ACC Coaching Salaries

[The Stig]

Sure, but I would rather spend $3m on a basketball coach and expect 25+ wins and $1m on a football coach and expect 4-5 wins then spend $3m on a football coach and expect 6-7 wins and $1m on a basketball coach and expect 18-20 wins.

I am of the opinion that Grobe's compensation limited our coaching search last April.

In other words, recognizing that we have a limited amount of funds, I think we should prioritize basketball.

Considering that most athletic departments are driven by their football programs and that not one of us complained about Grobe's salary when it was announced in '07, I wouldn't hold my breath were I you. Considering he's only had 4 or less wins 3 times in 11 years (historically remarkable here) and we seem to be getting higher rated athletes he should get paid a decent amount. Would you complain about it if we get to the point were 6 wins is a bad year for us?

Limited funds is something which most schools face (yes we do have a steeper hill) so that shouldn't be used as a crutch. Why not just get rid of all "unnecessary" sports to prioritize one of the main ones?

Grobe makes a helluva lot more than most of us but should he be blamed for that? Would any of you jump at a chance to sign a contract like that coming off your best job performance ever? That said, he should be held accountable and prove that he's worth that money.

 

[TBR]

Considering that most athletic departments are driven by their football programs and that not one of us complained about Grobe's salary when it was announced in '07, I wouldn't hold my breath were I you. Considering he's only had 4 or less wins 3 times in 11 years (historically remarkable here) and we seem to be getting higher rated athletes he should get paid a decent amount. Would you complain about it if we get to the point were 6 wins is a bad year for us?

Limited funds is something which most schools face (yes we do have a steeper hill) so that shouldn't be used as a crutch. Why not just get rid of all "unnecessary" sports to prioritize one of the main ones?

Grobe makes a helluva lot more than most of us but should he be blamed for that? Would any of you jump at a chance to sign a contract like that coming off your best job performance ever? That said, he should be held accountable and prove that he's worth that money.

Where did I blame him for anything? I am just providing a little clarity on the information. Being a private school we just get these lump sum numbers out in the press normally 1-3 years late. I am tired of hearing all of this vague stuff along the line of "he normally makes X million but so and so year he had lots of bonuses and other stuff so it was a lot more than usual". I think it's valuable to get the actual numbers out there.

The other stuff is more of the philosophy I think our athletic department should be taking. I mean from what I can tell we have never spent more than $1m on a basketball coach. That just doesn't make sense when basketball is the only sport that turns a profit for us (and it isn't look football is even close).

 

[PhDeac]

The odds are higher that we'll get a coach worth $3 million in hoops as well.

This thread is definitely evidence that Wellman's search was on the cheap and limited our options.

I'm not sure it's been confirmed or if it's just rumor, but it definitely looks like money to get rid of Dino came from outside the budget because it would have made much more financial sense to keep Dino.

There were definitely people who complained about Grobe's deal because it's a risk giving anybody a 10 year deal. I don't think anybody knew it was a $3 million deal. At the time, the word was that Grobe wasn't going to make anymore money, it was just going to provide stability for his assistants.

I under why Ron gave in. At that point, you've got to show you can play with the big boys. It was a risk. It's paid off in terms of getting people/sponsors to buy into BB&T Field, but it isn't paying off on the field. If you look at that $3 million as seed money for everything that's come it for BB&T Field, Deacon Tower, the scoreboard and all the season tickets and such, it looks a lot better. That doesn't come in if Lobo or Dean Hood or somebody else is the head coach.

 

[The Stig]

Wasn't trying to say that you were blaming him, just that some seem to approach this with a "how dare he take that kind of money!?" point of view.

I have never gone through our salaries but is your point of never paying a bball coach more than $1M taking inflation into account? I honestly have no clue on how competitive we try to make those salaries but one can easily argue that we haven't had a coach worth $3M (brings up the chicken egg debate).

Ph, I would guess along your lines about Dino's compensation coming from one or more donors, though I do wonder how much his buyout was

 

[TBR]

Wasn't trying to say that you were blaming him, just that some seem to approach this with a "how dare he take that kind of money!?" point of view.

I have never gone through our salaries but is your point of never paying a bball coach more than $1M taking inflation into account? I honestly have no clue on how competitive we try to make those salaries but one can easily argue that we haven't had a coach worth $3M (brings up the chicken egg debate).

