It’s Time to Cap NCAA Coaching Salaries—How and Why

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said “there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.” 

That’s NCAA Division football, in a nutshell. The schools adhere to a rule book as thick as the Bible, all to create rules of equal and fair play. But every year, the rich get richer—and they do it by breaking the bank to pay for football coaches. The latest example is Texas A&M’s hiring of Jimbo Fisher for $75 million (see his arrival above). By any standard—except NCAA Division I football— that is an obscene amount of money for a university employee.

Here at Illinois, our coach received a record contract, by university standards; yet in 2017, Lovie Smith’s contract ranks 39^th in the nation for annual pay (paying $3 million this year).

There is a better way: The NCAA should set a salary cap on coaching salaries in football.

If that sounds like an unfair rigging of the market, it’s not. The NFL caps player salaries at approximately 50% of total league revenues. That’s spreading a lot of money over 53 players. It's legal because sports leagues are permitted by courts to impose anti-competitive rules in order to make their teams more balanced and competitive.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that the NCAA capped Division I at 10% of annual football revenues.

To put this in perspective, Texas A&M had the highest level of football revenue over a recent three year average-- $58 million per year. At Rank 25, UCLA averaged $38 million per year. 

Let’s just say that premiere football programs average about $40 million per year—and let’s set a 10% cap on head coach salaries, at $4 million per year.

The top 20 football salaries for 2017 paid over the $4 million threshold.

What would a salary cap achieve?

First, it would reorder the coaching salary market by constraining its out-of-control trajectory. We’re talking a hard cap in this proposal. Just as free agency in football—combined with a salary cap— leads to labor market mobility that often flows from championship teams to weaker teams, the best teams would retain some coaches but others would lose their talented employees.

Good coaches would be incentivized to explore schools with more cap space. Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley would re-sign at $4 million (he’s at half that amount), or find a new school. A more likely scenario is that Larry Fedora—paid about $2.2 million at UNC—would move for a better contract.
Second, some college coaches would move to the NFL. If Nick Saban left for the NFL (again), every SEC football school would be thrilled. Currently, he's about $7 million above my cap-- so, he'd be movable. The point is that the SEC would become more competitive.
Third—and foremost— strained athletic department budgets would be shielded from a vicious cycle of spending on football head coaches. Money could be spread to fund more student scholarships. 

And that’s the point of the NCAA, isn’t it—to promote the interests of student athletes? But to judge from coaching salaries, this group might be better known as the NCCA-- the National Collegiate Coach’s Association.

What Do You Think? Pros and Cons of the NBA Tracking a Player’s Bio-Data from Wearables?

I welcome readers to send thoughts on pros and cons of allowing teams to track bio-data from wearables. Send your ideas to m-leroy@illinois.edu.

If you use fitbit, meet its cousin on steroids, WHOOP. It is worn on the wrist but tracks data such as heart-rate. It has an accelerometer to detect when you are moving. The main thing it calculates is HRV.

A coaching guide says this: “HRV has been shown in numerous studies to positively correlate with athletic performance and training adaptation, and to negatively correlate with risk of overtraining and injuries. This document provides coaches with an overview of HRV with a focus on its utility as an athlete training tool.”

WHOOP can also be used to spot over-training—not just by measuring time spent in exertion, but by an HRV that correlates with an increased risk of injury. See http://whoop.com/validation/hrv-overview.pdf?_ga=1.183336355.48521612.1480105655.

The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement has new language on whether a team can collect data from WHOOP and similar wearables.

To summarize:

Art. XXII, Section 13 is specifically devoted to wearables.

A wearable is a device that is worn by a player that collects movement and biometric data.

Teams may ask players to wear these devises and allow teams to access data.

Players who agree to this request must be given the same data as the team.

Data can’t be used in negotiations.

The league and players union will develop more standards for the use of wearables.

***

Again, I welcome your thoughts!

Big Ten Expansion: Why Not UCLA, Cal?

TV controls college athletics to a harmful degree. Games are scheduled at inconvenient hours for student-athletes, fans, and university communities—but not for TV advertisers. With this essential logic in mind, I offer my quirky forecast for the Big Ten to add UCLA and Cal.

I’ll share my reasoning in a minute. First, here are my assumptions.

1.       Jim Delaney runs the conference, not university presidents.

2.       Jim Delaney covets TV markets.

3.       Jim Delaney—a product of my law school, UNC— understands the intrinsic value of outstanding public universities.

4.       Jim Delaney also understands the importance of cultural symmetry between schools as diverse as Rutgers and Nebraska, and their traditional Big Ten brethren.

5.       The Power 5 is a transition state that will become the Power 4 and eventually Power 3.

Here’s my reasoning for UCLA and Cal—not from my perspective, but my imagination of Jim Delaney’s perspective. Los Angeles (UCLA) is the #2 TV market in the U.S., and San Francisco (Cal) is the #6 TV market. With Rutgers, Delaney has a piece of the NY and Philly markets, rated #1 and #4. Chicago is #3. By acquiring these two schools, the Big Ten would have 5 out of 6 top TV markets (Dallas is #5).

Not only would these schools add tens of millions of TVs to the Big Ten gravy train—it would allow a TV window on Saturdays from noon Eastern time to midnight Pacific time. Can Delaney resist that?

Cal and UCLA are currently ranked #1 and #2 in the U.S. as public universities. Michigan is ranked #3. Illinois and Wisconsin are tied for #10, and so on.

