Cost Analysis of Keeping A Bad Coach with a Long Contract

[kdog27]

I don't know the cost analysis but letting this guy run the basketball program even further into ground will cost us much more than 170k in the upcoming years. Letting this guy ride out his contract just because money is tight is just as dumb as not making a facility repair that ends up being way more costly down the road. Forget shutting the BB program down, if this school can't afford to buy out one of the lowest paid coaches in division 1 we might as well give up on sports.

[hammb]

It's standard procedure to let a failing coach go with a year left in order to not have a dead year. This should be built into the thought process with the initial contract. It doesn't matter what is going on with the rest of the university. If you are going to have a basketball team, then this kind of thing comes with it.

Whose standard procedure? Ohio State's? This is the problem with college athletics. Some people feel you run the university for your athletic program and academics be damned.

Right now, this university is trying to negotiate a contract with the faculty. The faculty are looking at every salary of every university employee. You pay a former employee $175K to sit at home for one year and the faculty union is going to have a conniption.

We are about to lose 100 faculty positions and not replace many of them. This will provide more money for faculty salaries, but how will this impact the quality of education that students are paying for? If the students begin transferring en masse, lower enrollments are going to be more of a concern than one basketball coach.

And you are only concerned about one basketball coach.

History shows us how the university is going to handle this...The same as Ankney, Blackney, Dakich, and Paluch. It's a fiscal responsibility.

BS

If you're going to field Division 1 athletics it's because you've already made the decision that what it brings you in students/image/etc is worth the cost of running that athletic department. Part of that cost is paying what it takes to maintain competitiveness.

The only way you can possibly see that return on investment from athletics is to be competitive. If you're going to run it half assed and not try to compete then you're just wasting the money you're putting into it. The University would be best served to do what it takes to maintain a competitive level of play in the premier revenue sports. If you're going to pull stuff like just letting contracts expire and not actively attempt to compete then I feel the university would be far better off just not even putting up the charade of having an athletic department.

[Falcon137]

It's standard procedure to let a failing coach go with a year left in order to not have a dead year. This should be built into the thought process with the initial contract. It doesn't matter what is going on with the rest of the university. If you are going to have a basketball team, then this kind of thing comes with it.

Whose standard procedure? Ohio State's? This is the problem with college athletics. Some people feel you run the university for your athletic program and academics be damned.

Right now, this university is trying to negotiate a contract with the faculty. The faculty are looking at every salary of every university employee. You pay a former employee $175K to sit at home for one year and the faculty union is going to have a conniption.

We are about to lose 100 faculty positions and not replace many of them. This will provide more money for faculty salaries, but how will this impact the quality of education that students are paying for? If the students begin transferring en masse, lower enrollments are going to be more of a concern than one basketball coach.

And you are only concerned about one basketball coach.

History shows us how the university is going to handle this...The same as Ankney, Blackney, Dakich, and Paluch. It's a fiscal responsibility.

They fired Brandon with time left on his contract.

[Flipper]

Brandon had issues other than performance on the field...the APR and arrest issues were killers for him. Orr teams lose too much...but they compete most nights and seem to be solid citizens so the case to get rid of him would probably be tougher to make

[Globetrotter]

There is a reason that the highest paid person in nearly every state payroll is a football or basketball coach. You may think the pays out of hand but if you want to be on the same playing field you have to play by the same rules. If we can't buy out one of the lowest paid coaches in the game then what is the point? The product on the court is as bad as it gets, with no signs of getting better. Do we really have to hit 100% on every single coach we hire?

Can we name other schools who do this? Having a lameduck coach simply is horrible for recruiting and building a program.

[Falcon137]

Brandon had issues other than performance on the field...the APR and arrest issues were killers for him. Orr teams lose too much...but they compete most nights and seem to be solid citizens so the case to get rid of him would probably be tougher to make

True. Brandon's teams were generally, pretty good and won more than they lost.

I was just making the point that BG doesn't ALWAYS wait out contracts like transfer insinuated.

[BleedOrange]

It's standard procedure to let a failing coach go with a year left in order to not have a dead year. This should be built into the thought process with the initial contract. It doesn't matter what is going on with the rest of the university. If you are going to have a basketball team, then this kind of thing comes with it.

Whose standard procedure? Ohio State's? This is the problem with college athletics. Some people feel you run the university for your athletic program and academics be damned.

Right now, this university is trying to negotiate a contract with the faculty. The faculty are looking at every salary of every university employee. You pay a former employee $175K to sit at home for one year and the faculty union is going to have a conniption.

We are about to lose 100 faculty positions and not replace many of them. This will provide more money for faculty salaries, but how will this impact the quality of education that students are paying for? If the students begin transferring en masse, lower enrollments are going to be more of a concern than one basketball coach.

And you are only concerned about one basketball coach.

History shows us how the university is going to handle this...The same as Ankney, Blackney, Dakich, and Paluch. It's a fiscal responsibility.

BS

If you're going to field Division 1 athletics it's because you've already made the decision that what it brings you in students/image/etc is worth the cost of running that athletic department. Part of that cost is paying what it takes to maintain competitiveness.