Ph, I would guess along your lines about Dino's compensation coming from one or more donors, though I do wonder how much his buyout was

Of course he should have taken it. I don't know that we should have offered it though, and I definitely don't think we should revere him as a saint for sticking with Wake Forest.

And, no, we haven't had a coach worth that much money, but, at least in my mind, part of the reason is we have never been willing to spend it. I don't know that we could pull a $3m coach, but we could likely pull a $2m one.

Skip made $924,843 in 2005 which translates into $1,023,612. The database I am using doesn't go back far enough for a good Odom year so figure that's the highest. Skip's starting comp was $791,731 (for 2002, his first full year) which works out to $953,762. I don't care to do quite this much research, but I'd bet those were fairly competitive numbers back in the day. The issue is that coaches have gotten a lot more expensive over the past 10 years, but our budget doesn't seem to have increased.

Of course, I say this yet my hope for next time around is that we get some young and kind of unproven head coach (so therefore cheap), but go out and hire the absolutely best assistants we can find. In the day and age of Butlers I think this is our best strategy to getting that $3m coach. High risk, high reward.

 

[PhDeac]

Agree on that strategy TBR. Any coach worth $3 million right now isn't going to come to Wake. But we could get a coach who could coach his way up to $3 million. Of course, as we're learning with Grobe, the challenge is staying a $3 million coach.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Sure, but I would rather spend $3m on a basketball coach and expect 25+ wins and $1m on a football coach and expect 4-5 wins then spend $3m on a football coach and expect 6-7 wins and $1m on a basketball coach and expect 18-20 wins.

I am of the opinion that Grobe's compensation limited our coaching search last April.

In other words, recognizing that we have a limited amount of funds, I think we should prioritize basketball.

Agreed. I love basketball, football just gets me to basketball season.

 

[showbzz]

Maybe it's just me but I hate this mentality. I think (for what little that's worth) that Wake should pour as much money into as many sports as we can for the returned revenue, the reputation and to support the student athletes. How many of you would have cut Field Hockey in favor of supporting the basketball team? They and Men's Soccer are about the only ones consistently worth a damn. I'd rather spend $3M on a football coach and expect 5-6 wins than $500,000 and hope for 1.

when you sink a lot of money into the head football coach's salary, you are inevitably taking that away from other sports....why did the asst men's soccer coach leave to take a lateral asst soccer coaching gig? because penn state doubled his salary. same goes for other sports. at wake forest there are a limited amount of resources, so if you load up on one sport (football) and that doesnt generate enough marginal revenue over what you could pay for similar results...then in essence you ARE cutting one sport in favor of another. not in absolute terms, but in terms of cutting the legs out from underneath one sport in favor of another

 

[oldeac]

On Form 990 reporting, deferred comp to an individual is actually reported twice (in different years). It's reported once when its accrued (accrued amounts go in Column C) and once again in the future when it's actually paid out in cash (Column B). So, when deferred comp is involved, the total comp number from year to year can be inflated and deceiving becuase it reports the same compensation in two different years.

 

[TBR]

On Form 990 reporting, deferred comp to an individual is actually reported twice (in different years). It's reported once when its accrued (accrued amounts go in Column C) and once again in the future when it's actually paid out in cash (Column B). So, when deferred comp is involved, the total comp number from year to year can be inflated and deceiving becuase it reports the same compensation in two different years.

I believe in my calculations I left out the accrual and only included the disbursement.

 

[WhatUTalkinBout Willis]

Wake isn't a football school. That's pretty obvious at this point no matter what the fans or athletic dept says. The scoreboard tells the truth.

 

[wakedeac98]

Wake isn't a football school. That's pretty obvious at this point no matter what the fans or athletic dept says. The scoreboard tells the truth.

Agreed. But I remember one of those "would you rather" polls not too long ago on Deacon Sports which asked "would you rather go to a Final Four or a BCS Bowl game?"...and I was SHOCKED to see that about half (and I think a majority) picked go to a BCS game over the Final Four.

Going to the Orange Bowl and then having a top 5 NFL pick in a 3 year period resulted in a lot of unrealistic expectations about our football program that were a product of the excitement of the moment. Both the fan base and the athletic department were guilty of it.

As a result, the basketball program has suffered. One of the smallest D-1 fan bases attention, excitement, game attendance, and support dollars became more divided. An unprecedented amount of money from our school is now tied up in football. Our athletic budget is not unlimited and other programs, most notably basketball, will feel the effects.

