Football Coaches
- Thread starter kougkurt
- Start date
Basketball coaches on deck. This year was fun!
Understandable now why Greenie moved to WVU.
If they're smart, they'll realize it will cost more in the long run to have to hire a new staff and coach. All that goodwill will go up in smoke.
Hoping both MBB and WBB coaches get the help they deserve (and need).
It had better include Chun and his entire upper administration. And Schulz and cronies too for that matter. Or they should all be "encouraged" to make major donations to Athletics.
Edit - just read what I could of the premium article on brand X. Schulz mentioned FB and VB, with the other sports to come when their seasons are over. Look forward to the conversation after Smith takes BB to the Sweet 16. "Great job Kyle, now take a 10% pay cut."
Don't tell me that this totally bloated WSU Athletics staff couldn't use some serious scaling down. Wish I had the roster from 10 years back or so, so we could compare. I've never seen so many Directors and Assistant Directors in my life.
One that I can speak to is Compliance. Yes, important. Back in the day there were two guys. And remember, the # of sports and athletes has not grown. Now, A Deputy AD Director, a Director, Associate Director and Assistant Director. Oh but no one below to direct.
Oops, forgot the staff link. Take a few minutes and look at this. Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.
Staff Directory - Washington State University Athletics
The official Roster for the Washington State University Cougars
wsucougars.com
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I didn't know there were still rules to break.One that I can speak to is Compliance. Yes, important. Back in the day there were two guys. And remember, the # of sports and athletes has not grown. Now, A Deputy AD Director, a Director, Associate Director and Assistant Director. Oh but no one below to direct.
Oops, forgot the staff link. Take a few minutes and look at this. Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.
Staff Directory - Washington State University Athletics
The official Roster for the Washington State University Cougars
Yeah, Smith should be on the short list for any decent AD looking for a new hoops coach. He's 55 in June and has us on the verge of the Tournament after replacing 4 starters (5 if you count Jackson). He's rewarded with a pay cut, limited NIL, portal, and going back to the WCC.
Making Kyle or his staff take a pay cut would be the stupidest F-ing thing Sgt. Schulz (I know nothing!) and Charlie Chun (Owner of face cannot always see nose) have ever done. And they've done a lot of stupid things, especially Schulz.
You know the more I think of this the more pissed I am. So Schulz does his little interview with Brand X, knowing that they are going to publish it. So here's a F-ing idea. Turn it into an outreach/fundraising/call to arms or whatever. Announce it from WSU, not Brand X. Say we hope it to be temporary. Announce that Chun and Schulz are doing the same to their salaries. Mention any other cost cutting and revenue enhancement measures. Make a plea to all Cougs to support Athletics and the NIL in this time of need.
Where is the fundraising effort? Nowhere I've seen. We all know we are in dire straits, but "all is well".
And finally, if all this money is coming in from the Pac-12 catastrophe, is right now the time to cut coaches salaries? Don't we have some shitpot of money to get us by for a while? And how about being transparent with that? I wish some major boosters would get pissed off and start calling BS. nothing I can do personally, I'm just a grain of sand.
If Chun and Schulz cut Kyle Smith's salary, they might as well shut down the Athletic Department. There will be some jealousy from people involved but he needs a pay raise...not a pay cut. If I were in their shoes, I would bump him to $2.7 million and say that it was based on the fact that it should have been $3 million, but he agreed to a 10% reduction below market rate just like everyone else.
More or less my point. Pay Smith (and Kamie) and keep the ball rolling. If you don't, you basically just pissed away any goodwill you have with fans, and many will ask "what's the point of even having an AD?"
We are at that stage in life where your buddy who went to work for Microsoft in the 80s is rolling large on the Riviera and you’re slugging it out in the family business
Sometimes things just happen and there’s no way to make up for it.
Losing coaches to bigger money is part of the new normal.
Sometimes things just happen and there’s no way to make up for it.
Losing coaches to bigger money is part of the new normal.
This is reality for a former P5 team that effectively is losing that status. It sucks, but there is no way Smith is going to get anything approaching $3m, even if he deserves it. MBB isn't a big revenue generator; it can make some money, but it's a distant second to football.
Leon Rice is a decent comp. When he signed an extension last year, he was the winningest coach in school history, had just won 27 games, had Boise State as an 8 seed, had won at least 20 games in 9 of his 12 seasons, and he has had Boise State in the NCAA tournament 4 times in his 12 years. Even after all that, he got a raise from $750k to $900k, escalating by $50k a year thereafter, with some incentives.
Yes, we rightly are excited Smith is getting WSU to the tournament this year, especially knowing all it takes for him to go out and get new talent every single year and then work miracles with those guys, but as of mid-2022, the highest-paid coach in the MWC made $1.4m, and Rice was the 4th-highest paid in the conference despite not even getting to $1.1m until the final year of the deal in 2026/27. I believe Dutcher now makes significantly more, but he had those guys in the national title game and is in San Diego.
Some people are all about becoming a MWC program, whether officially or effectively, but then they don't like aspects of that reality like this. This is reality if we aren't a power-conference program with power-conference media revenues.
WSU will struggle to keep any coach who succeeds in any sport, especially the revenue sports, and it can't pay well above market rates for its new reality in terms of exposure and money coming in the door. It sure as hell can't pay a lot of money for programs that don't generate any money like women's BB.
Leon Rice is a decent comp. When he signed an extension last year, he was the winningest coach in school history, had just won 27 games, had Boise State as an 8 seed, had won at least 20 games in 9 of his 12 seasons, and he has had Boise State in the NCAA tournament 4 times in his 12 years. Even after all that, he got a raise from $750k to $900k, escalating by $50k a year thereafter, with some incentives.
Yes, we rightly are excited Smith is getting WSU to the tournament this year, especially knowing all it takes for him to go out and get new talent every single year and then work miracles with those guys, but as of mid-2022, the highest-paid coach in the MWC made $1.4m, and Rice was the 4th-highest paid in the conference despite not even getting to $1.1m until the final year of the deal in 2026/27. I believe Dutcher now makes significantly more, but he had those guys in the national title game and is in San Diego.
Some people are all about becoming a MWC program, whether officially or effectively, but then they don't like aspects of that reality like this. This is reality if we aren't a power-conference program with power-conference media revenues.
WSU will struggle to keep any coach who succeeds in any sport, especially the revenue sports, and it can't pay well above market rates for its new reality in terms of exposure and money coming in the door. It sure as hell can't pay a lot of money for programs that don't generate any money like women's BB.
I intentionally didn't comment on women's basketball because 1) our team is probably not an NCAA team this year and 2) we are never going to generate huge crowds to support a bump for Kamie, even if she does deserve some extra pay overall.
As far as Smith goes, if he can get enough excitement at WSU to get our attendance from 3,000 per game to 6,000 per game, that will justify a million dollar per year bump in pay. We have to find a way to pay that money. As I said above, if we don't, we might as well scuttle the whole thing. We should have short term money for paying him more. Not enough to keep him from leaving if someone offers him $5 million per year...but if we can't get to at least $2 million, we are screwed. Short term thinking is why Mike Price left in 2002 long before we had any kind of equitable money share in the conference. We can't be ridiculous in a pay bump, but if we don't try, we won't be in the MWC....we'll be in CUSA or Sun Belt.