What about travel and division imbalance? Those would be solvable in Delaney’s world. Move Illinois to the East. Add UCLA and Cal to the West. By present and historical measures, this Illini fan is sorry to say that this would dilute the East; adding UCLA and Cal would beef up the West (UCLA is having a down year, but compares to Nebraska). The result: more parity. 

Here is your lineup, reflecting current football standings:

East                                                                                        West

Michigan                                                                                Wisconsin

Penn State                                                                              Nebraska

OSU                                                                                       Iowa

Indiana                                                                                   Minnesota

Maryland                                                                               Northwestern

Illinois                                                                                   UCLA

Michigan State                                                                      Cal

Rutgers                                                                                  Purdue

NCAA Transfer Restraints: Free Agency for College Players?

My brief (10-minute read, max) law review article, "NCAA Transfer Restraints: Free Agency for College Players," is available online here. (Photo is a former Illinois quarterback who left the program after a coaching change.)

Lovie, Lon Kruger and Nick Saban: The Importance of Hiring “Fit”

Adam Rittenberg of ESPN reports today, “Several industry sources say that Smith is miserable in Champaign. Yes, every 2-6 coach is miserable, but this situation is especially sour — and that the rebuilding job looks much greater than he anticipated. Could Lovie be one-and-done?”

For perspective, let’s recall Nick Saban’s failed experience as a head coach of the Miami Dolphins. The logic behind his hiring was (a) NFL rosters were becoming younger, (b) a college coach would understand younger players, and (c) Saban won a national title at LSU in 2003.

Saban was a head coach at Toledo (1990), and Michigan State (1995-1999) and LSU (2000-2004) before he had a HC job in the NFL. He wasn’t a bad coach but he was the wrong fit for the NFL. As soon as he returned to Alabama, his greatness as a coach became immediately evident.

Lon Kruger coached at a very successful level at Kansas State, Florida, and Illinois before he left NCAA coaching for the HC job of the Atlanta Hawks. He bombed there—but he was hired because the league was getting younger, and the Hawks assumed a college coach would relate to a younger team.

Like Saban, as an NCAA “retread” he revitalized UNLV, took a better job at Oklahoma, and took his team to the NCAA Final Four last year.

Lovie Smith has a similar pattern. He was never more than an assistant coach in college, and left NCAA football in 1996. Twenty years later, he returned to Illinois as a head coach.

There is a reason that labor markets for head coaches in professional leagues and the NCAA rarely overlap—the games are played very differently; a unionized employment relationship for players is very different from an NCAA-regulated relationship that coaches manage with “student-athletes”; and the cultures of pro leagues and NCAA teams are worlds apart. (Consider Chip Kelly in this context, too.)

Jim Harbaugh, you say, as a counter-example?

Let’s not forget that Harbaugh is the son of a “lifer” NCAA football coach, Jack Harbaugh. Quoting Jim Harbaugh’s wiki bio, “During Harbaugh's childhood, the family moved frequently, as his father held assistant coaching positions at Morehead State (1967), Bowling Green (1967–1970), Iowa (1971–1973), Michigan (1973–1979), Stanford (1980–1981), and Western Michigan (1982–1986).” Later, Harbaugh had a successful 13-year career as an NFL quarterback with the Bears, Colts and Chargers. No wonder he is a rare example of someone who understands both worlds of NCAA and NFL football.

Whether hiring is for Division I, NFL and NBA coaches, or any other setting what matters is getting the right fit between the job candidate and the needs of the organization. A hiring process that ignores the fit issues often yields disappointing results.

Big Money in College Sports: How Is It Spent?

The answer to this question was reported in Inside Higher Ed yesterday. The Knight Commission, a body that provides oversight of NCAA activities, put forth this chart (click to enlarge, see bottom chart):

Illinois is barely in FBS Quartile I. This means (roughly speaking) that 34% of revenues are spent on salaries of coaches and staff. Facilities get 21% of the pie, and athletic aid to student-athletes receives 10%.

How much does the school receive? About 2%, assuming that Illinois is typical.

This imbalance will be harder to maintain as state universities, such as the University of Illinois, cut and reorganize academic units while the athletic side spends lavishly on salaries and facilities.

How College Athletics Could Save the Nation

Suppose current polls hold up, and Hillary Clinton wins by a near-landslide. Further suppose that after the election, Donald Trump refuses to concede and doubles down on his narrative that the voting booths are rigged, thus making Clinton an illegitimate president-elect.

Would Alabama secede from the nation?

Hold that thought for a moment. Alabama has the #1 college football team in the nation—not in Alabama, but the nation. How long could a secession conversation go on without the NCAA weighing in by stating that it is an association of American universities? If a state secedes, it’s no longer in America; and its state university cannot compete in college athletics.

If you’re still reading, we can agree that this is totally absurd … until we think about the on-going transgender-bathroom controversy in North Carolina. Now seriously, a year ago could we imagine that a North Carolina law would bar transgender choice of a bathroom, and as a consequence, the NBA would drop Charlotte for the All-Star game, and the NCAA and the ACC would drop North Carolina venues for championships?

A year ago, I would have rated that possibility in realm of the absurdly improbable.

A lot of unpredictable events in politics and sports have occurred in a short time. Perhaps we’re on a path where people will need to choose between passion for a college championship and remaining in the United States.