Wake is not, has never been, and will never be a football school. The sooner we realize this, the better.

 

[FreeStateDeac]

...

Going to the Orange Bowl and then having a top 5 NFL pick in a 3 year period resulted in a lot of unrealistic expectations about our football program that were a product of the excitement of the moment. Both the fan base and the athletic department were guilty of it.

As a result, the basketball program has suffered. One of the smallest D-1 fan bases attention, excitement, game attendance, and support dollars became more divided. An unprecedented amount of money from our school is now tied up in football. Our athletic budget is not unlimited and other programs, most notably basketball, will feel the effects.

Wake is not, has never been, and will never be a football school. The sooner we realize this, the better.

AMEN. Basketball has suffered greatly by the diversion of resources chasing a football fantasy.

 

[PhDeac]

I understand what the last few posters are saying, but you can still get a better coach than Dino or Bz for under $1 million.

 

[TBR]

I understand what the last few posters are saying, but you can still get a better coach than Dino or Bz for under $1 million.

GT is spending $1m on Brian Gregory.

I don't think we could get a proven coach for significantly less than [Redacted], much less one that's proven to actually be good.

I would have preferred a balls to the walls approach, but Ron Wellman isn't going to do that, unfortunately he's only going to look at proven candidates. Maybe the [Redacted] blunder will change his mind.

 

[DeacKillsaDevil]

Football pays the bills. Take a look at the article posted on the top revenue producing ath depts.

Completely agree. I wish we would pay our basketball coach 3 million and our football coach 1 million.

While Grobe's recent run of success was nice, I think our athletic department and to some degree our fan base has lost touch with it's identity as a basketball school. And the sooner we get that back the better.

Wake will never have prolonged long term success as a football school. There are too many reasons to list why that will never happen. However there is more than a realistic shot that Wake could have long term sustained basketball success, given the right circumstances.

Wake should be focusing all of its time, thought, energy and money into the basketball program. The football program should be a distant, distant second at best. I would love to go back to the glory days of the early 90s through the mid 2000s where we had realistic chances to be competitive for the ACC basketball championship most years and have the occasional 6-6/7-5 football season every 4th year or so with a trip to Hawaii or San Francisco.

We've lost a little of our identity these past 5 years with pipe dreams in football and can't help but believe it's contributing (at least in some small way) to the disaster our basketball program has become.

Make basketball the clear top dog again. If we dangled 3 million (top 5 money) after Dino left there is no way we would be stuck with this current clown. College basketball starts with the coach. Recruiting follows.

 

[ChrisL68]

All those years of chasing basketball glory never brought us an accomplishment as great as the Orange Bowl.

The issues we have with our basketball program right now are due to the death of Skip Prosser. Trying to scapegoat football is weak, IMO.

 

[PhDeac]

Wake isn't paying Grobe $3 million/year.

And all those years of chasing basketball glory never brought us an accomplishment as great as the Orange Bowl.

The issues we have with our basketball program right now are due to the death of Skip Prosser. Trying to scapegoat football is weak, IMO.

The Orange Bowl is what you get for winning an ACC Championship. We had two of those in hoops. We weren't a Top 10 college football team in 2006.

And Skip was part of the problem. Wellman's handling of his death made it worse.

 

[TBR]

Wake isn't paying Grobe $3 million/year.

And all those years of chasing basketball glory never brought us an accomplishment as great as the Orange Bowl.

The issues we have with our basketball program right now are due to the death of Skip Prosser. Trying to scapegoat football is weak, IMO.

Well if people say that over and over again then maybe it will be what we're saying.

His guaranteed compensation is $2.3m. End of discussion.

If you don't think the football coaching staff's comp, at a time when football revenue is decreasing, effects other aspects of the athletic program then you are crazy.

[Redacted] could not have possibly been our choice if pay was not an issue.

 

[KeEpEr]

Wake isn't paying Grobe $3 million/year.

And all those years of chasing basketball glory never brought us an accomplishment as great as the Orange Bowl.

The issues we have with our basketball program right now are due to the death of Skip Prosser. Trying to scapegoat football is weak, IMO.

Winning the ACC Basketball championship is the same as participating in the Orange Bowl. That goes to the ACC champion. How does Skip's death affect our best three players leaving after their sophomore year, Tony Woods' situation and our starting point guard breaking his foot?