having to give women higher cost equal scholarships; and athletic directors opposed higher costs, higher penalties and greater demands for accountability. In classic NCAA fashion, they are crying “slow down” and work on “details.” In the NCAA reality, slowing down means killing the reforms. The Presidents need to hold the line.

To understand this Byzantine process, remember the NCAA is a membership organization. All major reforms must ultimately be voted upon by the membership. These reforms focus upon Division I. NCAA President Mark Emmert and the reforming presidents have invoked a fast track method where the Presidential Board can pass legislation directly.

However, the membership has checks and balances. If a certain number of schools sign a petition, this small number can force the presidents to review the legislation. This happened at the last NCAA convention over the permission to allow conferences to permit increased grants in aid to cover cost of attendance and to permit conferences to award four year scholarships.

The Presidents reaffirmed the reform. The second check now allows schools to launch another petition to overthrow the legislation. If appeal gains 20% of the membership’s signatures, a vote to override will come up at the next NCAA convention. Design to permit maximum deliberation, this process has enabled an alliance between less well off football schools and very underfunded basketball only schools to stop change for years.

The Presidents’ reform agenda expands across many areas. The issues of relations with agents and restructuring compliance rules and enforcement lie ahead. But the reforming Presidents focused first upon student welfare. They pushed on increasing incentives for academic success and simple justice for providing athletes the cost of attendance and four year scholarships.

A number of reforms such as limiting schools with low graduation rates from NCAA tournaments and bowls or mandating a year of academic readiness for very at risk students buttress the education and student aspect of college athletes. They are both proceeding to implementation. They may be weakened in details, but surprisingly they are moving ahead.

Why the opposition to actions that would increase justice and academic success? Basically everyone in Division I but the ultra-elite 14-22 schools loses money, lots of money on all sports including football. The chasm between relatively well off football schools of the FBC and the weaker football FCS schools and basketball only schools drive many votes. Huge media contracts with the top conferences exacerbate the inequality. The less well off schools militantly oppose any cost increases. In addition the almost 200 non-football schools often support very small and underfunded programs. They virulently oppose any efforts that would increase costs whether justified by academics or justice. As an example, efforts to require summer school for at risk basketball players were soundly defeated on a class vote. Yet all the information suggested that mandated summer school would increase graduation rates.

The opposing schools claim that increased costs give a decided benefit in recruitment to the already well off conferences. They believe, correctly that the “permissive” legislation to allow schools to pay full cost of attendance will be picked up by most BCS conferences. To their mind this will further put them at a disadvantage. Schools mutter about “stockpiling,” and all fear having to pay the extra costs to the mandated equity of women’s sports.

Honestly, these arguments are disingenuous. Most elite players do and will continue to choose a FBS over a FCS school and a BCS school if possible. These schools already possess better coaching, facilities, competition and exposure. The proposed reforms for four-year scholarships and cost of living might aggravate but will not create this distinction. The “stockpiling” of players already happens, but most modern players will not be stockpiled and quickly transfer.

NCAA President Emmert and the pro-reform Presidents have fought this inertia by speed and aggressive proposals. At the last meeting Mark Emmert argued that this is not about “confrontation.” 

Well it is about confrontation, and only relentless pressure will get anything done. Even the schools who will benefit from these reforms are piling on to clear up the “details.”  The opponents will be back and have a chance next year to vote to overturn it all. But things are changing at the grass roots level. Conferences are already facing parents and athletes who want four-year scholarships and push them toward offering the cost of attendance levels.

Despite the opposition, the reform movement has garnered successes. The denial of tournament entry is sticking. No one had the courage to oppose it, even if they hate it. The public support of the Secretary of Education has helped. Emmert and NCAA staff has moved ahead with modifying penalties and the Enforcement Committee has generally taken its cue from him going after schools aggressively such as the USC and the Ohio State penalties. The higher penalties need to be rationalized but stand as a bulwark long needed.

The “year of academic readiness” for at risk student athletes is making steady progress in implementation. In one of its great unsung successes, the NCAA has steadily increased the level of high school core course preparation required This change has helped higher graduation rates and lead to many better prepared student athletes.

These academic reforms are far more important in the long run for doing justice to the academic promise of student athletics. But still, enough student athletes cannot function at college when they arrive. Yet schools ask these grossly unprepared students to start on their teams immediately, carry a full academic load and not get full cost of attendance.

This whole approach is patently unjust to students and violates the promise of college sports. Many of us would return to freshman ineligibility to remedy this but it won’t happen. However, the plan to let underprepared student athletes have a year of academic readiness is critical. It limits practice time; builds on full time students; prohibits travel and helps underprepared student athletes focus upon becoming viable college students.  Yet unlike past attempts, this approach keeps four years of eligibility. It does not penalize low income or minority athletes like partial qualifiers or Prop 48.

It costs money and it means that many teams will not be able to immediately use freshmen to save themselves especially in basketball. So you get opposition from the predictable sources and a fair degree of worry and confusion, but at least the ADs have enough shame to largely stay quiet. They let it ride and will fight to modify the rules so the minimum number of athletes will have their year of academic readiness.

The membership forced the Presidents to blink. Athletic directors and coaches are hectoring the Presidents at home. More than a few presidents caved to let the schools sign the petition. Now the Presidents have to take control of their athletic directors and coaches.

The membership will continue to balk. This time the Presidents have to tell their athletic directors and coaches to support the reform rather than letting their athletic directors and coaches run the university.