$63,000 windfall

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
$63,000 windfall				October 10, 2009

Until last week, I thought that William & Mary had become a somewhat boringly stable institution. Gone were the flaps over the Wren cross and other progressive reforms that ousted president Gene Nichol instituted, and in were the somnolence and quietude induced by the paternalism of Taylor Reveley.

It seemed that the only thing the college had to worry about was where the next buck was coming from, since it certainly wasn’t coming from the state.

Then came the news last Saturday that the campus was abuzz, if not seething, about the fact that basketball coach Tony Shaver had suddenly found himself the recipient of a $63,000 windfall that would bring his salary up to $210,000. In the wonderful world of athletic coaching salaries, this puts Shaver second only to football coach Jimmye Laycock and way ahead of the grunt coaches who are laboring in the desolate fields of baseball, track, swimming and gymnastics.

Given the fact that, according to NCAA statistics, the salaries allotted basketball coaches rose 47% between 2004 and 2006, Shaver’s raise is probably nothing to get all snitty about.

Indeed, if you look at the overall salary scale for top-notch basketball coaches, Shaver is making what amounts to chump change.

Consider the case of John Calipari, who is hauling in a cool $4 million annually at the University of Kentucky. Or Roy Williams at North Carolina, who banks over $2 million. Even the University of Virginia is coughing up $1.7 million for its basketball coach, Tony Bennett, who evidently coaches as well as he croons.

According to Kentucky’s Athletic Director, Mitch Barnhart, who faced a maelstrom of criticism when Calipari’s salary was announced, winning basketball and football programs provide the revenue needed to pay for so-called non-revenue sports. Without them, he said, Kentucky would have to eliminate five or six of its 18 intercollegiate programs. Thus winning coaches are sought and paid handsomely because they solidify massive TV contracts, elicit substantial alumni contributions and fill huge basketball and football arenas.

It goes without saying that, given its size, virtually none of this applies to the intercollegiate athletic program at W&M. .

On the other hand, the evaluative principles that guide all athletic departments seem fairly standard. Winning coaches are rewarded with raises, while losing coaches are either let go or told to pass muster before they’ll see a salary hike.

Not so at William & Mary.

Despite his rather gruesome record of 65 wins and 113 losses over six seasons, Shaver got a raise that’s the equivalent of many a faculty member’s full salary. If Shaver’s salary is chump change, faculty salaries are even chumpier. And herein lies the rub.

While the revenue sports at other, usually larger, institutions may well help to advance the cause of minor intercollegiate sports, this has rarely been the case at W&M. Both the football and basketball programs at the college fail to support themselves, let alone other sports. And last year, according to the financial report submitted to the NCAA for 2008, was no different.

To help make up the difference, as well as accord some support to non-revenue sports, the William and Mary Athletic Educational Foundation kicked in a whopping $2,618,289. In addition, the College of William and Mary Foundation, a general fund supporting all operations of the college, proffered the equally substantial sum of $2,071,050 to the Intercollegiate Athletic Department.

Little wonder, then, that faculty eyebrows are raised when coaches, whether they win or lose, seem not only to have a tacit tenure agreement with the college, but get substantial raises to boot. While faculty salaries have long been frozen and furloughs contemplated, football and basketball coaches sail on regardless of performance to ever larger salary increases.

One can also sympathize with students who, after facing constant tuition hikes and forking over $1,008 in athletic fees every year, wonder where the college’s priorities really lie.

At a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors with members of the Faculty Senate, board members suggested that, rather than raising revenue, it was perhaps time to eliminate courses in academic departments. There was no mention of eliminating or revamping financially defective revenue sports programs.

As one professor put it, “If the president and the Board of Visitors don’t wake up soon, we’ll start a slide back to our status in the 40’s and 50’s - the very best college on a line between Fredericksburg and Suffolk.”

The University of Arizona’s Athletic Director, Jim Livengood, noted last year that “Coaches’ salaries, for the most part, don’t make sense. And I’m not sure they ever will. I didn’t create it. But I live in the environment.”

Perhaps it’s time for environmental change.