Rutgers Quandry

[PoconoPony]

Article by Newark Star-Ledger sports writer Steve Politi.

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Kyle Flood is not getting fired.
I began a column with that sentence 34 days ago, and you would have thought I had poured a can of blue paint over the Scarlet Knight himself. Outraged email. Furious comments. Message board meltdown.
The overwhelming sentiment: How dare I support a head coach who won a share of the league title in his first season and was (at the time) likely headed for another bowl game in Year 2? Had I not been paying attention to the blowout losses and recruiting defections?
Well, since then, the wheels have come off.
Rutgers has dropped from 4-3 to 5-6, including an awful loss to an awful Connecticut team. If you want to say this team has quit, or that it has been outcoached, or that it doesn’t deserve a bowl trip even if it beats USF in the season finale – which will take place on (gulp) Kyle Flood Bobblehead Night – you’ll get no argument here.
And still: Kyle Flood is not getting fired.*
I’ll add the asterisk because maybe the Scarlet Knights lose 35-0 to USF, and maybe the school suddenly channels its inner Southern Cal and makes a change after just his second season. But this is more than just giving a coach a fair chance to build his program – which, by the way, is still true.
This is a matter of economics. Rutgers won’t fire Flood because it’ll cost a lot of money, and that’s because the school has yet to come to grips with the cost of doing business in big-time college athletics.
The buyout in Flood’s contract is just $850,000, but according to someone familiar with the actual contractual obligations, it would cost closer to $3.5 million clean house in the football building when you factor in his assistants’ salaries, payroll taxes and other fringe benefits.

So Rutgers, which spent a combined $1.6 million to get rid of basketball coach Mike Rice and athletic director Tim Pernetti in the spring, would have to eat more than twice that for a coach who, no matter what happens on Saturday, will have a winning record. This, for many on campus, would be far more outrageous than losing to UConn.
But it’s more than that, because firing the current coaches means hiring new ones. Flood is the 74th highest-paid coach in the country, according to a USA Today survey, and Rutgers has a better chance of getting into the BCS this season than finding an established replacement at his salary.
Any good candidate will demand twice what Flood is making, and that candidate will insist on much deeper pool of money for his assistants, too. So on top of the $3.5 million to get rid of Flood on his staff, Rutgers would be on the hook for another $5 million or so next season to replace him – and that doesn’t even include the new coach’s buyout, because if he’s any good, he’ll have one.
Oh, and that financial commitment would be coming at a time when Rutgers is still fighting its exit fee with the American Athletic Conference. Louisville agreed to pay $11 million on the way out the door, and while Rutgers is still awaiting a court ruling to determine what it will pay, it isn’t leaving for nothing.
And don’t count on the Big Ten windfall next season, either, to make all these problems go away. Rutgers will not receive a full share of the Big Ten revenue pie for six years. The Scarlet Knights might get Ohio State on the schedule, but it isn’t close to being an equal on the ledger sheet.
So add that all up all those factors: A financial hit to fire Flood and his staff, plus a much bigger commitment in salaries to hire their replacements, plus a potential hefty payout to exit a conference – all for an athletic department that is already the most subsidized in the nation at $28 million last year.
Flood isn’t exactly inspiring confidence with the way his team is finishing the season, but unless Rutgers suddenly finds a creative way to absorb that financial hit, he’ll get a shot next season in the Big Ten.
That, really, has always been the biggest issue here. Rutgers wants the big-time athletic program without the big-time investment. It’s easy to rip defensive coordinator Dave Cohen, but he’s making $250,000 a year. Maryland – Maryland – has an offensive coordinator making twice that, and that coach, Mike Locksley, would only be the eighth-highest-paid assistant in the Big Ten this season.
Rutgers has a president in Robert Barchi who has little interest in investing in his athletic department – “We’re not going to be spending what Michigan spends” is how the man in charge put it last spring – and an alumni base that isn’t accustomed to writing big checks, and that’s a problem.
Big-time athletics requires a big-time financial commitment. Fans can complain all they want about Flood’s team being 5-6 this season, and yes, it’s getting harder and harder to defend the program.
They should also know this: Rutgers is getting what it paid for.

[feelthehorsepower]

That, really, has always been the biggest issue here. Rutgers wants the big-time athletic program without the big-time investment. It’s easy to rip defensive coordinator Dave Cohen, but he’s making $250,000 a year. Maryland – Maryland – has an offensive coordinator making twice that, and that coach, Mike Locksley, would only be the eighth-highest-paid assistant in the Big Ten this season.
Rutgers has a president in Robert Barchi who has little interest in investing in his athletic department – “We’re not going to be spending what Michigan spends” is how the man in charge put it last spring – and an alumni base that isn’t accustomed to writing big checks, and that’s a problem.
Big-time athletics requires a big-time financial commitment. Fans can complain all they want about Flood’s team being 5-6 this season, and yes, it’s getting harder and harder to defend the program.
They should also know this: Rutgers is getting what it paid for.

Does this sound like SMU at all?