The only way you can possibly see that return on investment from athletics is to be competitive. If you're going to run it half assed and not try to compete then you're just wasting the money you're putting into it. The University would be best served to do what it takes to maintain a competitive level of play in the premier revenue sports. If you're going to pull stuff like just letting contracts expire and not actively attempt to compete then I feel the university would be far better off just not even putting up the charade of having an athletic department.

Yup. Otherwise, why not just eliminate the basketball program outright? That will pay for faculty salaries.

If the program is institutionally destined to suck, then it will ultimately be a money sucker and serve no other purpose for the university. Plan for profit and success or get the hell out of the business. Currently, I don't see what purpose the men's program serves in its current state under Orr.

[Flipper]

If it were up to me...Orr would have been gone a year ago. We closed Anderson Arena and didn't sell it out...we have a brand new building and it's not even half filled most nights. He's killed the interest in the program amongst the students and locals and that's costing us topline $$$$ everynight. It costs the same money to run the arena if you have 1500 or 4000 people, but you make lot less money with 1500. If you want athletics to be a means of drawing students...and that seems to be the rationale for being a D1 school...you have to spend the upfront $$$$ to make even more $$$$$.

And the biggest difference between Orr and Brandon is that Brandon wasn't a GC hire and had a shorter leash because of that

[BleedOrange]

Another thing that we all keep forgetting is this: the perceptions, interests, and loyalties current students have towards BG sports are being formed NOW! We are losing future alumni. They days that expire with a dead program are never regained.

[transfer2BGSU]

I was just making the point that BG doesn't ALWAYS wait out contracts like transfer insinuated.

You're right - with Brandon we did not wait. But as has been pointed out, there were other issues with his teams. I do not see us releasing Coach Orr with a year remaining.

Remember, this is a different time financially from when we released Coach Brandon.

[factman]

The real problem is the person(s) that saw fit to give him an extension. Do we really want him hiring the next basketball coach at BG?

[hammb]

I was just making the point that BG doesn't ALWAYS wait out contracts like transfer insinuated.

You're right - with Brandon we did not wait. But as has been pointed out, there were other issues with his teams. I do not see us releasing Coach Orr with a year remaining.

Remember, this is a different time financially from when we released Coach Brandon.

If we cannot financially afford to buy out one of the lowest paid coaches in D1 with a single year remaining on his contract we have no business running a Division 1 athletic department.

You wanna argue that the financial climate is such that we should drop sports to benefit the university as a whole? Sure I'll listen. But you'll never convince me that it makes financial or competitive sense to keep a lame duck coach who you want rid of just because you can't afford his buyout. And I'd be SHOCKED if it costs his entire salary to buy out that final year either...If it does whoever negotiated that contract should be fired.

[guest44]

Thank you Greg Fundraiser. You saw the same fluke MAC regular season title that we did. You handed out an extension, yet the chances of another big program coming after Orr were similar to the chances of James Erger playing in the NBA. BG lost to a 5 win Canisius team at home, just 3 weeks before, and had a losing non-conference record that same season. Ohio (seeded 8) was favored vs. BG (seeded 1) in Cleveland, just 5 days after BG beat OU by 30+ at home. Way to see the big picture Greg. Greg then sits down with Dave Horger for his softball question segments, to say the program is headed in the right direction. CLUELESS.

[hammb]

Looking at it real quick without getting real deep, even if the buyout IS $175k, is that really that much money?

We play 16 home games a year. That works out to a little under $11k per game. The cheapest tickets to the Stroh are $13-14 I believe. Even if you only sell the $13 tickets covering the cost of the buyout only costs an additional ~850 tickets per game. That's based PURELY on ticket sales, not factoring additional revenue from concessions/merchandise/parking sales. I suspect that if you looked at total dollars spent on the gameday experience you'd find it would take less than a 500 per game ticket boost to cover that expense in one single year.

New hire or not I doubt that attendance will be real great in 2013-14. But if you hit on a hire that shows some promise next year? Then comes back out and shows some wins in 2014-15? That season I would be shocked if you didn't see an average attendance increase of well over 850 compared to what we're seeing now.

The lone upside of the Orr tenure is that he has sapped SO much life out of the BGSU basketball experience that it isn't going to take much to see a cost/benefit improvement by canning him ASAP. There are fans here, and they've been in the arena when we've been good (which sadly is about 10 years ago now). A new coach that breathes life back into this program will QUICKLY pay for himself and the buyout because we have a TON of unrealized revenue just waiting for BG basketball to rebound.

That's not even accounting for the fact that you'll build a lot more future fans if you can actually start winning. I still have season tickets and go to BG games because I grew up in the area during the 80s/90s and went to games with my grandparents. Then I was in school for the Dakich glory years, graduating after the '01-02 season. That winning history built a lifelong relationship with the program that I've still been going to all these games no matter how terrible we've been. But if I would have grown up during the '00s and were in school right now? I find it hard to believe that I'd have developed the same attachment to the program that I did then. There's no life in the program...I can't see myself spending so much time in the arena during my college years with this craptastic product on the court.

[Globetrotter]

I am completely baffled how we can have $10million dollar donors who I believe rightfully say we can be Gonzaga or Butler and then just a few years later we are having a discussion that we can't buy out a very low paid coach. Orr should have been out and we should have had another coach when the Stroh Center opened. You can't let him suck anymore momentum out of this program.