Dive Brief:
- The University of Louisville has placed head basketball Coach Rick Pitino on administrative leave following the release of an NCAA report which implicates Pitino and other coaches for fraud and corruption during the recruitment process.
- Pitino's attorney is claiming he is owed additional payments for unpaid salary, retention bonuses and compensation for media appearances, and he says that Pitino will try to attain all of what he argues he is owed — approximately $44.5 million.
- The Chronicle catalogued some of the actions the school would be able to take if they could apply that amount elsewhere; according to their analysis, the school could pay off the debt of 1,900 students, or it would be able to pay all salaries for faculty and administrative staff in the College of Arts and Sciences for one year, among other options.
Dive Insight:
Substantial severance packages have consistently been problematic for higher ed institutions, whether faculty are fired or are asked to leave of their own volition in the aftermath of a crisis or controversy that seems too difficult to weather. Savvy incoming presidents are recognizing the high turnover rates in the position, the increased volatility of students and boards, and the overall insecurity of accepting a job as a college president. Leaders are also getting smarter about negotiating the terms surrounding their exits on the front end. And boards, struggling to recruit competent talent to the office, are finding themselves less and less in a position to negotiate terms which may be more favorable to the institution.
But for institutions in the Power 5 conferences — college football and men's basketball elite — like Louisville, the men's basketball or football coach often out-earns the president by leaps and bounds. James Ramsey, U of L's recently fired president, made approximately $1.7 million per year in his most recent contract. And though his pay was reportedly 2.5 times greater than any other president in the Atlantic Coast Conference — a group which includes institutions like Duke University, the University of Miami, Virginia Tech and others — it is still dwarfed by Pitino's $5.093 million average base salary through 2025-26. And the pressure to win at these levels means competition for the top coaches is even tougher, creating an impossibly seller-driven market which favors top coaching talent, even above institutional leadership.