Potholes and Millionaire Coaches: Drive Carefully

These are gaping potholes outside the athletic department office today at Illinois. For good reasons, committing the budget to $4 million this coming year in pay for newly hired football assistants is far more important. But the potholes clearly suggest that Illinois does not have enough money to do everything first-class. What are the implications for non-revenue sports? Will Illinois pay top-10 salaries for their head coaches and assistants? Upgrade their facilities? Will women share in the same wealth as men? What happens if Illinois' “bold” hiring move has the results of Texas, a program that has gone 6-7 (2014) and 5-7 (2015) after committing $25 million in a five year deal to a new head coach? The new coaching staff landed two top-20 classes, but produced sub-par results on the field. Here’s hoping that the new hires lift all Illinois boats, and fill in the potholes. In the meantime, drive carefully.

Illini Football, Meet Devin Pugh

Devin Pugh, a former scholarship player at Weber State, had a common experience. He was promised a four year scholarship, but when his coach retired, the new coach said he did not intend to renew Pugh’s grant-in-aid. Pugh looked into transferring. Several D-I schools expressed interest and offered him a conditional scholarship—contingent upon his ability to play two years. But NCAA rules that require a transfer to sit out a year deprived Pugh of one year of eligibility. Another rule limits player eligibility to five years. The rules left Pugh with only one more year. The interested schools, therefore, withdrew their offers when Pugh was not granted a waiver.

Forced to sit for a year, Pugh transferred to a D-II school, where he could play immediately—but he had to borrow money for tuition. He also worked at a $9 an hour job. Recently, Pugh filed a class action lawsuit alleging that NCAA caps on scholarships and one-year transfer rules are antitrust violations.  Big Ten football programs treat football players better than Weber State treated Pugh. Schools grant athletic scholarships for the entire term of an athlete’s enrollment. Still, Big Ten schools have only 85 scholarships to give.

Turning to Illinois’s hiring of Lovie Smith, it is reasonable to expect more-than-usual turnover among players. The expectation, suddenly, is to challenge for the Big Ten West title, and move up from there. The current squad is mostly populated with two- and three-star star players, and walk-ons. The idea behind changing coaches so suddenly is to attract better players as soon as possible, while maximizing the potential of the current players (as the other coaching staff did).

The pertinent question is, what will happen to the current squad? Will they feel pressure to transfer? The recent turnover at Michigan, replacing Brady Hoke with Jim Harbaugh, suggests that college football—including the Big Ten— has a way of prodding players from the old regime to move on while the team quickly opens up more scholarships for new (and better) players.

If Illinois football players are treated the same way, they will leave with broken dreams and face monopolistic NCAA rules that have a tendency to break the bargain that was made when they were recruited. Pugh’s lawsuit seeks to uncap the number of Division I football scholarships that a member institution can grant in any given year. Pugh also seeks a court order to abolish the NCAA’s one-year eligibility penalty for players who transfer. And key to note, Pugh’s lawsuit seeks treble damages from the NCAA and member schools.

Pugh’s lengthy legal complaint makes the point, repeatedly, that coaching salaries are soaring due to monopoly rules that financially harm the very players who make the game worth watching. They point out that the problem for student athletes is especially acute at schools where a “win now” approach is imperative. The sudden change in Illinois football coaches has potential to add more plaintiffs to Pugh’s lawsuit.

Cubit’s Firing Mirrors State’s Dysfunction

Putting football aside, Bill Cubit’s shotgun firing raises troubling questions and bad comparisons. It adds to the graveyard of terminated careers—not only for football coaches, but force-outs for UI Presidents (Joe White, Michael Hogan), chancellors (Phyllis Wise, Richard Herman), and an AD who himself forced out several coaches in costly buyouts that were followed by even worse hires. Illinois has squandered more than $10 million in buyouts for coaches and senior campus leaders since 2007— this as the state bleeds red, and students borrow heavily to attend Illinois. Cubit’s firing days before spring ball also mirrors the dysfunction of operating the State of Illinois without a budget. Employment contracts and budgets—core features of stable organizations— are meaningless scraps of paper at Illinois. There is more to this firing than the possibility of hiring a wonderful NFL coach. Cubit’s firing and other high-profile, career ending force-outs at Illinois sends a bigger message to would-be deans, provosts, chancellors, presidents, ADs and presidents: Stay away.

Rank the NCAA Stink

How would you rank the stink among the following NCAA programs? Louisville Cardinals: Use hookers to recruit high school basketball players in a college dorm. UNC Tar Heels: Run ghost courses for championship basketball program. Penn State: Championship locker room scene of sexual assault of a child. Illinois: A raft of messes, including some involving documented mistreatment of athletes, numerous coaching buyouts. Others? For sure.

Are Illini Just a Double Big MAC?

PJ Fleck is another name out there for the Illini. Pro: Two 6-2 seasons, a fast rebuild from disaster; young; high-energy; smart. Con: How many Power 5 schools would even consider hiring TWO WMU head coaches, consecutively? Illini would look like a Big MAC Carousel of Coaches (let’s not forget Toledo’s Tim Beckman). And Fleck is 17-21. Let’s see, you ... fire a coach with a lifetime over-.500 HC record and hire a coach who is under .500, and call it progress?

Lovie Smith for Illini? Cons Outweigh Pros

If Illinois hires Lovie: Pro: First black HC for Illinois football, Super Bowl coach, high integrity person, high winning percentage with Chicago Bears, was fired after 10-6 season. Con: No meaningful college experience; no network built up with high schools around Illinois or beyond; wasted Jay Cutler's talent and struggled on offense after Ron Turner left; "runs off the bus" offense out of sync with spreads these days in high school and college; fired Ron Rivera, now Carolina Panther HC, over petty jealousy; and worst ding on Smith: offended Chicago media with his smug, slick, opaque, holier-than-thou answers. His honeymoon with Chicago media would last about 30 minutes. By the way, if Bill Cubit was fired for hiring his son as OC, it's fair to point out that Lovie had his son, Mikael, as a safeties coach for the Bucs.

Memo to NCAA: If You Care for Student-Athletes, Stop “Koltering”

If you follow college football, and don’t know “Koltering,” the term was coined when Jim Harbaugh, then head coach at Stanford, offered a scholarship to Kain Kolter—and withdrew it when he recruited a better QB. Note aside, it’s easy to see how Kolter became a labor activist, isn’t it? Now Harbaugh is at it again, this time withdrawing a longstanding scholarship that Michigan made to OT Erik Swenson. Harbaugh wasn’t even a man about it—he told his assistant to contact Swenson with the bad news. Adding insult to injury, Swenson had successfully recruited other players to Michigan.

Memo to NCAA: Your premise in numerous player lawsuits is that these young people are student-athletes who signed a grant-in-aid agreement—emphasize, agreement, to attend a certain school. Agreements are made when Party A makes an offer to Party B, and Party B accepts the offer. Harbaugh and Michigan will say, of course, that no G-I-A was signed. That’s two weeks off. But see the doctrine of detrimental reliance, a legal principle that accounts for this type of grossly unfair behavior: “In order to prevail on a promissory estoppel [detrimental reliance] claim and have a promise enforced, you must show the following: A promise was made. [Yup, by Michigan.] Relying on the promise was reasonable or foreseeable [Yup, Swenson was so over-the-moon, he recruited for Michigan.] There was actual and reasonable reliance on the promise [Yup, Swenson stopped being recruited by other schools.] The reliance was detrimental [Yup, Swenson has to shop for a new school and football program on short notice].