In these economic times, everyone’s got to make cuts. So it’s kind of refreshing to see guys like UCLA head coaches Rick Neuheisel (football) and Ben Howland (basketball) , as well as their athletics director Dan Guerrero voluntarily reduce their salary.
The UCLA, like every other school in the entire UC system, are definitely among the biggest losers in these economic times. The UC has been hit so hard by the California state deficit that professors from UCSD recommended the closure of UC Riverside, Santa Cruz and Merced.
UCLA basketball Coach Ben Howland, Athletic Director Dan Guerrero and football Coach Rick Neuheisel have all agreed to pay cuts, according to a school official.
At the UC’s, the highest paid staff member is not the UC President, the Regents, a school chancellor, or some professor of some exotic subject. It is Jeff Tedford, head coach of Berkeley’s Golden Bears football team. But Tedford, as well as Neuheisel and Howland, justifies their salaries by the amount of revenue their teams make.
The economic impact of Tedford and Neuheisel’s football teams and Howland’s basketball team go beyond ticket sales. Merchandising not only generates revenue for the school, but local retailers selling the school merchandises are also beneficiaries of the school’s success. UCLA basketball and Cal football are both conference championship contenders each year, giving these team a great late season merchandise sales push. And while Neuheisel’s football team has been mediocre in the last decade and constantly dwarfed by its crosstown rival Southern Cal, make no mistake about it, they still make a lot of money. Don’t believe me? Watch any UCLA game, including USC, and see if they’re stadium isn’t sold out and filled with a bunch of fans rocking the baby blue and gold.
But a strong athletics isn’t doesn’t just help a school out from the financial standpoint. Is it a coincidence that UCLA and Berkeley are also considered the two best schools in the UC System? From a broader scope… would you guess that Michigan and Ohio State, college football’s biggest rivals, and Duke and North Carolina, college basketball’s biggest rivals, are all high up on the US News ranking.
Granted, athletic superiority isn’t required to obtain reputability and academic superiority. Just look at M.I.T. and C.I.T. But it is definitely a great starting block. Even though they are athetlic doormats these days, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale essentially took turns as National Champions in the first 30 to 40 years of college football existence. In fact, USC’s 16 national championship titles look feeble to Princeton’s 28 and Yale’s 27.
Winning football or basketball games don’t bring you academic success. But it does bring you exposure. Winning games attract winning recruits, which in turn builds winning programs. And winning programs attract fans who enjoy winning… not just on the basketball court or on a football field, but in a classroom and in the real world as well.
These are the types of people that will run your major corporations and invent the next technological advancements that will earn them millions and even billions. They are also the types that are more inclined to donate large sums of money back to their alma maters… through grants, endowments, and scholarships.
So yes, the coaches have the right to ask for that much money.
But at the UC’s, where budget cuts have begun well before the entire country was in a recession, it has become difficult to compete with other universities in retaining talented administrators and academia.
Former UCR chancellor and current Purdue University president France A. Cordova
Consider former UCR Chancellor France A. Cordova. Cordova, considered one of the premiere hispanic female leaders in education and a former NASA head scientist, was a godsend for UCR. Her initiatives in the sciences has helped moved UCR’s Bourne’s College of Engineering to a must watch list of up-and-coming school. She also spearheaded many intiatives in promoting math and sciences, especially in minority groups and females.
But after serving at UCR for a few years, Cordova was offered a job to be president of the Purdue University system. While never mentioning that money was a deciding factor, it would be hard to argue that Cordova’s $450,000/year salary (compared to her $286,000 UCR salary) had a big role in this.
If UCR had $450,000 a year to offer the Chancellor, would that have kept Cordova in the Inland Empire? Who knows, but it definitely would have at least made Cordova’s decision to leave much harder.
Which goes back to the original point. Neuheisel and Howland’s annual salary stands at just above $2 million each. They’re not obligated to take it. They’re on contractual basis and wouldn’t have to take one. But a 10% paycut, as they have elected to take, equates around $200,000… a price that could have —maybe…maybe not– kept Cordova around UCR.
So, to Neuheisel and Howland— while I may not be a fanatic of their teams, I commend them for their acts of unselfishness.
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On a side but related note: At Cordova’s acceptance speech in Purdue, she mentioned one of the things she is looking forward to is finally having a football team to cheer for. See importance of athletics?
