Kentucky Football: Preparing For Akron

Florida Enters BCS Title Game With Top-Paid Athletic Director
By Curtis Eichelberger – January 6, 2009 13:41 EST Email Share
Share Business Exchange Twitter Delicious Digg Facebook LinkedIn Newsvine Propeller Yahoo! Buzz Print

 University of Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley

 University of Kansas Athletic Director Lew Perkins
Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) — When Jeremy Foley was hired as athletic director in 1992, the University of Florida was emerging from National Collegiate Athletic Association probation, playing in an outdated stadium and seeking its first national title in football or men’s basketball.

Since then, the man who started his career as an intern in the Gainesville school’s ticket office built a program that won two national championships in both football and men’s basketball. The Gators football team will try for its third on Jan. 8 in the Bowl Championship Series title game in Miami against the University of Oklahoma.

The 56-year-old Foley is the highest-paid athletic director among public schools in college football’s top division, according to contracts obtained through open-records requests. His $965,000 in guaranteed salary can grow to more than $1 million after benefits and bonuses. The University of Kansas’s Lew Perkins is second at $900,000, followed by the University of Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez at $750,000.

"The athletic director is more like a CEO of a corporation than a guy who hires coaches," said University of Florida President Bernard Machen, who will earn $416,000 in base pay this year. "Jeremy oversees everything from the sale of bonds for capital construction to tickets and sponsorships, and he manages more than 500 employees."

Foley hired Urban Meyer to coach the Gators football team beginning in 2005. The following season, Florida won its second national title. This season the Gators are ranked No. 2 heading into the title game against the top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners.

Gators Are Favored

Florida is a 3 1/2-point favorite over Oklahoma, according to Las Vegas Sports Consultants, which advises casinos on betting lines.

The Florida athletic director, who didn’t respond to an interview request, has managed $199 million in renovations to sports facilities during his tenure and oversees an $83 million budget. Joe Castiglione, Foley’s counterpart at Oklahoma, makes a base salary of $700,000, fourth in the NCAA.

The contracts were acquired by filing public records requests with each public university in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision. In some cases, salaries were obtained from state salary databases. Schools that aren’t required by law to disclose employee contracts, such as the University of Southern California, the University of Notre Dame and University of Miami, aren’t included.

"Athletic directors are no more important than faculty in any discipline, but they are paid proportionally more because salaries at a university reflect the outside marketplace, and American society clearly places a high value on collegiate and professional sports," said University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who announced his retirement last month.

Salary Comparison

Hemenway said that before setting Perkins’s pay, he conducted salary comparisons, reviewed non-salary arrangements at other schools, spoke with the Big 12 Conference commissioner and drew from his own observations and experiences on various NCAA committees. Perkins needed to be paid at or near the top of all athletic directors in the U.S., he said.

"Perkins runs athletics like a business — focusing on generating revenue while being efficient and keeping costs down," Hemenway said in an e-mail. "In five years, he has doubled the departmental budget and translated this financial success into concrete improvements."

Perkins declined to comment through Associate Athletic Director Jim Marchiony.

New Hiring Model

Chuck Neinas, founder of Neinas Sports Services in Boulder, Colorado, and a former Big Eight Conference Commissioner, said the days of hiring the retired football coach to run the athletic department are long gone.

Similar to bankers or lawyers, he said, today’s athletic directors need years of practical experience and contacts, plus skills in budgeting, hiring coaches, sports marketing and increasingly, fundraising.

Neinas helped place athletic directors Perkins, Castiglione and Missouri’s Mike Alden, as well as football coaches such as Alabama’s Nick Saban, Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops and Texas’s Mack Brown.

"It’s very difficult for someone to come in from the outside with no college experience and be successful," Neinas said. "There are many passionate constituencies that need to be managed, fiscal concerns, fundraising, academic challenges and you’re never going to satisfy everyone."

Ohio State University’s Gene Smith manages the biggest program in the nation with 36 teams and a $115.4 million budget.

Biggest Program

Smith, a former Notre Dame defensive end and assistant coach, spent two years in International Business Machines Corp.’s marketing department, then returned to college athletics as an assistant athletic director at Eastern Michigan. He later spent seven years as athletic director at Iowa State and five years in the same role at Arizona State, working on the NCAA’s Management Council, Committee on Infractions, Rules Committee and Executive Committee.

Neinas said schools are also looking to diversify their programs.

With retention and performance bonuses, some athletic directors can increase their income by $200,000 or more. Most also receive country club memberships, cars and spousal travel to athletic events.

 ——- COMPARISONS OF ATHLETIC DIRECTORS BY CONFERENCE -—

==== SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE ====
-——————————————————————————————
              Athletic Yrs at No. of Dept. Guaranteed
School Director School Teams Budget Base
-——————————————————————————————
Florida Jeremy Foley 17 19 $83.1M $965,000
LSU Joe Alleva 1 20 $75.8M $550,000
Kentucky Mitch Barnhart 7 22 $67.0M $475,000
Arkansas Jeff Long 1 19 $51.8M $450,000
Georgia Damon Evans 5 21 $76.3M $420,000
Alabama Mal Moore 10 21 $77.0M $400,000
Auburn Jay Jacobs 4 21 $75.2M $355,050
Mississippi Pete Boone 11 16 $38.2M $327,400
Tennessee Mike Hamilton 6 20 $86.5M $314,575
S. Carolina Eric Hyman 4 19 $52.1M $309,065
Miss. State Greg Byrne 1 16 $31.8M $175,000
-——————————————————————————————
SEC Average 6 19 $65.0M $431,008
-——————————————————————————————

We are not alone in this. Look at Auburn, Tennessee, and the other mid-range SEC teams. If they are don’t beat Bama or Florida, they are no better off than we are. Their better bowl games are coming from reputation, ONLY when there is a tie-breaker situation. And we havent been in any of those that I can remember in a long time…..